I am fairly new to real estate but I’ve been reading and studying and I know there’s more to learn but I wanna at least start connecting with people in the area I plan to invest in

I am now about 6 months away from graduating with a BS in Global Studies from a 4 year university.

He is the Director of the Center for RE Studies, a real estate research organization and President of calstatecompanies.

It's important to study the data that's out there to try and get some idea of market patterns though.

Here's a study showing that in the next 20 years, 8 states will contain 50% of the US population:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/12/in-about-20-years-half-the-population-will-live-in-eight-states/Are these states necessarily good states to invest in?

To put my question in simplest terms, would it be possible to not attend college, but to instead find the same textbooks that would be used in a specific college class, and study them, hence learning everything I would learn if I was in that class, without actually taking the class?

If you can get a copy of an appraisal, study it.

Currently I’m interested and studying real estate investing!

I wanted to get recommendations on resources to do a market study or consultants who can do a great job to answer this question.  

I use Huntwise Pro to find all boundaries (spent $700. on one survey only for the surveyor to tell me my stakes were right on line with his tools within 6 ")  and study county maps and easements, which ranchers and the few part time cabin owners  out there just make their own easement/roads  and everybody, the few people around, like myself with an illegal easement on one of the 40 acre properties I bought apart from a tax lien  accept to be accommodating to neighbors in rough territory where you cannot traverse the legal easements on the perimeters so therefore, would have no access to your property.