I will try to keep this brief as I have a tendency to post short novels. Most of what you are asking has already been posted in separate places under various topics.
1.) If you want to attend Survivor, please email Brandi:
wsbrandic@gmail.com. She handles all administrative tasks and will send you the schedule.
2.) Yes, choice is achievable but I feel that most, IMHO, get burned out or start trying "other" ways because they focus too much on choice and it doesn't come as quickly as they had hoped. It's great to have long term vision but setting short to intermediate goals should be your focus. Your confidence will grow when you start hitting the short term targets. Back in the old days, GW's #1 goal for any new 1-5 student was to break even at the end of your first year of trading.
3.)Someone else in the forum will be happy to help you set up TOS as I only use as a 3rd backup. I love the order entry and trade management sections of TOS but dislike the charts even though the platform is free. If you truly want to learn to trade like GW then you should consider Alchemcharts. QCharts is going away and Alchem offers so much more at a slightly better price. Also, TOS does not allow you to do the chart study correctly as taught in Survivor. So ask yourself. If you made your mind up to take take the classes and do as instructed then why would you not get the tools suggested by the instructor? TOS can work but you need to be disciplined as it is way too easy to get caught up in "I want to do this my way by scripting my own indicators".
I've done a lot over the years with various platforms, writing my own indicators, trying to find the holy grail, back testing, etc. I found ways to, as close as possible, write a script that tries to mimic GW's style of trading on platforms that allow automated trading and true back testing. Results were always between 78% to 85% correct during normal times. In 2008-2009 crash, you would have gotten burned unless you adjusted your style of trading. This is why I now dislike automation. I want to make the final decision. All this to say that when GW says in class that his out of the box trading style is 80% correct, I do believe him. It's a great place to start and them work on getting better.
So why do people fail? It's all between the ears. Greed, adding new stuff,trying to improve by writing custom indicators that are not taught, etc. You don't have to improve the program, just get better at executing what is taught. That starts with letting go of hope, fear, and greed. Not suggesting you have - just mentioning. There was a time roughly 7 years ago when I was 82% correct on stock direction but still lost money due to fear and greed. About 6 years ago I made a few changes to my style. I was more aggressive and only 48% correct but was profitable during those 9 months. That period of time taught me a lot about cutting losses short and letting winners run to a logical conclusion.
Once again I failed at brevity but wish you the absolute best in your trading endeavors!
NCT