Hi Mike! I'm sorry no one has responsed to your post in quite some time!
I'm Jesse and I use BoA too. I'm really shocked you got denied by Cap One for a secured card! They are generally pretty easy to get from what I have heard on here.
But I definitely congragulate you on thinking about your future and your finances in a roll. Even as an 18 year old, I can tell you not many young people are thinking about their financial future and starting early. You are definitely one of a kind.
So ever since joining this site, I have been FICO obsessed (shockingly enough, I have only had a CC for about 3 months now). I went straight and applied for the BoA Cash Rewards credit card online and was approved after talking with a rep with a $700 credit limit.
I have learned that you are never supposed to let your card report anything over 30% of your limit you are given. Staying below 10% utilization (I try to stay at 5%) gives best result for score boosting. As an example, say your secure card has a $300 limit.. You can go and spend that, just make sure before your statement closes that you only have $15 remaining to report to the three major credit bureaus at the end of the month. Then whenever your statement closes, you can go ahead and pay that $15 off if you want.
Another thing is that you keep your inquiries low. You've most likely done three hard inquires to see who would approve you to let you get your foot in the game. Wait until 6-9 months before "apping" for anything else, assuming you are keeping a good utilization rate. Applying for new credit takes a ding in your score. You right now shall be "gardening" and that's precisely not apping for anything for a good length of time.
Never close any active accounts as this also affects your score. Say for example in 5 years whenever you got your nice new car from being approved at a good 1.9% APR for having awesome credit history, you notice you have your account open with Bank of America from 5 years ago and you don't even use their services anymore. Never cancel it from your credit history. Let it remain open and report as it will go towards your AAoA. AAoA means "Active Age of Accounts." Having a lengthy AAoA is excellent.
Speaking of financing cars, always check out credit unions first because more than likely they will give you the best rate on a vehicle.
If you have any more questions, definitely give me a response on here! 
- Jesse
@newhis wrote:Hey Mike, did you get the Cash Rewards secured card from BoA?
If not, you can do a secure chat and ask to change your card to Cash Rewards, you will get a new card that will earn 3% gas, 2% groceries, 1% everything else.
You got some denials, my recomendation is to wait 6-12 months before app again. Test chase, amex, barclay pre qual sites before app. Try to get at least 2 more cards that you want. You can read here people with a lot of cards, you don't need 20 cards to get a good score. I can see people with only 2 cards and score around 800.
I only have 2 cards, don't know my score yet, I think next month Discover will show a score. I'm waiting at least 8 months since I got my cards to app for 2 more cards.
The best thing you can do is see if you can get "pc'ed" to an cash rewards if you can't then that is ok. All you really need to do is use your card , and pay it off. Thats basically it show good payment history. Do that for an good 6-9 months and then you should be able to get an fico score. Once you get fico score then you can decide if you want to try for an better rewards or cash back card. That would be my short term advice.
