im seeing you guys rolling d10 early yet im reading event tables as 2d6
also where would a list of military academies be? Do they provide certain bonuses / negatives or is that just fluff from example character?
If you'll look through the Lifepath PDF linked to in the character creation guide, there are lifepaths on both 2d6 and 2d10. It's a chronological thing; early published lifepaths were 2d6, ones published later are on 2d10.
The Lifepath document also includes all of the military academies for which there are academy-specific paths which do have differing mechanical effects on the characters (though the event charts are the same for all the academies of a specific faction). Basically, the following academies have lifepaths:
FedSuns:Albion Military Academy
Armstrong Flight Academy
Filtvelt Military Academy
Kilbourne Academy
NAIS College Of Military Sciences
Point Barrow Military Academy
Robinson Battle Academy
Sakhara Academy
Tikonov School Of Military Discipline
War College Of Goshen
Warrior’s Hall
LyransAlarion
Bolan
Buena
Coventry
Nagelring
Pandora
Royal New Capetown
Sanglamore
Thorin
CapellansCapella War College
Liao Conservatory Of Military Arts
Sarna Martial Academy
Sian Center For Martial Disciplines
St. Ives Academy Of Martial Sciences
Victoria Academy Of Arms And Technology
DracsSun Zhang
Mariksnone
Canopians
n/a - Canopian Institute of War is a path, but the school doesn't actually exist yet
Marian
n/a - Collegium Bellorum Imperium is a path, but the school doesn't exist yet
OutwordsColumbia Academy
If you want to go to an academy not on this list, use the generic "Military Academy" path.
Note: this happened this way because the Field Manuals for Dracs and FWL both were published during MechWarrior 2e RPG, and so lifepaths didn't exist. Them MW3e came out, and we got the rest of the Field Manuals with Academy paths in them. The later Handbook series is ATOW-compliant, which doesn't include lifepaths.