<p>The short of it: I want to work for the government (NASA would be great). Salary is definitely a big factor in this.</p>
<p>My university offers specializations in:</p>
<p>Security
Gaming
Artificial Intelligence
High Performance Systems
The Business of Software
Software Engineering</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure I can scratch Business of Software and Gaming off the list.</p>
<p>Any significant software project will make use of the knowledge of software engineering and security. High performance systems, depending on what it entails, may also be useful.</p>
<p>Try to get in a course in each of these areas: algorithms and complexity, operating systems, software engineering, computer networks, security, and databases.</p>
<p>Ah, very helpful. Thank you.</p>
<p>At this point, I managed to reduce my options of interest to High Performance Systems and Software Engineering.</p>
<p>I guess my next step is to compare salaries between those two specializations and to investigate which of the two the government (e.g. NASA) is partial to in terms of job abundance…</p>