Sorry, I’m doing this on mobile so there may be spelling errors.
So my conundrum, is what I plan on doing for my major(s). Right now I am a high school senior going to the University of Kentucky right after high school. Since a young age, I have had an interest in the Air Force and science. Right now, my plan is to join ROTC and work on a dual major in Mechanical Engineering and Physics. I plan on being a developmental engineer in the Air Force, and while serving I want to pursue my education further (on the military’s dime), preferably to the point of getting a Ph.D. in physics. From there, I would like to become a professor and research/teach physics. I don’t know how viable this plan is or whether it is “over the top”. Any advice I could recieve would be fantastic
Chances are your school won’t prevent you from doing a dual major if that is what you want to do, but keep in mind that trying to do that and graduate in four years is going to be very difficult. Many engineering curriculums are very structured and upper level courses tend to have a long chain of prerequisites. Doing an engineering degree tends to leave you with very little room for free electives. In my personal opinion, it may not be worth the time and effort to do a dual degree.
You may look to see if your school offers a major called engineering physics. For engineering physics, you will have to take a certain amount of upper level physics courses and a certain amount of upper level engineering courses. For the engineering courses, chances are you will have an advisor help you form a coherent sequence of coursework. So if you want to make your degree more ME focused, your advisor will help you choose which ME courses to take for your engineering courses. Then there will be room for you to take additional technical electives in either physics or engineering, and you can make the course selection based on whether you want to go to graduate school for physics or engineering.