<p>As long as you can afford the cost of college, there is no real advantage to ROTC. In fact, for doing civil engineering work, it is advantageous to not be in ROTC. This allows you to negotiate your assignment with the military before you enter. With ROTC, they already have you and the military might decide that they want you to do something other than civil engineering work.</p>
<p>Both the Navy and the Army have outstanding civil engineering organizations. The Navy has the “Seabees” or Construction Battalion units, while the Army has the Corps of Engineers. In fact, the Corps of Engineers also has extensive career opportunities for civilians. In other words, you would be a civilian employee of the Army. You might consider that, instead of pure military.</p>
<p>Mechanical Engineering is the ideal major for what you want to do. A mechanical engineer can easily understand almost anything that a civil engineer does. It is also good preparation for any other type of engineering, especially for gaining a masters degree. However, your concern about switching careers is valid. It takes a lot of work to gain employment outside of your experience. I recommend getting that masters degree after military service, not before it.</p>
<p>Nuclear engineering is a bad idea if you want to go with the Navy. They will put you on a submarine. Period. They might even break a promise to put you in the “Seabees.” Nuclear power officers are in very high demand with the Navy. Besides that, what you learn in nuclear engineering is of limited value in the medical field. Not useless, but not particularly useful either. If you want to learn something about nuclear engineering, just take a couple of nuke electives during your mechanical engineering studies.</p>
<p>Finally, the military will not send you to a masters program until you have been in the service for at least ten years. For example, the Naval Postgraduate School is for career officers – not for anyone fresh out of college. If you get that far, you might as well stay for 20 years.</p>