Re:Get the CS degree (Score 1)

I respectfully disagree. I think the career experiences you gain after university can take you in many different directions, and with CS especially you have options in many different fields (far more opportunity to move around from CS to something else than from Aero to CS). Straight out of college, the Aero or MechE degree isn't going to get you a job as a software engineer at Google or Facebook. It may get you a job "programming" somewhere obscure, but you're going to be hard pressed to find a top-tier employer hiring a software engineer these days with a person who is a recent graduate and who didn't do CS. (I also believe there's a difference between computer science, software engineering, and programming, but that's probably a long enough rant for a different post.) The computer scientist could easily get a job at Northrop or Boeing working on embedded control systems for aeronautical / space systems. If they build the systems that model these components and work closely enough in the field, perhaps that bleeds over into an actual aero design job, but to be frank I'd say the chance of that happening is about the same as someone with an aero or MechE background landing a job as a software engineer at a top-tier company. However, the CS person has a much wider swath of potential employers and industries than the Aero person.