Air Force pilot - college major?

Question

I heard that the USAF doesnt care what field you major in at college. Is this true? All my life becoming a pilot is what I have wanted to do, however, I am not good at math so I most likely would not major in anything that involves math (engineering, physics, etc.)

Answer 1

You need to improve your math skills.

Piloting involves figuring out coordinates, vectors, et al.

I guess you could major in geography. But, take several math courses, too.

Answer 2

Your best chance of getting a pilot slot is go get into the USAFA in Colorado. If you graduate in the top 10% you can pretty well write your own ticket for what you want. They get first pick for the pilot slots. If you go into college and get an engineering degree that will help a lot. But doing ROTC in college will help a great deal also, specially if you show some leadership ability and end up your senior year as the cadet commander of the ROTC unit. Then you go into the USAF and have to show you can do a good job at something. After a year or two you can apply for pilot training and perhaps get something that the Academy grads turned down. If you consider they are only going to buy about 300 of the F22 fighters for the Air Force and 1000 of the F35 total for all branches, you can see they are not going to need a lot of pilots. Also, a lot of "pilots" are sitting at Creech AFB in Nevada flying UAVs in Iraq. Not quite what you hand in mind I bet, flying a UAV from an office. Also if you would do a search of even this site, there are hundreds of "I wanna be a pilot" type questions. For every one slot there are hundreds if not thousands of wannabee pilots. If you do not have 20-20 vision, if you are color blind, if you got any kind of mental health or neurological problem you will not even be interviewed. A better bet would be to try to become a civilian airline pilot.

Answer 3

If you go to the Air Force Academy or do ROTC it matters a little bit what your degree is in. If you are coming straight from the civilian world, it matters very, very much. The Air Force is looking for technical degrees, such as computer science and engineering. They are hiring less and less from the civilian side and more promoting from within. So if you think that Criminal Justice degree will make you a pilot or even an officer, you need to think again

Answer 4

Most Air Force pilots (especially the hot fighter jocks) are Academy grads. The Marines don't care what your major is and they used to have what they called "Flight Contracts" for guys who wanted to be pilots. Although in the USMC you have to do lots of other things besides fly.

Answer 5

your major is considerably less important than where you go to school. most pilots come out of the US Air Force Academy, as mentioned above. the other options are ROTC and OCS.

In my graduating class at USAFA, the people who got pilot slots had backgrounds ranging from liberal arts, to law, to Aerospace engineering.

Answer 6

You must be good in engineering and physics to become a pilot.

Answer 7

We had two slots given to my husbands ROTC class and I would agree that it really doesn't matter what you major in, however, my husband went to UNT and, believe me, it matters a lot if you're not very good in math. You have to be a VERY quick thinker and math is quite important.

It can't hurt to try though.