There are tons of jobs for Nukes. My room mate was a physics major at USNA and now has a PhD in Physics. Seriously, she is a genius. She was also a Nuke. She works for one of the government agencies doing Nuke stuff and loves it. Between the government, research labs, private corporations, there are tons of jobs for any nuke school grad. There are more jobs than those qualified from what I have seen. Bottom line is he doesn't declare his major at USNA until March timeframe. They hold open houses at USNA for majors. Upperclass, professors and officers on the yard will also help provide input. He has options and time once he even gets there to work through what he wants to major in. He can be an athlete and major in anything. Its hard and time is limited, but its no impossible. Athletes do it daily there. My best friend at USNA was a math major and did his masters in ops research. He does that for a living as a private consultant making bank. I have lots of friends who do all kinds of engineering work in every engineering field you can think of. Most of them are what you mention, management/supervisors where they use their leadership to lead teams and manage efforts. They aren't doing entry level engineering work, they get paid the big $ for their ability to tackle problems, plan, lead teams, think outside the box. I was a history major and did systems engineering for the past 10 years. You advice is right now. Major will not really influence career field. It can affect shore tours/B billets. For instance an engineer will have more options to work in R&D, testing, acquisition, Test Pilot School (for pilots) for shore tours. It also opens up the Engineering Duty Officer path if they want to do after their initial tours.