Unless you are in a specific 5 year engineering program (that often includes an internship) then you CAN graduate with a BS in engineering in 8 semesters. Make sure your academic advisor knows that you NEED to graduate in four years and take a full credit load.
Good luck!
+1
1. You can do it, but it has to be planned ahead. If you are a high school junior, you should plan on a hefty load of AP's next year and possibly a college course during the summer after senior year. The point is to open holes in your schedule and add flexibility for things like ROTC. It is the only way my DS was able to make AROTC work with ChemE.
2. The issue with any Eng degree is that there is a large number of
hard requirements and many of them have to be taken an inflexible sequence. A history major will have the choice of "The Tutor Kings" of "The Ming Dynasty" when ever he/she wants. The EE major has to take "Y" before "Z", but only after completing "X" first. Many of these classes only offer one section per semester and are not offered in the summer. Adding in the hard requirements of ROTC only makes the pieces harder to fit.
3. I know that its against the grain of this forum to admonish high schoolers who dream big. But I will do it anyway. You better do really well in calculus and/or be comfortable with the tedium, if you are going to study engineering and do xROTC. Once, in high school, DS had to race from a tennis match to a class at the local university. One of the dads, a serious guy who is universally considered the smartest banker in town, asked "Where is ***** off to?" I told him he is taking Calc III at *****, to which he replied, "Oh, that's why I dropped engineering."
4. If you have an xROTC scholarship for engineering, good luck dropping engineering and keeping your scholarship.
I have no reason to question your abilities, but you need to know what you are getting into and what you're capable of. The best way to do that is press yourself senior year while your classmates are cruising. Take the AP's which are most relevant to the major your are considering. Don't wait for freshman year to gauge your tolerance for a tough academic schedule.
Best of luck!