I'm a rising senior and coming up on college admissions, I'm really stressed. My passion for basically half of my life has been astronomy and I love everything related to space. Unfortunately my brain flipped the "prepare for college" switch during Junior year and I missed out on many, many valuable opportunities that I never thought twice about before. Camps, learning opportunities, etc. I've recently chosen AE, as I can specialize in dealing with space systems while also doing something I'm good at (calculus and physics) while having good opportunities for jobs and good salaries in the future.

But the thing is, ASTRONOMY is my passion, not AE. While I think AE is cool, astronomy is literally what I love the most. I love the stars, galaxies, planets, everything. But I haven't learned anything really *about* astronomy. Sure, it involves math and physics, but my pre-college lifestyle has excluded all the deeper astronomy related things. Which brings me to my second question which I asked above.

The thing that concerns me the most is that I've heard about how competitive the field of astronomy is and how not many people get employed since most places require a PhD and even then it is still very competitive. I want to do what I love, really, really bad, but I feel like its very difficult and may not even be viable for me in the future compared to AE, where I feel a lot more comfortable about my future.

My coursework is pretty open ended, the only thing really specializing me in an area is one engineering class I'm taking this year. I'm starting an astronomy club and have an astronomy related social media page, which I hold very dearly. I figured I'd ask THE astronomy question sub, where most people are professionals or at least experienced in the field.

Is it that hard? Are my dreams achievable? I know people say 'follow your dreams' but I want to live comfortably in the future. I'd appreciate any advice.

P.S: I'm confident in my grades and coursework for astronomy (AP Calc and physics classes) but it's just down the line where I get worried. I want to go to UIUC for either AE or Astronomy btw, if U of I is a good astronomy school, which I hope it is)