u/Deep-Dragonfly-3342

Is it possible to become a pilot through OTS?

Ever since I was a kid I was interested in flying for the air force, but when I went into high school I must have lost myself because I started grinding academics and athletics like every other asian kid does, and I ended up getting sucked into the trap that going to a prestigious college was the only career path.

Now I am slowly starting to rediscover my interest in flying for the Air Force. I have a 3.9 GPA in Computer Science and Data Science, and I find that I am pretty good at studying for tests, but I have absolutely no flight hours. However, its too late for me to join ROTC since I am ending my junior year already.

I wanted to get some more information from the experts on whether it is actually still possible to get into UPT through OTS before I start seriously pivoting my time towards preparing.

Also, I wanted to ask is the application to OTS binding, and do they tell you if you got accepted to a pilot slot before OTS or after?

I am a CS student in college right now with computer vision research and unpaid web SWE internship experiences, and I am struggling hard to get an "official" and paid software engineering internship, so I can only imagine how much I will struggle to get an actual dev job. I wanted to look more into robotics and low-level programming because money is a concern for me and I dont want to end up graduating from college without a stable source of income.

First, I wanted to ask whether the grass is greener on this side or not. Is it easier to get a job as a robotics software engineer, provided I focus my effort to attain the same level of qualification that I had when looking for regular software and data science jobs?

Also, I wanted to ask what kind of projects I should be trying to do this summer in order to pivot more towards a robotics role.