DAMN...I did the exact same thing, though I ended up at GE designing engine components before I went to an airframer. One of our test pilots once asked me how I knew so much about aiplanes and yet had never been in the military...I told him I've been building models non-stop since I was four years old.
I was accepted at Harvard without even applying when I graduated high school. I went to Illinois and got an aeronautical engineering degree and rose to the mediocrity of the middle class instead. Bill Gates, by way of comparision, dropped out of Harvard...had I only known.
"Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be aeronautical engineers...make them be doctors, and lawyers, and such"...or something to that effect...