Go with your parents suggestion.
Your young plenty of time left.
Unless you really have a burning urge to join the forces stay clear of the Air Squadron.
You will proberly find that the EDI has a gliding club. Go see what thats like. The hand feet stuff in gliding will help with powered flight and its good fun and cheap.
And if say in your 3rd year you still want to be a pilot think about doing a PPL that summer. And get a class 1 medical now just to make sure you can actually work as a commercial pilot. It seems daft setting your life up to be a pilot then find out that you can't.
You have to start planning now how to be different from everyone else when it comes round to writing your first CV for your first job. And I don't mean president of the Union. This goes for all jobs not just being a pilot.
Things like.
TA officer.
Special Constable.
First responce medic for the ambulance service etc.
Team sports
Become an instructor in a practical hobby eg Scuba diving.
It all gives you life experence to pull on later when it comes to writing CV's and filling out application forms.
You don't want to have to write for:
"tell us about a confrontation situation and how you dealt with it"
well there was this big lesbian in chambers street union and she took exception to some engineers talking about flange design. Luckly I was able to blindside her and belt her round the head with a fire extingisher before to much damage occured. I learned alot about customer relations while working as a bouncer at the student union.
MJ
A320 how come you manage to come out with utter pish on some threads and yet on others your advice is actually quite sound.