Here's my tuppence worth....
I wouldn't go into aero engineering with the idea of it increasing your chances of being successful on an atpl course or becoming sponsored to do one. Many people become dissillusioned rather quickly-and find that aero engineering has much less to do with aircraft and much more to do with the engineering side of things.
It will only be until you get to your final year where you will have more scope for selecting which subjects you would prefer to study in greater depth and can also select an aero related final year project. Many pilot wannabes soon realise the limited amount of aero topics in the foundation years of the course-which becomes all too apparent when you are sitting banging your head against the desk in Control Theory lectures where the only reference you hear to aviation in hours of lectures is a 5 minute reference to its use for damping in autopilots!
I would suggest that if you want to go to uni, study something that you are really interested in and join the uni air squadron or find a uni with a good gliding club-or if you dont happen to be too hard up then get your ppl whilst you are studying.
Aero engineering is a great degree if you want to become an aeronautical engineer or go into engineering but not as useful or as helpful as you might think if you want a career as a pilot-afterall they teach you more than you will ever be able to remember on the tech side of things in atpl groundschool.
Cheers
TG