To succeed in your plan, you will need to get a good degree. My concern would be that whilst not difficult, there's a fair amount of theoretical work to do for the written exams (if tickboxes can be counted as 'written'). I would be very wary of jeopardising your current studies as this would impact on both plan A and plan B. It may be that you can get things done e.g. in the summer holidays in which case it may not be an issue.
If you just want to get in the air, you could consider some other form of sports flying e.g. microlights/paragliding. There's plenty you can pick up there in terms of risk assessment, theoretical knowledge, that would do you no harm at all when you switch to powered flying.