I've seen this attitude especially in America, to say that becoming a physicist is like a higher level and engineering a lower. I really dont see the need for why people are making it so hard on themselves and it prolly only results in the fact that you have more physicists in the end and lack engineers. Making a challenge out of things definitly invokes a battle for the best quality but saying that some jobs are for more intelligent people than others is stupid in my eyes.
Same with the other guy who said mechanical engineering is for istp's. Lol, well thanks for that, dunno what prejudices you hold against istp's. Obviously this guy never done a stress-deformation FEM analysis in ansys of a construction you did yourself. Or a thermical analysis of the heat distribution in your computer casing. Those things are fun and have nothing to do with just selecting from existing specifications. In my country mechanical engineers are always aswell the leader in projects, because they have to bear the greatest responsibility. If a circuit fries short that doesnt matter so much as like the wrong steel was choosen and the whole thing collapses. That means if you study mechanical, you automatically study management, organisation and teambuilding.
If you want to do the most innovative work your future definitly is in mechanical engineering too, cause we are living in times of innovation at the moment and judging from the many different job positions freeing up on development project teams, I think there's a lot going on. Think the two hottest fields are in the energy sector or becoming a mechanical engineer that on the same time has qualifications for dealing with i.e. low tension voltages. Probably intresting in the automotive sector in the future.
Dunno but whatever you do, go by your heart. If everyone around you makes a challenge out of it and tells you you are stupid cause you didnt make it to noble-prize rocket scientist so be it. At least your own heart is in the right place. And let those nerds become lab rats. Those people all life far away from the real world and wont be as often as you be in the daily newspaper, cause you are an engineer