Upon entering college Jim was interested in continuing his study of rocketry and flight. Since there were no universities that offered a program in rocket science, and he was determined to achieve his goals, Jim decided that the military was the only place where flying was being pursued as a science and decided to enter. He applied to the Naval Academy and was placed on an alternate list.

So he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin under the Navy's Holloway Plan, were he studied for two years and was allowed to take flight lessons while pursuing his education. However, just as he was beginning to study aviation , he received a letter of acceptance from the Naval Academy at Annapolis , so he left Wisconson to begin his career in the Navy. Upon graduation, still interested in rocketry, Jim wrote his senior thesis on the then unheard-of topic of liquid-fuel rocketry. Of the 753 students in the graduating class of 1952, only 50 were selected immediately for naval aviation. Lovell was one of them.