I think I may be mis-understanding this statement but when I read “I want to be able to choose what type of projects I take on” that will limit you alot to freelance. Most companies who do a variety of work are not going to let you choose what projects you work on necessarily, the classic is when IDEO puts an Architect on a finance driven project. Understand the process and like yo said, work hard and you will land where you want. Konstantin Grcic once said something along the lines of “I like to design things in size from a chair to a table.” I always thought this was an interesting statement because he used size to describe his desired enjoyment of work.