I'm currently 15 years old, and I've been sitting on the idea of joining the US armed forces. My motive for this is to be able to get through college and to get nice experience for my resume, as well as a bit of a reality check and real experiences. I know it won't be a cinematic experience, but it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. I am currently active in sports (hockey, to be exact), eat well enough, and am fairly fit, although thin. I'm sure that I'll be even more fit by the time I finish high school, so I'm not too worried about that. I would definately like to go to college before committing myself to any contracts. Because of that, I have been looking into NROTC in order to finish college and then move into the Marine Corps. I'd like to study Psychology at the moment, and I see several colleges with NROTC teach that. Now, question time:
1. In order to be accepted into a college that has an NROTC program, what do think would be a good GPA to have? I'm not worried about test scores, I'm fairly smart and have always excelled in tests. I know the premier GPA would be a 4.0+, but what do you think would get me in?
2. If I were to be accepted and get into the college, NROTC pays for most of the costs, but I'd need a job to pay the rest, do you think I'd be overwhelmed balancing college, a part-time job, and NROTC for 4 years?
3. Anyone that has gone through the NROTC program, how did it go? Was it hard to get into it and were there any major cons to it?
4. Any Marines that can describe training would be greatly appreciated.
5. Any other military or academic advice would also be great. Especially other ways to pay for college.

Thanks in advance.

I have been through the AFROTC program. This is how it goes. I finished school with a BS in chemical engineering but chose not to finish the ROTC program but I did go through 2 years of it.

1. If you truely want ROTC to give you a full ride you have to apply for an ROTC scholarship before you graduate high school (not everyone in ROTC is on scholarship) if you are granted the scholarship it pretty much covers everything, you have to read the fine print to see where the bur is thats going to get into your shoes as far as what is payed for or not. If you get the scholarship you get your first year without commitment as soon as you show up to ROTC class the second year you are in (although its really easy to get out even after your second year, you may have to pay some money back when you cease to be a full time student)

2. You can go into ROTC as a nonscholarship and get like a few thousand bucks off your tuition and you have 2 years before you have to commit.

When I was in AFROTC, the commitment was medium to minimul but the classes you had to go to were by in large a complete waste of time, upper class men go up and talk and everyone claps, more or less a bunch of BS. I was in a very rigourus engineering program and it seemed like a waste when I could have been doing differential equations or organic chemistry homework.

As far as time commitments, it can swing depending from person to person, what your prioities are what kind of quality of life you want to have in school, a big factor is what your degree is and how rigourus your particular degree path is (for instance my school had the AFROTC program but most of the time we had to go to boulder becasue our school was so small (addmitance was difficult) and cadets from boulder has such a slack ass degree path compared to ours they always got on us about not doing pointless activities, I constantly had to remind them of that fact and they got pissy and rude so I just left. If you can put up with the nonsence and you are getting a 100% full ride it is probably worth it, if you dont get on scholarship its not worth staying in the program. It just chews up time you could be studying or partying and having a good time (whet ever you do, dont ever think that having a good time or parrying can take the back seat, if you dont have a release it can put a major strain on you.)

If you dont get a full ride out of high school, the best way to pay for school is to fill out the FAFSA for federal aid, not that democrates have control of congress one of the things on there agenda is to make going to school easier and lower student loan interest rates, so go first for the grants and then the super low interest loans, now days its almost impossible to get away with out any student loans unless you really fluke out with grants or mommy and daddy are rich enough to pay your way or you want to put in a large amount of time into the military (always remember its not really a 4 yr commitment its 8).

Also be carefull with phycology, because if you dont go carrer with the military you will have to get a PhD in order to really be employable in the field of phycology. People wont pay you 100$/hr to tell you there problems if all you have is a BA in phycology.

Another thing you can do is go to fanne may (not sure if thats the spelling) and you fill out a profile and it will do a search for scholarships for you and send you an email when new ones pop up based upon your profile. There are lots of ways to pay for school that dont involve going into the military for close to a decade, talk to your guidance counselor.

Once you finish school you can also go through the OTS program, I have no idea what the process is with the navy, but what ever you do dont go through the army, there OCS program coming off the street is the most disorganized bunch of BS I have ever seen.

Common

Whatever you do, don't follow any advice from the poster called rppearso.

He's currently AWOL from his command. I haven't read his response to you becuase I have him on my ignore list, recommend you do the same. When you have done that, stop back in and ask any questions you like, we have plenty of real veterans in here that can actually answer your questions.

Yes, listen to thegunny because rppearso, as you may have noticed, quits all military things. Ignore the fool.