BSN: Join Military VS GS employee (Civilian)

[sugarbunny3, BSN, RN]

Hello to all,

I am a current BSN student with 6 months left!! woohoo! Anyway, I live in a large military city with a large joint base hospital. I am weighing my options of joining the U.S. military as an officer or applying to the hospital as a GS employee. I do have a contact that can get me in at the hospital as a GS; however I do plan on moving forward with a midwifery degree soon. My main questions and concerns are as follows: *note, thank you in advance for answering my questions ? *

1. As far as paid tuition is concerned; the military offers paid cont. ED funds, but as a GS employee are there any tuition/scholarships available for nurses? If so, can I please have the details of how they work and for how much?

2. I am aware that I could more than likely end up moving away from my city; which I am okay with, but is there any lead way possible for me to stay and work at the joint base hospital here?

3. I don't mean to make this so much about money but I would like information of the pay grade of military officer VS GS employee.

4. If you feel there is any other great and valuable information I could use please add it! I am here to learn!

[Nunya, BSN]

You can look up pay online. As far as I know unless you're ROTC the military wants you to have a year's experience, and I think it would be hard to get a GS job without that also. If your join the mitary of course you can request the local hospital but it's not guaranteed, although it would be cheaper since they wouldn't need to move you. But when I joined in 84 it would have been cheaper to move me 3 hours away to San Antonio (from Houston) yet they moved me to MS. Call a recruiter and ask your questions, they'll be happy to help. And call HRv at your nearest VA hospital and ask if they hire new grads.