Community college then university, or just university? How much time?

If your goal is to join the Navy, I would speak to a Naval Recruiter or a school with an NROTC program, more so the latter. I've heard the Navy wants to reduce the number of nursing scholarships, but as I'm not in the Navy or NROTC (just friends and classmates who were in NROTC), I would go with my previous statement. I do know, however, should you decide to go that route, that you will most definitely have to keep up your grades, especially when you're in nursing school, and failing out of the program will result in you owing the Navy whatever amount they paid for your education.

If you want to forgo that route, in the area I'm from, students will take their pre-reqs at community colleges (or a hybrid of cc and university) and then move on to a nursing program from a university. It's been my experience (though I can't speak for everyone) that nursing schools don't make as much of a fuss about taking all pre-reqs from a university as would med school (though I'm hearing now med schools will be more forgiving). Regardless of where you take your pre-reqs, it would be in your best interest to keep your GPA around a 3.5. The national average to get into nursing school, supposedly, is 2.something, but that bit me in the end. I'm just happy I have my BSN and passed Boards. Look at what schools you wish to apply and their requirements. I would look at the school with the highest GPA requirement, assume I'm going to that one, and keep it where they'll at least look at your application.

All in all, it should take you about 4 years if you do everything correctly, 4 1/2 in the case of my nursing school. In my case, it was longer than 4 1/2, but that's because I goofed and wanted to have fun in college:)

Hope that helps.

What I forgot to mention also is, if you're planning on cutting costs, I think I would stay away from private schools. The private nursing school in my homecity had an outrageous tuition, even for in-state residents, and with the costs for equipment, it's not an expense I was willing to fork over.

At your age and with those plans, I would go the University route and look into a ROTC program.

BSN is the future and hopefully will become the only route to becoming a RN. Until we stop having so many paths to entry we will never have the respect the profession wants so badly. My hospital has stopped hiring ADNs & has given a deadline to those already there.

If I could go back in time, I would have started doing nursing at a university fresh out of high school. Considering the time it has taken me to do pre-reqs and get my ADN to bridge to a BSN completion program, I could be half way through a masters already. Since you say cost is a factor (and it always is for everyone), maybe consider taking some of the pre-reqs at a community college and transfer them when you apply for the BSN program.