Need opinion!

Networking can help your chances and if you can "get your foot in the door" at a hospital (such as a PCT job) then you can raise your chances of being hired right out of nursing school. Otherwise, you might end up working in a LTC facility for a while..

It really depends on what your school uses to make the cut, and when schools are overloaded with applicants it makes the job alot easier to use teas scores and GPA to cut the stack down to size. Keep shooting for A's, because no matter how good your essay is, it means nothing if the board doesn't read it due to a 3.41 cut off. Oh and on getting out, if you haven't already started, start saving money like crazy. The VA makes military disbursing look good, seriously if it wasn't for the 6 months of expenses I had saved up I would have been homeless as it took the VA 3 months to pay me and the school... And the delay happens to some every semester.

You write well and you have many experiences to draw from and you are not cocky (meaning I think you will put the time and effort into the eassay), I think your essay will be outstanding.

I think you will have no trouble getting into some nursing schools but not any nursing school. They are all so different, it just depends on how much weight they put on which aspects of the application.

I agree with KareBear, networking can help your chances after school. Probably the most important factors these days are location and experience. The job outlook for nurses is much tighter in some areas of the country than in others. You are doing more than a civilian can do without a nursing license but I don't how it if it would be considered nursing experience or not. You might ask on the male nurses board because they have several military people who post sometimes.

Where are you currently stationed? @FSCJ near NASJAX, your military experience would get you 20 pts extra towards acceptance. Also, there are contract nurses at NASJAX hosp (and civilian, but that would cut into any retirement pay....if you are retiring).

I think a 3.4 is competitive enough to get into nursing school. As far as getting jobs after graduation, I think you will be in a better position simply because of your background. You can research the websites of the schools you are interested in attending to see what the average GPA and other requirements were for the previously accepted class.

Good luck to you.