What happens after?

A lot of times (due to the economy), new grads don't have much of a choice. You will need experience often times to get into specialties, but I have never heard of an ASN being denied access into a specialty just because they had an associate's and not a bachelor's.

Different specialties require different qualifications. Often times, your employer will provide that education (for instance, a cardiac monitoring class for telemetry, a chemo course for oncology, a NRP course for NICU, etc). Some floors have their own orientations as well. Believe me, nursing school does NOT prepare you to be a nurse practicing independantly. You will need more education, and that is a common theme in nursing.

Just don't expect to pop out of school and emerge into an ICU. It happens, but rarely.

It's a little intimidating, isn't it? I am getting my ADN then planning on my BSN after, and as far as I can tell from researching it, I need my BSN to do trauma nursing. But you don't just come straight out of nursing school and hop into your desired specialty, at least from what I have heard.

certain schools lack access to certain areas of nursing (no clinical rotations in ICU or OR) or lack certain skills that are imperative to a field (say cardiovascular). If thats the case they will turn the applicant away until they have experience in the field or similar experience.

Depends on your area of interest and the location where you live. If you want to work ICU when you graduate, some hospitals require you to have at least 1 yr acute care experience (LTC doesn't count). Some hospitals have a internship program and others will hire you as a new grad. Some specialities like Flight Nursing or Trauma nursing requires X number of yrs (usually 3-5 yrs) in critical care or ER to apply. The reason for that is you need to develop your advanced nursing skills which come with experience with more complicated patients. As for ASN vs BSN for positions, I sure there some hospitals have those requirements also.

Also, just because you want to work in a department doesn't mean there is an opening in that department. You may have to take what you can get until you can transfer.