What are your thoughts on ROTC nursing? Specifically for army? I am curious about joining but cannot receive scholarship until Sophomore year and am wondering how to balance it out with classwork.
Thoughts? Feedback? 
The first question is: at what point do you make a binding commitment? For example, if you can get a stipend for a while without a long-term commitment, it gives you time to decide whether you want to move forward.
Nurse students do have few electives and tight schedules. You are correct to try to figure out if the schedule would work. Also, most nurses work in a hospital in the summer between the 3rd and 4th years. Would that conflict with any summer ROTC obligation?
You might consider joining the military after you graduate. In that case, they send you to Officer Candidate School. My sister did that a number of years ago, and she attended with other nurses and doctors. It was not as difficult as the training that is required for regular military staff officers. You may find that the military offers some college loan forgiveness programs. However, my understanding is that college benefits vary from year to year and from service to service, depending upon what types of people they need.
My D is a freshmen nursing student with Army ROTC. She is at a school with many AROTC nursing students, so the Army leadership at the school know how to deal with inflexible nursing schedules. To help a bit with this problem the school allows nursing AROTC students priority registration. I would suggest if you choose this route to look at host AROTC colleges (not crosstown-schools) that has a large nursing group in ROTC and a nursing dept that works well with the Army leadership.
The binding commitment for scholarship recipients is the first day of sophomore year. Non-scholarship is, I believe, first day of junior year. For scholarship kids, the penalty for leaving this binding commitment is either 1) payback to the Army all monies received or 2) enlist in the Army; the choice between 1 or 2 is up to the Army, not you. So “scholarship” is really the wrong term these use - it acts more like a loan, with payback to the Army with either years of service or you pay them back if you quit.
So far, my D has had no issues balancing school and ROTC. Even the upperclassmen nursing students tell her all the work is doable, you just need to have good time-management skills. My D does physical training (PT) every M, T, and Th at 6am (another reason to not be at a cross-town school) and some outdoor training (lab) every Friday from 1pm-5pm. The upperclassmen nursing students with clinicals that conflict with any of these events are excused but do some type of makeup.
As Charlie mentioned, you could go the OCS after college route. In the current environment, that might be a little tougher. The Army (and Navy and Air Force) need a lot fewer nurses than a few years ago, especially a newly graduated nurse. Now if you had some years of experience with a NP or CRNA, then you would be much more valuable. Additionally, you need to know that if you go ROTC, you are not guaranteed Army Active Duty when you graduate, you could be forced to go Reserves. In the recent past, I think all AROTC nurses got Active Duty, but this changed last year where some were forced reserves, so you can see that it is not as easy to become a Army nurse as in the past. Of course, in 3-4 years this could completely change.
Oh, and BTW, nursing ROTC scholarships are A LOT more competitive than they used to be. Just keep that in mind.
For AROTC nursing students, they work in a army hospital for a month between their junior and senior years, one-on-one with a army nurse officer (preceptor)
Let me know if you have any other questions and good luck,
When my sister was a nurse in the navy, she was in charge a team of many enlisted corpsman, who did most of the patient care. She served a number of years active duty in various parts of the US and Okinawa, and then served several years of reserve duty while she was a full-time nurse at a private hospital (which was near a Naval Hospital).
She wanted to do a tour of duty in Europe, but could never get it. I understand throughout the military it is extremely hard to get assignments in Europe. She did get to travel for free throughout East Asia, but had to get strapped into cargo holds next to jeeps…
Nurses are also subject to the rule of “up or out.” If you don’t get promoted regularly within certain period of times, you have to leave the service. The problem is that there are only a limited number of spots for nurses at the higher ranks. At least that was the case several years ago.