Let me give you the run-down from my perspective. I was prior service when I went to college so Army ROTC seemed like a pretty good deal, at least in the way they sold it. It would have been a good deal if you wanted to get a BA in general studies and go off into the operational world as an operator. However, if you have any interest in getting into medical school, DO NOT go this route.
First, they pretty much own you. Some units may only make you do a PT test every now and then but that is the extreme minority. You are a cog in the machine and as far as they are concerned, at this point, you are no different that your buddy making a 2.0 dying to be Ranger Joe. You'll have to do PT 3 days a week, class work twice a week and a 3-4 hour lab. This does not include all the extra duties you will be given such as squad leader, CO, First Sergeant etc. You can bank on having at least an hour or two of extra work every day on top of everything that was already mentioned. Additionally, expect to be voluntold to go on recruiting events and color guard duty. Even if you decline to do any of the extras like Ranger Challenge or whatever its called, you still get to set up for it. Add on to that the FTX's that take place monthly where you sit in the woods wishing you could study for your test on Monday and you've got about 20+ total hours each week dedicated to this 3 hour class...
That's just your first two years. When you hit your third year (read, the year you should be focusing on MCAT prep) they just start piling on the work. More FTX's, more additional duties, etc. Go ahead and add 5-10 hours on top of what you're already doing. You'll get to spend the summer of your junior year (read, when you should be sending out and receiving secondary applications) up in Ft. Lewis Washington with a large group of mouth breathers hoping to be the Army's version of Chesty Puller. While some of them are decent enough people and can hold a conversation, some are really really in love with the Army and your days will be spent listening to how they are going to go to Ranger school, followed by Jump school, followed by the Q course, followed by Halo, followed by BUDS, and topped off with a special course on wolf fighting taught by Liam Neeson himself. Oh and if you sent out your AMCAS on the first day like you should have you can rest assured that when you get home you'll have a stack of secondaries that had been sent out a month prior. Good luck explaining the long turn around.
Finally, when you do get into a med school you had better hope they didn't fill all the Ed Delay slots for the year. Otherwise you could be looking at an acceptance letter in one hand and orders to Benning in the other, guess which one wins? If you happened to get an Ed Delay and an acceptance and use the HPSP to pay for it, forget about a 4 year plus residency commitment. Go ahead and tack on 4 years to whatever the recruiter tells you.
If you got this far and are still considering it, well then I don't know what to tell you. Just remember what you could be doing with an extra 20 hours a week when you're sitting in a pretend FOB taking pretend fire getting yelled at by a future Transpo officer who bought a K-bar online for $250 because thinks he's John J. Rambo and that's what "operators" carry. Get a job, take loans, hell, give out handy's at the truck stop for 25 bucks in order to pay for college. You'll still come out ahead.
