WOW!

sooooo many questions.......where to start?
I'll throw my money at the "A" school stuff.
A school is not too bad. The Navy will teach you the way that it wants you to learn it. Some people with higher levels of education may find the methods simplified or refined excessively for the Navy. Remember, the typical nuke will be 18 or 19 with only a high school education. Your college experience will only help you. The Navy nuke schools are set-up to ensure you succeed (some argue to a fault). If your instructor can't explain a concept to you so that you can grasp it, there will be 4 or 5 other people available to help you (although it may require you seeing them on your own time). For the most part your classmates should help you. You just need to make sure you are doing everything you can to help yourself before you burden your classmates with questions that were answered in class, or concepts that have been covered repeatedly. More than likely there will be people with similar abilities to you. These classmates can make great study partners. You will probably be surprised that there will be a lot of things in common with A school and high school. At your age, these things can be a distraction, so stay focused.
As far as
"basically getting a nuclear engineering degree, food, board, and the garantee theyre not going to be sent to iraq for atleast the first 3 years of their service" your average nuke will be several credit hours away from any bachelor degree after the training pipeline and sea service is complete. An A.B.E.T. accredited engineering degree is even more distant.
I will give you the food and housing (although there are some half-way houses that I have seen that were in better shape than my A-school barracks). The Iraq statement is not true. Failure out of the nuclear pipeline opens up a lot of other possibilities, some wanted, others not so much. The needs of the Navy.......
"what makes the program sooo bad?" Usually the pretense by which people join the nuke program is very seldom the situation they find themselves in.
Very smart people are taken, taught just enough to do a job, restricted from following natural tendencies like logic, compassion, reason, and self gratification, and placed under considerable stress. All this while expecting near mechanical, unquestionable compliance with rules, procedures, and regulations from their superiors. The end game of which is to preserve a public perception and national safety that we have sworn to uphold.
Its an imperfect system operated by imperfect people, imperfectly held to an ideal standard.
My Navy nuclear experience has been the most transformational of my life. Did I like it while I did it? Not really. Would I go through it all over again?....ummmmmm NO! Am I glad that I did it? Most definitely.
wow my 100th post.............anyway