Since I can answer some of your questions, I've decided to take this opportunity to make my first post, introduce myself, and answer your questions.
I am a recent DEPer (June) who is leaving for Great Lakes on Aug 30, 2006 from southern California. I am 24 (HS c/o '99) and had to run quite a few waivers before I got into Nuke. The first waiver I had to do was an age waiver because when I went to MEPS, the earliest opening for Nuke was February '07, which meant that I would be 25 by the time I reached bootcamp (my birthday is in Oct). The second waiver was about my father who I have not had contact with since the day I was born. And the third waiver was for a misdemeanor I had when I was in college. This misdeamor was later re-classified(sp?) as an infraction by the Legal person at MEPS. Once all my waivers were complete, a contract was sent to my recruiter and now I am waiting to ship at the end of August.
I did well in HS (Salutorian) and was accepted into every college I applied to, including the Naval Academy. However, I decided to stay close to home to be closer to my mother, my gf at the time, and my HS friends. I attended UCLA and graduated with a Microbiology degree in '03 and have been working in the Biotech industry for 3 years. In February '06 I took the ASVAB (97) and the Advance Placement test (71) and was told that I had qualified for the Nuke program as long as my waivers passed. I was told that with my degree I could apply for an Officer but in the end, I chose Nuke (I'm not sure if I made the correct choice here, only time will tell.)
So to answer your question on whether or not your age will affect your acceptance into the Nuke program, my answer is maybe. Since graduation from college, have you done anything productive such as earning a college degree? Or have you just been sitting on your a** watching the idiot box? My recruiter told me that the age waiver is to make sure that the person wasn't just sitting around the house doing absolutely nothing. As long as you have been productive since graduating from HS, e.g. attending college, there shouldn't be a reason for you to not pass the age waiver.
Sorry for the long post, but this is my 1st post and I wanted to introduce myself.
Huy