Personally, I love the Army, but I fucking hate the reserves. Do whatever YOU think YOU need to do. Pick the job that YOU want, get a nice bonus (nothing under 10k) and all the school benefits you can get. As far as age, I had a guy in his early thirties in my basic and he did just fine. I was 22 when I joined and was one of the oldest ones in basic. My reenlistment window opens soon and I want combat engineer on my new contract. I'll have to go to school again with a bunch of 18 year olds (I'm 27 now), but I'm not to worried about it. As far as PT, the requirements adjust with age, but the special schools that you mentioned ie. Ranger, which requires Airborne first, may hold you to higher standards. If you can do two miles in the 14's, 60 PU's and 60 SU's you should be golden, and if you're even close to those numbers now, just think how much better they will be after basic training. Oh yeah, and I think they changed the combat schools up so that you pretty much do basic and your MOS school concurrently. You will be at Ft. Benning, if you go that route, for a very very long time between basic, infantry, airborne, and most of ranger. I say go for the 14x if you really want to, you'll be glad you did in the long run.