<p>Salary for both varies WIDELY on location. In nyc, san fran, a rn can make around $40 an hour, give or take. In some areas $18/hr is not unheard of or even less. If you are living in a major east coast city, I can tell you the starting hourly rate for rns is about $25 -30 an hour. Almost all nurses are paid by the hour aside from those in management, state jobs such as state mental hospitals or prisons etc. Those working in nursing homes, hospital floors, etc will almost always be paid by the hour. You can be a nurse with a diploma program(phasing out or non existant in some areas), associates or bachelors. Many hospitals REQUIRE AND ONLY hire nurses with bsns esp in metro areas where there are tons of bsn programs. I think that is the best option for most young people interested in nursing. It takes about 4 years, if you get into the program right away. Some schools have you take pre reqs for 2 years, then nursing classes for the last 2. You can major in nursing in many colleges/universities. You can also have a BA OR BS in some thing else, AND take the pre reqs for nursing then do an accelorated bsn program (about a year or so). There is so much variation the best thing to do is look up the criteria for all the schools you are interested in. The process is you graduate from an approved school of nursing, then register to take the NCLEX , which is the licensing test for nursing. After that you will have a license, a requirement, to work as a nurse.</p>