Not an Osprey pilot, but know and work with quite a few. My main caveats will be at the end. I deployed on a MEU a while back, where my det was attached to an osprey squadron.
Ospreys are selected out of primary. SNAs first go to South Whiting for an abbreviated helicopter syllabus (2 months). After that, it's over to Corpus for multiengine, where they do almost the entire syllabus (fam, instruments, etc.) which takes 7-9 months or so. Then is when they'll find out their duty station. Ospreys have the most variation in duty stations available out of any TMS: New River NC, Miramar and Pendleton by San Diego, Hawaii, and Okinawa.
Post wings the FRS is in New River and takes 4-6 months.
Fleet life will be busy. Osprey squadrons are split into MEU and SPMAGTF squadrons for what they do for deployment. Each of those has it's own pluses and minuses.
SPMAGTF will be either in the desert (but not as exciting as you think) or in Rota, Spain (but not as exciting or fun as you think), but it's not the boat at least. The MEU is its own form of pain and a constant tease of meaningful work that almost never gets fulfilled. On MEUs (or anywhere, really), Ospreys and 53s and up being cargo/pax pigs for a lot of admin movements. Ospreys deploy on a pretty steady rotation and you could reasonably expect 2-3 deployments within your first fleet tour.
The downside to this is that it can really be a grind. Osprey pilots historically are undermanned in fleet squadrons and so after your 4-ish years in the fleet, you won't necessarily be able to escape to flight school or another cushy non-deploying B-Billet and may be sent to another squadron to do the whole thing all over again. Most of my Osprey friends are pretty burned out by the end of their first tour and looking for ways out of the community (FAC tours with infantry battalions, etc.) even for just a couple years.
They vary on thinking that the flying is satisfying. Some people like it, and I know more than a few that absolutely hate it. The Osprey's "part of the action" is not really as spicy as you may think it is, and there's a lot of flying around in circles waiting for other people to do stuff. That being said, it's a vital role to the MAGTF.
The community is a little odd. The big caveat I'll give here is that I am a Huey pilot, and flying an Osprey is not appealing to me and neither are most Osprey pilots (that skid and assault pilots don't get along is one of the eternal truths of the Marine Corps). In the past, the community was a hodgepodge of former CH-46 "phrog" pilots desperately trying to keep flying, castoffs from other communities, and a couple pure Osprey guys. As time has gone on, there's obviously more pureblood Osprey guys, but it still feels like a group of people trying figure out what they're supposed to be. It's a much more chill environment than skids. The squadron will not have a ton of pilots (more than jets, less than a helo squadron) and so your experience will live and die based on the other pilots in the ready room.
The biggest caveat I will give you is that everything I said could be completely different by the time you're a flight student. When I was looking at flying in the Marines back in high school, skids were doing 7 months on/7 months off rotations to the desert getting crazy amounts of combat time and doing insane stuff. By the time I got to flight school, that was no longer the case. While there's still no where else I'd rather be in the USMC, my life and job are not really what I thought they would be. Stuff changes, and while getting excited about a platform now is good, keep your options open. That's honestly the best advice you could have right now: poke around the internet, read books ("The Dream Machine" is an interesting book about the Osprey's development cycle), and when you get to your commissioning source, ask semi-intelligent questions to every officer about their job. What do they like, what do they not like, what is rewarding/not about their jobs, etc. Think about why they're saying what they are (Don't expect great insight on pilots from a logistics officer or vice versa, for example) and just take it on board for when it comes time to make your decision.
Hope this helps!
