a couple things to keep in mind
I believe for this year's process they are going to adjudicate requests for changing schools after each board, so you won't have to wait until the end of all the boards to request a change. What happened this year is that when the process was over and winners requested to change the school they wanted to change to didn't have any more allocations, so the offer was useless.
Once an applicant has an offer in hand from one of the early boards changing their college application to an "early decision" application may help them get into their school of choice.
It's a complicated, slightly scary process...keep close contact with a good recruiting officer and you will do fine.
This definitely would be an improvement.
I, for one, would rather see a system whereby scholarships are awarded only after the first round of acceptances for a school are sent out and allow early board recipients to a school with early acceptances to later trade in when a more competitive schools first round of decisions are announced (along with the scholarships).
For example:
1) Top candidate Alpha applies to 5 schools including his/her local State U (a safety) which has rolling admissions and 4 more competitive school, some with Early Acceptances in December and January.
2) S/he is on top of things and get all college applications in during September and the ROTC scholarship application in during August and is awarded the scholarship at State U during the first board in October.
3) S/he accepts the scholarship at State U in October, knowing s/he has a bird in the hand.
4) In December, one of his Early Action schools higher up his list accepts him in their first round of decisions and the December board awards the first of the scholarships for that school to Alpha. Alpha decides to upgrade and turns in the State U scholarship (which can be recycled to another candidate in January) and accepts the scholarship to this school.
5) However in January, his top pick Ivy League school defers Alpha to regular decision. Meanwhile other applicants to top pick Ivy League school do get admitted and fill up all the available scholarships.
6) Alpha finally gets accepted to top pick Ivy in March, but finds out that all of the scholarships have been given out to Early Acceptance candidates. While disappointed, Alpha understands that s/he lost out to more qualified (academically) candidates (as judged by early admission). Alpha ask to be put on the waitlist for scholarships to top pick Ivy.
7) In late April, one of the scholarship recipients to top Ivy finally gets a SA appointment and turns in top Ivy scholarship. Alpha, being the top OML candidate on the waitlist gets an offer and turns in scholarship accepted in December for the scholarship at top Ivy League school. Alpha sends in acceptance letter to school at the end of April.
In this scenario, the system works to award each school's scholarships at the earliest date where they can be realistically accepted which usually corresponds to the date the best early applicants get their acceptance. There is a bit of churn as more schools award scholarships, but a waitlist for each school awarded by OML score allows recycled scholarships to go to the highest rated interested candidate.
I don't think this method will be implemented in my lifetime (it requires tracking of each schools earliest decision dates and building waitlists for each school as well as multiple awardings of the same scholarship when they get recycled. It doesn't necessarily eliminate the late in the game changes, but it does ensure the best (by measurement of OML score) candidates available get awarded the scholarships for the most competitive schools with later initial decisions, while allowing candidates to lock in backups without excluding their dream school.
My dreams having been expressed, if Clarkson is right this will help many. I encourage all concerned candidates to investigate further and report back.