Appeal process?

ZBBMcFate

5-Year Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2011
Messages
8
I hope someone can help me answer some questions that have arisen during my daughter's application for an ROTC scholarship. Here is some background
information:

1) My daughter applied for an Army ROTC scholarship, listing Stanford as her first choice.
2) At some point in the process, her physical assessment was received by Cadet Command but not placed into her file.
3) She was accepted into Stanford.
4) Her file was not reviewed by the scholarship board
5) We became aware of the missing item after the board had met

At this point I am pursuing an appeal. I have documentation from her high school showing that the physical assessment was received at Cadet Command via fax on 10 January. I do not know how often, if ever, such appeals are heard and ultimately succeed, nor do I know if my daughter would have been offered a scholarship. However, with her grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities, I think she would have been competitive.

My question for you is what, if anything, can be done to appeal this decision?

Thank you for any assistance.
 
I am truely sorry for your daughters situation.

I have not heard of any appeal process.

Unfortunatly this is something that happens all to often. We have had 2 son's go through this process now. During the application process for my younger son we had to resend information to Cadet Command that was either misplaced or lost in the mail. We kept in contact with the ROO and they would look up his application to make sure everything was ready. We had him check just prior to the first board and found that we needed to resend his ACT scores. Luckily we got them there in time to be seen by the board.

Ay least one ROO has posted here talking about working with cadets to compete for campus scholarships because they either not seen or not ready for the final board. Nobody has ever mentioned an appeal process.

I would doubt an appeal would do much good at this time due to the fact that the March 8th Board was the final board for the year. There will be no other boards that would be able to review an application. Add to that, results from the March 8th Board have begun to be released today. All the decisions have been made and now everyone is just waiting for the remaining results to be released.

Your daughters best bet will be to contact the ROO at Stanford, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't UC Berkely the ROTC Host school for Stanford. Contact them and let them know your situation, register for ROTC for the first semester, go to all the MS classes and Labs, and participate fully in ROTC activities, also make sure she is well prepared for the PT Test so she can pass with high numbers. Basically she will need to put her best foot forward, show she is committed to the program and do everything she can to place herself at the top of the class. This will go a long way towards being competetive for any campus based scholarships that may be available.

Best of luck to your daughter.
 
After I posted the initial question, I had an opportunity to discuss this with a person fairly high up in Cadet Command. Essentially what you wrote is correct. (other than that bit about Berkely, the host for Stanford is Santa Clara University) There is no appeal process. It is also unclear how many, if any, 3-year scholarships might be available for the Santa Clara program.

Bummer.
 
After I posted the initial question, I had an opportunity to discuss this with a person fairly high up in Cadet Command. Essentially what you wrote is correct. (other than that bit about Berkely, the host for Stanford is Santa Clara University) There is no appeal process. It is also unclear how many, if any, 3-year scholarships might be available for the Santa Clara program.

Bummer.

I think your "bummer" may be the understatement of the forums right now. So sorry to hear that a simple clerical error has left your DD (and your family) in this position. The new and improved website status page would have prevented something like this, but not in time... I hope your DD does okay with processing whatever this means for her college choices/changes. Does CA have reserve or national guard SMP programs attached to her school? It is an option if you talk with the ROO/PMS at Stanford/St Clara they will know the details.
 
There is no appeals process. Without going through the board there is no way of getting a score for the individual. They aren't going to get a board together for appeals plus all the scholarships have been allocated (for now).
 
I have spoken with the ROO at Santa Clara. He has been helpful, and he has suggested my daughter prepare an application for a campus-based scholarship. Thankfully, he thinks he will know in mid-May how many, if any, will be available. Here is where getting into Stanford actually works against my daughter, as the higher tuition may take up more funds that the detactment will have available. At least Santa Clara is pretty expensive too, so there's not a huge difference between the two.

One unfortunate outcome is that we won't know about the scholarship until after the committment deadline for colleges.

We'll see. This is a very valuable lesson. For meanings of "valuable" that include the cost of Stanford tuition/room and board ($58k/yr). I don't think I can afford too many valuable lessons like this one.
 
The Tuition/Fees at Santa Clara and Stanford should be within $2,000 of each other. Who really cares about $39,000 vs. $41,000? Now if you're talking $12,000 at Berkeley vs. $41,000 at Stanford, well, that's another discussion.
 
The Tuition/Fees at Santa Clara and Stanford should be within $2,000 of each other. Who really cares about $39,000 vs. $41,000? Now if you're talking $12,000 at Berkeley vs. $41,000 at Stanford, well, that's another discussion.


Hopefully this will prove true. The "buzz" is that money will be tight.
 
I learned a very valuable lesson in this process.

My DS was looking at some pretty high-end schools on the level of Stanford. When the January board scholarship awards came out, the PMS of the host school of one of DS's satellite, "high-end" schools was very upset that Cadet Command had -- against the PMS's pleading with CC -- given the scholarships to the satellite high-end school and NOT to the cheaper, less-prestigious host school. I mean, the PMS was REALLY mad!! Admittedly, this left a sour taste in DS's mouth and did affect his ultimate decision on where to attend school.

The lesson here is that Cadet Command is actively trying to steer scholarships in the direction of the "Tier 1" schools. So don't think you have no chance simply because tuition might be higher. I think the folks at Santa Clara are extremely professional and your DD won't have the same experience that my DS had.

One more point. I don't know if your DD is contemplating graduate school, but you'd be surprised to see the number of grad students in ROTC or Army-funded scholarship programs. My guess would be that the undergrad scholarship students take a back seat for grad school scholarships, because the Army already has their hooks into them.
 
I'm just amazed that they even admitted to you that they made that mistake in the first place (or acknowledged that they'd ever even received the results of the test). We had a similar "clerical" issue for my son for AFROTC - a couple months after he'd submitted everything, he received a call from his ALO (same person interviewed him for AFROTC as USAFA) saying someone at the state level was looking at his file and curious if he'd actually really only done 9 situps on the physical test! Since his ALO had the results of his CFA (which were obviously much higher), he also questioned the results and contacted my son, who'd luckily saved the signed test sheet and refaxed it over. But if someone hadn't noticed that and looked into it, he probably just wouldn't have gotten the scholarship and none of us would have ever known why! I do strongly feel that in your case since it was their error, there should be some way they could do a private board and come up with one more scholarship! But I guess that makes too much sense! :mad:
 
We visited our son's #1 choice school prior to the first AROTC board. He sat down with us and opened my sons application on his computer. We went over each line item to make sure they had the correct information. They had yet to update his ACT scores which we quickly sent another copy to CC. He had taken the full AFPT Test rather then the PFT, the PMS added a note to the application clarifying this so they didn't think his 2 mile run time was for just 1 mile.

It is amazing how many little things, and little mistakes can really mess up your application.

I think the lesson for all future applicants is not to trust that anything is complete, double check everything and get things in early so you can send copies if needed.
 
The really ironic thing is CC do not need a copy of the PT score. The PMS/Interviewer can review it and enter it in the computer. My son was told he didn't need to send it to CC but we did anyway.
 
The lesson here is that Cadet Command is actively trying to steer scholarships in the direction of the "Tier 1" schools. So don't think you have no chance simply because tuition might be higher. I think the folks at Santa Clara are extremely professional and your DD won't have the same experience that my DS had.

Cadet Command must have their reasons, but when i did this way back in 1983, just getting a scholarship that was good wherever you wanted to go seemed to work out well. I hate to think how many good officers we lose over the mismatch between a scholarship and a student's top choice.
 
Back
Top