Commission into Army Reserves from ROTC on scholarship

Can you commission into the Army Reserves from ROTC if you are on scholarship? I am considering accepting a 3 year STEM scholarship for Army ROTC. Does this require me to serve at least 4 years Active Duty out of college, or can I still commission into the Reserves?

Thanks

marysue42 said:

Can you commission into the Army Reserves from ROTC if you are on scholarship? I am considering accepting a 3 year STEM scholarship for Army ROTC. Does this require me to serve at least 4 years Active Duty out of college, or can I still commission into the Reserves?

Thanks

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You can commission into the Reserves without serving Active Duty.

marysue42 said:

Can you commission into the Army Reserves from ROTC if you are on scholarship? I am considering accepting a 3 year STEM scholarship for Army ROTC. Does this require me to serve at least 4 years Active Duty out of college, or can I still commission into the Reserves?

Thanks

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You can still commission as a Army Reserve or National Guard Officer, even if you received the Active Duty Scholarship contract.* A few years ago the Number 1 Army ROTC Cadet on the National OML chose Army Reserve.

*This offer is null and void in the event of a new conflict that requires you to serve on Active Duty. This happened in 2003/2004 to a few Cadets that requested Army Reserve.

Jcleppe said:

You can commission into the Reserves without serving Active Duty.

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Marist College ROTC said:

You can still commission as a Army Reserve or National Guard Officer, even if you received the Active Duty Scholarship contract.* A few years ago the Number 1 Army ROTC Cadet on the National OML chose Army Reserve.

*This offer is null and void in the event of a new conflict that requires you to serve on Active Duty. This happened in 2003/2004 to a few Cadets that requested Army Reserve.

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Well that settles that I guess, thank you

Usually the commitment is either 4 years active duty or 8 years in the guard or reserves. There are some great benefits to joining a reserve component, like being able to choose your branch and unit.

Minimum service for scholarship recipients is 4 years of service to the army (active refers to full time army or guard/active reserves) and 4 yrs of in-active reserves.

That is from Army website.

QA1517 said:

Minimum service for scholarship recipients is 4 years of service to the army (active refers to full time army or guard/active reserves) and 4 yrs of in-active reserves.

That is from Army website.

Click to expand...

Nope.

4 years Active Duty / 4 years IRR (Inactive Ready Reserve)
or
8 years Resreves or National Guard

It also depends on your Branch. Aviation for example is 6 years Active and that doesn't start until you get your wings, EOD is similar.

ADSO's also can play a part in your Service Obligation.

Your service obligation does not start until you report to your BOLC, that can sometimes take up to a year.

I stand corrected.

With the exception of when obligation begins:


Military Obligation

If you are selected for a ROTC Scholarship, you are required to:
Sign a contract with the Secretary of the Army.
Attend a 5-week Leadership Development and Assessment Course (AKA Warrior Forge) between your Junior and Senior Year.
Accept a Commission to serve on Army active duty, National Guard, or Army Reserves upon degree completion.
Serve in the military for a period of 8 years. This may be fulfilled by:

Serving active duty, if selected, for 4 years followed by 4 years of service in the Inactive Ready Reserve(IRR)/National Guard/Army Reserves. You may elect to serve 8 years or longer on active duty, but only the first 4 are required. Terms of obligation begin at the time of commissioning.
Serve 8 years in the National Guard/Army Reserves,that includes a 3-6 month active duty term for initial training. Terms of obligation begin at time of commissioning.

There is some fine print that goes along with all that.

Probably the best example I can use is how it worked with my older son.

Son graduated on May 11th 2012, had the commissioning ceremony and was sworn in.
He left school and came home, his orders required him to check in to his new unit on June 1st. This is where the fine print comes in.
Son's orders were very specific, they listed a date of May 25th as the beginning of Active Duty. The orders also specified that he could not begin travel to his unit/BOLC until that date. The date is based on the number days the Army allows for the distance traveled, in this case 8 days.
The date of May 25th is when the clock started on his service obligation, it was not the date he had his commissioning ceremony. The underlying word here is "Ceremony", that's not the date the service obligation starts.

My son was lucky, his report date was very close to his graduation.

Some graduates can wait up to almost a year for their report date.

Example:

A fellow cadet branched Infantry, his report date was November 10th 2012, 6 months after he had graduated and had the commissioning ceremony. The date of Activation on his orders was Nov. 3rd 2012. For this cadet Nov. 3rd is the day the clock starts for his service obligation.

While the length of the service obligation is a set number, the date that obligation starts depends on the cadets report date for BOLC and the Activation date on their orders.

For some graduating cadets it is very possible that they will not reach the end of their service obligation for 5 years after they graduate when you add in the time they have to wait until they report to their BOLC.

A lot of cadets and parents don't realize this when they start ROTC. As they progress through they will see how things went for the cadets ahead of them. The orders don't come out until mid to late in the last semester of their senior year. Until then they have no idea when they will report.

Some graduates will go work at LDAC, LTC, or be a Gold Bar Recruiter, if they are selected for one of these then that can also change when their service obligation starts. They will become knowledgable in all this as they progress through the program.

Things may be slightly different for those that choose to go reserve or National Guard.

Since your son is doing ECP a lot will depend on whether he is selected for Active Duty, his time in the Guard/Reserves will count toward Time in Service but not towards his Service Obligation.

Correct, the pre-commission time in service does not count towards the obligation. But I believe the time he spends in the guard as a officer while completing his degree does count towards the reserve time. Therefore, after the degree is completed he would have either 6 yrs of guard left or have 4 yrs of active duty.

I am attempting to verify what I just stated, but that is what was communicated to us verbally. It is hard to find info on the ECP.

I guess I got confused on the commissioning time as some that do not go directly to BOLC retain other positions as 2nd lts.

Very well explained though, thank you.

I don't know much, if any about how things work in the Reserves/National Guard when it comes to when service obligation starts. When you find out more information be sure to post what you find, Im sure it will be great information to those considering the Reserves/National Guard.

The learning curve is amazing sometimes, once you think you know something, they go and change it. Gotta love the military.

Like I said the ECP is an little known program that is hard to find info on other than it exists. Then throw into the mix the method that you go can thru it: SMP, ECP scholarship, non-scholarship, or GRFD (which locks you out of active duty contention) and there are just infinite levels of confusion.

I will post when I confirm my theories. I appreciate all information we have received here and apologize if I have posted anything inaccurate.

Hey, we're All learning as we go along.

Good luck to your son next year.

Thanks

DS has to report to his school the end of this month for orientation then goes to LTC at Fort Knox for 4 weeks. He will be home for about a week and a half then report back to school a week before classes start. He is very excited.

He got a job working construction the week after he graduated (ultimate goal is to get a construction management degree and branch engineering) and then told me last nite he was going to help a guy haul hay on the weekends. On top of that he works out and runs about 4 times a week. Needless to say he sleeps well after getting up at 5 am to go to work. He thrives on being busy and responsibility. That was one reason he chose ECP.

He's doing at 18 what I couldn't have done at 25.

That's right, I forgot that ECP's go to LTC the summer before they start school. Hope the heats not too bad at Ft. Knox. Best of luck to him with LTC, this coming school year will be exciting.

We are in southwest Missouri, heat and humidity are normal, along with tornadoes.

So DS set me straight, after re-counting conversations I remembered the service commitment requirements. Guess I had a brain cloud yesterday.
As far as commissioning into the guard from a traditional ROTC program, I cannot find anything to contradict what Jcleppe said. Your service obligation starts with BOLC which counts as active duty time.

As for ECP, what DS told me matches information I found on a Valley Forge power point and MMI website for ECP Scholarships.

The cadet will enroll in National Guard after passing their APFT. They will commission upon graduation from their MJC. They will then attend a follow-up school that has a ROTC program where they will continue to drill with a guard unit as an officer and participate in pt with the rotc program. The pms at that school is urged to utilize them as a leader in the program.

Upon graduation with their BS/BA degree (they have up to 3 yrs to do this) they will be promotable 1st LT and attend BOLC. They can either assess active duty upon graduation based upon their OML score with all the traditional ROTC graduates or remain in the guard/reserve. They will either have 6 yrs of guard time left or 4 yrs of active duty. If they remain in the guard and there is a delay in reporting to BOLC, this time counts towards their commitment also.

The exception to this is if they utilize the advanced education assistance program (Ike Skelton Scholarship) at their follow up school. According to some information, for every year of assistance used = 1 yr of ADSO. Therefore if you utilize this, they would graduate with their BS/BA degree and still have 8 yrs of reserve time left, not sure if you went active duty.

**DS's ROO said this is not accurate, but maybe because he is in-state on all his schools and is an ROTC ECP Scholarship recipient. Might depend on MJC attended and follow up school.**

To summarize, an ECP candidate would have 12 yrs of service in, 10 as an officer, by the time they fulfilled their service commitment if they remained in the guard/ reserve and utilized the education assistance program. If they went active duty and did not utilize the education assistance they would have 8 yrs of service in. (4 reserve and 4 active)

Stay in for 8 more years and by age 38 you have enough time to qualify for the guard retirement pay and benefits, whatever they might be at that time.

This is the information presented to DS and what I found on the all-knowing internet.

There is someone from NMMI that posts here on occasion, perhaps they provide some insight if any of this is not accurate.