Nursing scholarship...

My daughter started her application process in August prior to the start of her senior year in HS. She applied to both Army and Navy ROTC for Nursing and ended up being selected for both. She was able to get her package before the first Army board, but wasn't selected till the second board. She continued to take the SAT till November and was able to better her scores. Good luck and stay connected with the process.
 
To hiker

If you don't mind, please share what kind of SAT scores your DD had to be selected by both branches. Standardized tests are my DD's weakness. I understand the boards for nursing applicants are different from regular ROTC boards. When were the first and second nursing boards? Which branch did your DD select and why? We would appreciate any information you could share. Best wishes for your DD in her future career and sending a thank you to her for her desire to serve!
 
Futuresoldier: let me try to answer your questions, based on my DD's experience last year (she just finished her freshman year).

1. She took SAT's several times and kept bettering her scores along the away. We kept sending these in. My memory is that her best was M: 640, R: 590. She also took the ACT and was a 29. She had a 3.8 GPA (weighted with several AP courses (Calculus, Chemistry, Lit). To the extent it helped, she was a varsity captain (senior year) in soccer, basketball and track and played in the school orchestra (violin).

2. I am not sure about the different board dates for Nurse majors. With NROTC, you apply under the "Nurse Option", so that could very well be. Under AROTC, you select nursing as a major and I believe you meet the same boards as everyone else. I am sure they have their quotas as far as how many nurse scholarships they give.

3. With both NROTC and ARPTC, she had her apps totally (including interview) complete by late September and received word in January 2011 that she had received the scholarship. With NROTC it was for a local in-state school and she would have been cross-town to the NROTC Battalion. With AROTC she was given the choice of a couple nursing schools and ended up requesting a transfer of the scholarship to a third school (private college) withing the same brigade. She received the transfer and is now attending that school.

4. In talking with her extensively about the decision, I think school choice had a big part in her decision to go Army, however, she also really liked the Army program (great Gold Bar Recruiter at one of the colleges and very friendly ROO's) and felt more connected to it with a couple overnight stays with current cadets at a couple campuses. She was also invited on a field trip to Walter Reed in the spring of her senior year, which greatly impressed her and made her decide Army was the way to go for her. I think Army really did a good job of getting her interested.

5. Most exciting for us as parents is to see that after a year in the program, she is very excited about it, did very well academically and in the ROTC program. She won several awards including superior cadet and was selected to attend Air Assault school. She said she is very excited about serving as an active duty nurse officer down the road.

6. My advice to your DD: Study hard, do well on SAT's (take a review course), take ACT's as well, focus on getting into a good Nursing Program (very competitive!) that has an ROTC program or cross-town affiliation (make sure you look at the practical logistics of this). Get her interviews and PT (only Army) done early and submitted, so her application (if it is ready) can be met by each board. Tell her to saty engaged and to keep updating the ROO's or Gold Bar Recruiters (sometimes these are easier to contact and more willing to talk) at the schools she is interested in.

Best wishes during the process! If you have further questions, I will do my best. As a father, I tries to stay engaged with her and on all of this and helped her with the trips to different campuses, but the motivation and process was all her and showed me her interest and enthusiasm for serving in uniform as a nurse.
 
hiker

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. Very helpful information! All the best to your DD.
 
Each battalion for AROTC has a quota of 2-3 nurses per class but with cuts and the nurse corps being at 104% capacity (according to my nurse counselor) that could change.

I commission this year as an ANC officer, you can PM me if you have any questions.
 
Question for Aglahad

Aglahad: My DD will be a sophmore this Fall and has been told she will be an MSIII so she can go to LDAC next Summer. Is that your experience? They do this for nurses in her Battalion since their clinical load in their Junior year is heavy and it also alllows them to go to NSTP between Junior and Senior years. Just curious what your experience has been.
 
That was not my experience, but I have heard of a number of schools sending their nurses as MS IIs to LDAC. I did CTLT so I can not comment on all the ins and outs of NSTP but do know the gist of it. You get assigned to a MEDCEN and work in a specialty wing of your choosing (well they ask for your preferences at least). An RN works with you as you take on a 1-2 patient load (depending on your semester within the school of nursing) and you work within that ward for 3-4 weeks.
 
hiker said:
Aglahad: My DD will be a sophmore this Fall and has been told she will be an MSIII so she can go to LDAC next Summer. Is that your experience? They do this for nurses in her Battalion since their clinical load in their Junior year is heavy and it also alllows them to go to NSTP between Junior and Senior years. Just curious what your experience has been.
Click to expand...

The nurses in my battalion progess like that. They go from MSI to MSIII year and complete LDAC before Nursing School so they can devote all their time to school. They essentially get two MSIV years but still make up the MSII class (even though after LDAC completion, it is essentially pointless). As far as my battalion goes, you rarely ever see nursing cadets, except for MSI year.

EDIT: In my battalion, nurses also aren't required to attend PT while in nursing school.
 
My DD just completed her MSIII year during her sophmore year and will be attending LDAC next week. Next year she will be a MS4 so as not to waste the training she gets at LDAC but for pay purposes she will get paid as a MSIII. As far as PT goes all the nurses in her Battalion are required to do PT like everyone else. She also did Ranger Challenge the first two years. When she applied for the Nursing scholarship I believe her SAT scores were 640 R and 570 M and she had a 3.9 GPA and had received a DI soccer scholarship to a different school prior to getting the Nursing scholarship. She did her interview at a school 45 minutes from where we live and it was not even a school that she was intererested in attending. The interview went really well and the LTC who did the interview did not seem to mind that she was not considering his school. Wish you luck on your scholarship journey.
 
-Bull- said:
The nurses in my battalion progess like that. They go from MSI to MSIII year and complete LDAC before Nursing School so they can devote all their time to school. They essentially get two MSIV years but still make up the MSII class (even though after LDAC completion, it is essentially pointless). As far as my battalion goes, you rarely ever see nursing cadets, except for MSI year.

EDIT: In my battalion, nurses also aren't required to attend PT while in nursing school.
Click to expand...


That is really battalion specific. At my school as well as many others the nursing cadets were expected to do EVERYTHING line cadets were required to do. I think out of four years of AROTC I got out of maybe one event and that was as an MSIV. The missed PT every Monday my junior year because I had clinicals at 6am and I was still expected to be at make up PT later that day. Some nurses will try and shirk their ROTC responsibilities because we are busy, but for me personally I always enjoyed balancing the two as well as gaining the respect of my line buddies (I believe I got ranked 11/32 MSIII year when most of the nurses were in the high 20s)
 
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