How many AROTC scholarships allotted each year?

Also this is probably a very dumb question, but does each school (with ROTC) have a certain number of scholarships they can award? or is it a more wider scale?

I don't think it is a dumb question at all. I don't think the number is publicly known.

It depends on the funding allocated to and by USACC each year.

Conventional wisdom is that the SMCs (VMI, Citadel, UNG, Va Tech, Texas A&M, and Norwich) would have the largest number of AROTC scholarships vs the numbers at other schools.

From info at UNG website and other open sources it appears in 2015, there were approx 600 AROTC 4 yr scholarships awarded and approximately 1900 3 yr AROTC scholarships awarded for a total of approximately 2500.

Our personal experience with our DS in summer 2015 is that that about 30 kids showed up at VMI with 4 yr AROTC scholarships. Not sure how many have been awarded 3 year AROTC scholarships. Entering class at VMI is approximately 500 freshmen each year, so about 6% of the entering class appears to have had a 4 year AROTC scholarship.

Given that AROTC awards scholarships to over 600 colleges and universities, with a total of approximately 2500 scholarships per year (pending funding), my guess would be the non-SMCs would have AROTC national scholarships numbers in the single digits or low teens.

Clarksonsarmy is probably the best source to answer this question, but he may be limited in what he can share.

Others with more knowledge may be able to correct my "conventional wisdom" assumptions.

I agree clarkson is the go to person for this question.

Here is what has always been my take regarding AROTC scholarships. The scholarship is tied to the cadet AND the school, it is not necessarily transferable to another school.

I have always assumed it is akin to a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is the number and the amount of scholarships they can award. From there the next tier is the division/Brigade level. Than from there they allocate x amt to each college. It doesn't cross flow at anytime without Command approval. What's in their (det.) pot is in their pot.

So let's say the OP applies and gets a scholarship to TAMU, but not admitted, however he does get accepted to VMI, but VMI was not on their scholarship list. If so than they need to go to Command and ask for the scholarship to be transferred to VMI. If VMI is allocated 30, and 30 have accepted, than the answer could be no you can't transfer the scholarship because we have no more money in our pot from a budget aspect.
~ In all of my years here I have not seen a NO, but I am sure it does happen.

Hence, why I say it is tied to both the cadet and the school.

Falcon, the only thing I would disagree with you about is how non-SMCs maybe only in the single digits or teens. There are some colleges that are what I would call Powerhouses when it comes to ROTC. Penn State, UMDCP, UVA, Boise, Notre Dame, UMich and UCLA (maybe it is USC) all come quickly to mind.

This is an interesting discussion. Also, I am surprised by the 600 number of colleges and universities, because at my DD's PMS interview she was told there are 277 programs for AROTC that receive national scholarships.

I am curious if anyone knows how many nursing scholarships are awarded every year of that approximately 2500 4 and 3 year number from 2015. I know on a school basis, the usual number of "slots" to the nursing school is around 2 per year for ROTC, so I am thinking of that 2500, that only a small percentage is nursing, but I am curious if anyone knows.

@Dckc88 it's possible that, while there are 277 AROTC programs, they serve a much wider college community through satellite schools. One program may serve 5-6 different colleges, and the students scholarship would be to the college he attends.

True Jcc123, but I think Dckc read Falcon's post incorrectly.

Falcon stated that @600 4 yr scholarships are awarded, the remaining 1900 are 3 yr.. IOWS, it has nothing to do with 600 colleges, but how many kids are on 4 yr scholarship.

The way I read Dckc's post they assumed that there are 600 units. Two different things. Mixing apples with oranges. Apples being the # of cadets on scholarship. Oranges being the number of units.

I posted that badly and had the complete thing as a quote, what I meant was that Falcon A said both that there were 600 4 year scholarships and 600 colleges and universities. I think Jcc123 answered my question, that the number probably includes satellite schools. But here is the text that Falcon A originally said about schools:

"Given that AROTC awards scholarships to over 600 colleges and universities, with a total of approximately 2500 scholarships per year (pending funding), my guess would be the non-SMCs would have AROTC national scholarships numbers in the single digits or low teens. "

Here is the link to the AROTC web site: http://army.com/info/rotc/schools

There are well over 600 colleges listed -- by my count 838! -- click on each state and the list of schools per state shows up. Pima is right -- the "over 600" number includes "satellite" schools.

(Yes . . . the "600 4 yr scholarships in 2015" number is not related to the "over 600 schools" number.)

I was actually told that in some instances the scholarship can be transferred between schools.

Pima said:

So let's say the OP applies and gets a scholarship to TAMU, but not admitted, however he does get accepted to VMI, but VMI was not on their scholarship list. If so than they need to go to Command and ask for the scholarship to be transferred to VMI. If VMI is allocated 30, and 30 have accepted, than the answer could be no you can't transfer the scholarship because we have no more money in our pot from a budget aspect.

Click to expand...

It is not a given . . . USACC has to approve

Back to the original question...the answer is yes and no...During the national process Cadet Command kind of balances how many offers go to each school. I think they base that number on the schools mission. I think the goal is to have scholarship winners up to a certain percentage of the schools mission (something like 60%).

As an example the mission at Clarkson for MS 2019 is 12. This year I had 11 national scholarship winners (4s and 3s) show up this fall. I had more that had offers to Clarkson but chose to go elsewhere. So I pretty much got more than my share and am not expecting many campus based scholarships to come my way (I'm still going to keep asking).

The question back to you is how will this information help you? If you are going to try to outguess the process. If you are going to try to figure out which schools you are more likely to get an offer to, good luck.

Ask the ROO what the mission is for this year and you'll know about how many scholarships they may get, but it's not going to be up to them with regards to the national process. Keep in mind also that schools that are national draws (like Penn State or Notre Dame) are probably going to get capped out earlier in the process than less popular schools.

Again, find the schools that are the best fit, put together the best application you can, and hope for the best. That's all you can do.

And the 600/1900 numbers above are pretty accurate. That is the ballpark figures the we have basically used for quite some time.

Hi my DS applied for NROTC scholarship, he listed his top school as UCBERKLEY, USC & PennState, Cornell, Duke?? When awarding scholarship do they look at school price? Will they tell him to goto Pennstate cuz much cheaper?? Should he have put less expensive schools to max his chances for 4 yrs ROTC scholarship??

Blessedmom said:

Hi my DS applied for NROTC scholarship, he listed his top school as UCBERKLEY, USC & PennState, Cornell, Duke?? When awarding scholarship do they look at school price? Will they tell him to goto Pennstate cuz much cheaper?? Should he have put less expensive schools to max his chances for 4 yrs ROTC scholarship??

Click to expand...

No, they do not look at the cost of schools when awarding NROTC scholarships. They determine the scholarship winners first, and then assign it to the first school on their list that has scholarship slots still available. If Cal has a slot available, that is where it is awarded. If not, they will look to see if USC has a slot. If so, that is where the scholarship is awarded. They continue down the list until they find a school with a slot.

Some more statistics to threw on the pile:

http://www.army.mil/article/89263/Cadet_Command_exceeds_commissioning_mission/

Admittedly, this was from 2012, but I don't think things have changed too dramatically since then.

In 2012, US Army Cadet Command (ROTC) commissioned a total of just under 6,000 fresh 2nd lieutenants.

Of that number, the article cited above says that 1,500 were non-scholarship cadets. Which must mean that around 4,500 were on some form of ROTC scholarship.

The figures cited above in this thread (600/year in 4-year scholarships & 1900/year in 3-year scholarships) total 2,500. Which means, I guess, the remaining 2,000 cadets had 2-year scholarships?

Add another 1,000 new 2nd lieutenants coming out of West Point and you have 7,000 fresh officers per year. Bear in mind not all of these 2nd looeys will be active duty. From what I've read, probably 25% of so are US Army Reserves and US Army National Guard.

Assuming, therefore, that 1,750 new officers are reserves/guard, this brings us down to maybe 5,250 new officers on active duty.

Then there's OCS, which I have zero idea how many officers it produces annually. US Air Force OTS produced 550 officers in 2015 and their goal is double that in 2016, from what I've read in the Air Force Times, so the Army probably has at least 1,000 OCS grads planned for 2016 (again, not all active duty).

So we're probably looking at, what, 6,000 or so new 2nd lieutenants on active duty in 2016?

I believe the Army has a goal of 60,000 new enlisted recruits for active duty, so this would be a 10-to-1 ratio between new enlisted ranks and new officers.

Sound about right?