All good posts above, but it's important to point out a couple of additional details here. While it is factual that "The NROTC scholarship does not pay for room and board under any circumstance." Just for future candidates fyi, there are in-fact
some universities who offer full Room and Board support to AROTC, NROTC, and AFROTC scholarship winners, in addition to the academic, book stipend, fees, and monthly stipend scholarship from the service branch.
Also, there are some schools who
will let you apply the additional scholarships for room and board, and others as posted above, some schools
will not. My DS's school will let you use scholarships for room and board, and if those scholarships don't cover room and board, the unit will cover the rest. For Army and Navy, no scholarship student will pay for room and board there - period. For Air force, I didn't confirm as I knew by then that his other scholarships would cover the room and board.
My DS currently receives a free room (shared/ double) and a 14 meal per week plan - we upped that to a 21 meal plan at our own expense, by choice. If he moves off campus in a couple of years, they will actually hand him a check to cover what would have been room and board and the basic meal plan costs.
And he can keep scholarship moneys up to the "total cost of attendance" number which includes tuition, fees, anticipated travel costs, books, etc. Meaning yes, he will actually get a check at the end of the year for the difference. There are other schools, like Penn State for example, that do not offer scholarship support for room and board specifically for ROTC scholarship winners. Please see the room and board section of this forum for details. Also look at the ROTC sites of each branch like the AF one listed below, and lastly/ as
always, confirm the current details with the school's unit, as things do change.
I recommend doing your full due diligence - it's unfortunate that some ROTC students get handed for example a 14k x 4 = 56,000.00 bill for room/board to finish school, while others actually get not only free room and board, but paid, each year. But this is surmountable - learn the options and if this matters to you like it does for most of us, then choose your schools to apply to and go to, accordingly.
Hope this helps.
https://www.afrotc.com/search?term=room and board
https://www.serviceacademyforums.com/index.php?threads/afrotc-free-room-and-board-schools.57614/