Accepted student and ROTC

[usnadad10]

Does the ROTC board know what schools you were accepted to? Or do you have to let them know? Does it matter to them?

 

[meh126]

There is a fairly new section (December?) that lets you upload acceptance letters to your AROTC application. I'm not sure how that they are weighed. We did upload DS's. I cannot say if that had any bearing, but he was awarded 4 year scholarships to each of his top three choices that he was admitted to. It can't hurt, in my opinion.

 

[usnadad10]

Thanks. DsIs applying NROTC. Not sure if its the same but I will relay your comments

 

[USMAROTCFamily]

They do not know if you have been accepted to the school. We just spoke with the NROTC department at the University of Notre Dame. They told us that 18 scholarships have been awarded there so far this year and 7 of them have been admitted to the school so far. He said every year there, they have quite a few students who were awarded the scholarships, but were not admitted, thus having to request a transfer to another school that they have been accepted to, that still has open slots. He said most schools get 25 scholarship slots, but those with bigger programs like theirs may get up to 35. He told us that with the more selective schools, they hardly ever fill their total quota of scholarships, as they don't have enough scholarship applicants who get admitted to those schools. It sounds as though it is not hard to transfer the scholarship INTO those programs if you have been awarded it to another school, but you also apply and are admitted to the more selective colleges.

 

[Pima]

25 at every school sounds like a lot from a statistical perspective. IE chances of getting a scholarship are less than 20%. That would mean every unit would have an incoming class size of 150. I can see big units that size, but many have much smaller units with the total cadre totaling only 150, thus a candidate can theoretically game the scholarship system.

IE if every college gets 25 and they apply to match/safety colleges with small size units their chances go up dramatically. Theoretically the powerhouses like the SMC and Notre Same, Villanova are getting penalized.

Doesn't this than go against the idea of spread the wealth? Why not than do what AFROTC does and say to the mids you can take the scholarship wherever you want.

Just curious.

 

[USMAROTCFamily]

I don't know if I would consider it gaming the system. Look at it this way, if a kid has a dream school, but they aren't certain that they will be admitted to it, they may decide to put that school lower on their list of their ranked schools and put their safety school (that they would still want to attend if they are not admitted into the dream school) at the top. If they get the scholarship and that school still has "room" in their class of 25, then great, it is awarded there. If they get the scholarship later in the cycle and their "safety" school is already full, then Pensacola would keep going down the list, in rank order, until they get to one of their 5 schools that has a slot available and that is where the scholarship is awarded. If they later find out that they are admitted to the dream school, they can request the scholarship to be transferred there, but there are no guarantees that they will have room and they may go on the "waiting list" for a scholarship to the dream school. Inevitably, a popular school like Notre Dame that is tough to get admitted to, will have kids who have received a scholarship there, and have been admitted, but opt to take an appointment to one of the Service Academies instead, thus opening up one of the schools slots to somebody on the waitlist. Since many of these highly selective schools don't give their regular admissions decisions until the end of March or beginning of April, if somebody lists that Dream school as their first choice and gets the scholarship there early in the cycle, but then finds outs they didn't get admitted to school on April 1st, there could be a high likelihood that their #2, #3 or #4 choices are already filled if they are popular programs with easier admission standards. Then the scrambling really starts. There have been cases when somebody was awarded a scholarship, but all 5 of their schools were already full and then Pensacola tries to find a school for them to be able to use the scholarship at, but they may not always be able to. Definitely not all schools fill their allotted slots of 25-35 scholarships, but the popular ones definitely do. We talked with another very selective school, Rice University, and I think they said they only had 6 scholarships last year, mainly because most candidates can't get into the school. I would imagine it is the same with Yale, UC-Berkeley, Harvard, Vanderbilt, MIT, Penn, etc. In our case, DD absolutely wanted Notre Dame as her 1st choice and, luckily was admitted there Early Action, so it worked out for her. But knowing what I know now, I probably would have encouraged her to move her #2 choice (one with rolling admissions) up to the #1 slot, if we had to do it all over again. IMO, though, we'd only use this strategy if our daughter's top choice was one of the most selective schools. I would encourage candidates to speak with the Recruiting Officers at all of the schools they are interested in and find out how quickly they fill up, are they already filled up this year, and the likelihood of getting a spot off the waitlist. If you haven't been selected for a scholarship yet, you can use that information to possibly rearrange your school choices by emailing the folks at Pensacola. If you have been denied admittance to one of the schools on your list or didn't apply to it, definitely take that school of your school list. You can even consider applying to schools that still have applications open, to replace on your list.