I'm new to this site so not sure if I'm doing this right. My son will be applying to the service academies this year and also to private colleges with with the hope of receiving a ROTC scholarship to offset cost. Is he allowed to apply for a NROTC scholarship if he is applying to the academies and through whom does he apply the college or the Navy.
Yes, he can apply for both the academies and ROTC. Many people do. You apply for an NROTC scholarship here:
http://www.nrotc.navy.mil/index.aspx
where you can also find all kinds of info on the program. As part of the application he will list 5 schools with NROTC that he would like to attend, in order of preference. It is your son's responsibility to apply to, and be accepted by, the college. The two processes are unrelated.
BTW, the NROTC scholarship is awarded to a particular school. SO if your son gets a scholarship to Upstate U, but he is not accepted to Upstate U, then he can't use the scholarship (short story - there is a possible transfer process). At least one of the schools he lists will have to be in-state. There are different strategies to picking your schools but because of budget constraints I advocate two related ones (just my opinion here):
1. Apply to schools where he has a reasonable chance of being accepted with perhaps one safety NROTC school in the mix
2. Apply to as many in-state schools as possible. This may up the chances of a scholarship given the DoD budget constraints which allows them to award more scholarships.
As other questions come up during the process please feel free to post back here to ask them. Folks here are more than happy to help.
Good luck to your son!
PS. For the above post I should really say schools that offer in-state tuition. This could be an out of state school as some colleges offer in-state tuition rates to ROTC participants. You might still be required to list one that is geographically in-state, I'm not certain about that.