Army ROTC Scholarship Application Question

BigBillNY

5-Year Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2014
Messages
91
Hi,
On the Army ROTC scholarship application, one can list up to 7 different colleges in priority order.
Since students apply for the ROTC scholarship before knowing if they have been accepted by the college, how does the priority process work? Can you be offered a scholarship to more than one college? My son is seriously interested in 3 different schools; however, one may be a bit of a stretch to get in.
Overall, he is a good student. 3.5GPA, multiple honors course, varsity football captain, and SAT scores of CR-700, Math-660. He also volunteers and works a P/T job.
How should he rank the order of the schools when he isn't sure if he will be accepted?
Thanks for any insight that is offered.
Bill
 
It is hard to answer your question because things change from year to year.

Based on the past few years, awardees from the first board seem to get 2-4 choices. From the Second Board, 1-2, and from the Third Board, 1.

If you are awarded a scholarship to a school you subsequently don't gain admittance to, there is a process to attempt to transfer the Award. It is risky.

How comfortable are you with Risk?

-If you are a risk taker, you put the school you really want to attend, but might not get into, as the #1 choice.

-If you are Risk averse, AND commissioning is more important to you that the choice of the college you attend, you list the most preferred school you know you can get into as #1.

And so on with the many possible combinations.
 
DS did not listen to his mama. luckily it worked out. I told him to sincerely list in order of school preference. He is not a risk taker.

His top three choices really were his top three choices except that he ordered them differently. He put his third preference as #1 because he knew he'd get in, and then listed his next two. then listed his last four. Luckily he was in the first board, got 4 yrs to all of his top three choices and then got accepted into a perfect school for him.

He (and I) couldn't be happier.

Unlike the years past, I dont think price of the school was a factor. He got 4 yr scholarships to the three most expensive schools on his 7 school list.


Good Luck!
 
Thanks!

Thanks for the info. I'm new to this and need to learn all of the acronyms used on this website. DS?
 
My kid got his packet in for and was awarded a scholarship on the second board. He was awarded for his top two schools, one out of state and one in state school. He hadn't even been accepted to his in-state choice when he had to make his decision. He accepted the scholarship to his in state school and kept his fingers crossed. All the planets aligned and he'll soldier there in the fall.

The bottom line is.... Choose colleges and prioritize them based on where you really want to go... plus where you can get in. It doesn't make sense to put the total long shot school on top unless you actually have a shot at getting in.
 
We had this same dilemma last year with DD and will be wresting with it this year with DS. DD simply ended up listing the schools in order of what she truly wanted. She ended up listing 5 schools for both Army ROTC and Navy ROTC Scholarship. For NROTC, she was offered the scholarship to her #1 choice, which was her reach school, before we knew if she was admitted to the school. We were sweating out the admission decision, but were blessed when she was offered early admission to the school in December. When we went to visit the school in January and spoke with the NROTC unit, they had advised us at that point 17 kids had already been awarded scholarships to that school, but only 8 had been admitted at that point. He advised us that every year, they do have students who don't get into the school and do have to scramble to try to get their scholarships transferred. The problem, though, is that by the time they find out they don't get in, many of their 2nd, 3rd or 4th choice schools have already met their quota for scholarship winners, especially if they are a rolling admission school. So the offer for the scholarship may be pushed down to the last choice school. When we visited another very selected school, that detachment told us that they can never fill their quote of scholarships, as they typically have so many candidates who don't get admitted into their school. He suggested that even if that is their 1st choice school, to go ahead and move up the 2nd choice school that they believe they would definitely get into (and be happy attending if they aren't admitted to school #1) to the #1 slot. Then later on, if they do get admitted to the #1 school, ask for the scholarship to be transferred to the #1 school. I think it can be a crapshoot, either way, though.

For Army ROTC Scholarships last year, all of the award winners who were selected in the 1st round were all awarded scholarships to their top 3 choices. But once again, they had to make the final decision of which school they wanted to select, before the selective schools had made their admissions decisions. Last year I am not aware of anybody who was given more than 3 choices of schools, but some may have been offered less choice. My DD was not awarded her 4-year scholarship until the 3rd board. By that time, her #2 school, apparently had already reached their scholarship quota, so she was awarded the 4-year option to her #1, #3 and #4 choices on her list. By the time she was awarded the scholarship, she had already been admitted to all 5 schools that she had listed on her application.

I would talk with the unit/detachment of your child's #1 school and get advice from them. Find out if they meet their scholarship quote each year and if so, how quickly they do so. Find out how many scholarship winners typically accept the scholarship, initially, but then later decline them if they get into a Service Academy or choose another branch's scholarship. In that case, if you remain on their "waitlist" then you might be able to transfer the scholarship when that happens. I would also say, that if your kid is not selected in the first round of scholarships, keep checking in with your kid's top schools, to see if they have given out there allotments already, as you may wish to select new schools for the list or reorder the priority list of schools.
 
Let me propose a scenario, and see if you analyze it the same way I do:

An applicant's list of schools in order of the applicant's preference, along with realistic chances the applicant will gain admittance to each school:

- Stanford 5%
- UC Berkeley 25%
- Tulane 50%
- Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 75%
- San Diego State 95%

Assume that of these, only Stanford fails to reach its allotted # of first year scholarship award slots.

In this scenario, is there any reason to list Stanford as #1 choice? If Stanford is listed as #1, and the student is not admitted to Stanford on April 1, the Award is inapplicable. At that point the student scrambles and finds that UC Berkeley filled its allocation in March, Tulane filled its quota in January, and Cal Poly and San Diego State, being lower cost schools, will usually make room even if they've technically already hit their quota... they simply make it a 3 Yr. AD, and get Brigade approval to shift money from another school that doesn't use all of its budget (i.e. Stanford).

So my advice is to never list a Battalion that historically fails to fill its allocation of Scholarship Awards as #1. It is a wasted position since if they end up being admitted, they will be able to transfer the Award to another school with 95% certainty. In fact in this scenario is there any reason to list Stanford as anything other than #5? The same argument holds for Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton and perhaps one or two additional hyper selective colleges that fail to fully use their number of allocated Scholarships because not enough ROTC aspirants gain admittance.

Having decided that Stanford as #1 is a waste, it then becomes a risk/reward exercise about whether to list UC Berkeley as #1, Tulane as #1, or Cal Poly as #1.
 
Let me propose a scenario, and see if you analyze it the same way I do:

+100 Dunninla

This is a fascinating thought process. I suspect most just put their school choices down in their order of preference.

BUT what your prioritization game theory suggests is maybe that is not the wisest - especially if there are reach schools or schools that do not fulfill allotted slots.

They key piece of information, and I am sure it is on this forum somewhere, is actual AROTC School allocations and history of fulfillment. Maybe Clarkson's Army has that intel?

As an example: I know I was stunned to find out that, even in this down year, VMI received 43 AROTC scholarships of all ilk (4, 3 …).

Someone with more insight to this than myself might craft an Excel spreadsheet using Boolean logic to optimize this.

Caveat: My gut still tells me if you have ONE clear cut choice above all others as compared to 'Commission from anywhere' then an applicant would be best served stating that as their #1 Choice - and using this game theory for #2-7.
 
EA

Our DS applied to all colleges via EA. This way he knew he would have an answer in December/January. This played out very well for him as he was accepted into his top schools before he had to make a decision on the ROTC Scholarships.

It was a lot of work to get them all done along with his applications for the Academies but it sure made life easier for him come decision time. Obviously it is possible to be deferred from EA but odds are that at least a couple of the top choice schools would have accepted them.
 
Follow up question

Let's make an assumption for a minute (please hold the jokes about assumptions). If my son were to apply and be approved by the first board, it seems he would be given multiple colleges (up to 3) to choose from, provided he is accepted to the colleges.

What kind of timeline is there for committing to a particular college once the scholarship offer is made? Is there enough time to wait for the college admission offer? Or, is it a roll of the dice?
 
You typically have approximately 30 days to accept the scholarship. So if you were awarded on the first board, you'd have to accept by December-ish.

Some schools don't release admission decisions until March. Unless you applied ED, most schools require you to deposit by May 1st.
 
Can I post the obvious question? Why doesn't Cadet Command see the flaw in this timing and fix it?
 
Can I post the obvious question? Why doesn't Cadet Command see the flaw in this timing and fix it?

I think they're too busy trying to fix the flaws at LDAC.

Seriously though, I understand the frustration felt by many. We were lucky, both son's chose a school they were about 100% sure they would be admitted. They both received their scholarships on the first board and then applied for school.

For those that have several applications floating out there that don't make decisions until spring, it just adds to the stress. This is why every year this board is filled with applicants trying to transfer their scholarships. You would think one hand would talk to the other on things like this.
 
Let's make an assumption for a minute (please hold the jokes about assumptions). If my son were to apply and be approved by the first board, it seems he would be given multiple colleges (up to 3) to choose from, provided he is accepted to the colleges.

What kind of timeline is there for committing to a particular college once the scholarship offer is made? Is there enough time to wait for the college admission offer? Or, is it a roll of the dice?

Well, I assume they need to get through three boards and for each one, they need to know exactly how many scholarships they can offer. They, just like colleges and students, have a time crunch for their mission.
 
This post makes my head spin....not even sure if I should pass on info to my son as believe it would be anxiety producing. :eek: He was asking me for advice today on how he should list his schools. So of course...my first stop was this forum. My other son did AFROTC so different process. Son's dream school is Georgetown but acceptance is iffy. Planned area of study...finance/business. Other schools on his list are more likely to offer acceptance...should he even list Georgetown? With 2 siblings in military...his desire to commission is very strong and has been for several years.
 
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