Declining HSSP Numbers?

H

HopefulFuturePilot

New Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2020
Messages
4
I was wondering if anyone can make sense of this data. It shows a significant decline in HSSP applicants over the last decade. Combining this with more recent data, this trend is continuing drastically. In a post from 2018, there were 5,581 applicants, which is down from well over 15,000 back in 2010.

Please refer to page 58 of the following document:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD400/RGSD407/RAND_RGSD407.pdf

As well as the forum post I was referring to with 2018 statistics:
https://www.serviceacademyforums.com/index.php?threads/2018-afrotc-hssp-statistics.61445/

I found this data on accident because I'm trying to gauge my chances at a Type 1 scholarship. I have a 3.8 gpa, 1450 SAT, intention to major in Aerospace, and have many STEM-related extracurriculars (including leadership positions). I have been offered the CLS but I don't want to attend a local college as it's not very good for engineering.
 
I don't believe it has impacted colleges yet, but there is a decrease in the demographics, i.e., there will be less high school freshman next year than the previous years. So it is likely that the number of applications will be even further decreasing over the next few years.
 
Is the CLS still a thing? I only heard of it through your post above and then did a search on here....
 
Maybe a few things:
Possibly more aid and scholarship money available so that kids don't need ROTC to pay for school.
Also, I think parents don't emphasize it or suggest it. I'm on an FB page for military parents of kids heading to college and I rarely see ROTC mentioned as an option when posters ask for tips on scholarships or ways to pay for college.
Are high school counselors bringing up the option? We live in a military community in Colorado and my kids were the exception in terms of applying to ROTC. In fact, their applications spurred on a couple of their friends who hadn't even thought of it.
 
In 2010 we were reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. Parents had lost 60% or more of their savings in some cases. Many college applicants were applying to whatever sources of scholarship they could since their college funding was gone. By 2018 they had regained much of their savings and the applications dropped. Just my theory.

Stealth_81
 
@HopefulFuturePilot nice first post and thanks for the lite reading. Of further interest and importance in your Rand link is figures 2.4 and 2.5 on pages 16 and 17. My school district and especially the schools on the side of the county in which I teach are bulging with more freshmen every year. I'm in one of the largest schools and we are overcrowded. Construction starts soon on an expansion which will be too small the day it opens. The problem with the increasing number of freshmen is most of them do not fall in the "eligible and willing" category graphed in figure 2.4. Further, as shown in 2.5, the future of this demographic shows a huge increase by year 2060.

Thus the recruiting dilemma I suppose. The author stated in the Preface, "U.S. Air Force (USAF) senior leaders have increasingly expressed concerns about the diversity and representation of the force, stating that diversity is a “military necessity” (Air Force Instruction 36-7001, 2012)." Also in the Preface, "The goal of this dissertation is to improve understanding of the factors indicative of applications to the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps’ (AFROTC) High School Scholarship Program (HSSP) as well as to provide an analytic method to determine where those applicants might best be found and how best to allocate its limited recruiting force to reach these applicants."

A question was asked above about "high school counselors bringing up the option?" My school is in a highly dense military area. We are just down the river from the Pentagon. We are very military friendly, recruiters used to come in monthly and will again someday I'm sure, we have a JROTC program, and the counselors are familiar with military accessions. But, the huge annual increase in the minority population brings fewer qualified applicants to the pool.

There are surely a bunch of qualified applicants available but AF leadership (so is all of DOD) is looking to diversify the numbers. Where do they find this diversity? How do they get hem to sign up? Is there a quota system? I don't know. A few years ago the teacher across the hall asked me about "that officer thing" my son was doing. I told her about Marine PLC at OCS. Her son was about to graduate from a HBCU with a strong 2.0 GPA and had no job prospects. I told her the Marines were in the middle of a personnel surge. A huge increase in end strength numbers. His OSC class was the second largest since Vietnam. And, they were hoping to bring in more minorities and he would probably have a good chance of getting in. She said she would tell him. Come May I asked if he had visited the OSO and she said he did not want to join. My son's OCS graduation looked like it could have been in the middle of Kansas. Hardly any diversity at all.
 
I don't have the impression that AFROTC is hurting for numbers. Last HSSP cycle they cut back substantially on scholarship offers from the year before. Additionally, HSSP numbers skew heavily toward tech. In-college scholarship numbers, however, balance that out somewhat from the data I have seen. Basically, the impression I have is that -- in a very general sense -- they want non-tech people to join without scholarships so that they can evaluate them first.
You being a prospective engineering major, however, should have a decent shot to get an HSSP offer. That said, Type 1 offers are very hard. 1500+/4.0 averages.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top