Do Majors Affect Chances?

WestCoast

5-Year Member
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I have been looking into my #1 AROTC university choice and noticed that almost all of the scholarship recipients I found were Nursing majors. Now it may just be a coincidence, although now I am curious about how much majors actually affect the chances of winning a scholarship. After reading several threads in this forum, I learned that STEM majors are the preference of all three branches.The university has a well regarded nursing program so I'm guessing that that's reason for all the Nursing Scholarships. If one choose to major in something Technical like Business Administration or General Economics, would they have a lower chance compared to someone that chose Nursing? (assuming that the two people have similar credentials)
 
I have been looking into my #1 AROTC university choice and noticed that almost all of the scholarship recipients I found were Nursing majors. Now it may just be a coincidence, although now I am curious about how much majors actually affect the chances of winning a scholarship. After reading several threads in this forum, I learned that STEM majors are the preference of all three branches.The university has a well regarded nursing program so I'm guessing that that's reason for all the Nursing Scholarships. If one choose to major in something Technical like Business Administration or General Economics, would they have a lower chance compared to someone that chose Nursing? (assuming that the two people have similar credentials)

I'll let others speak to Army. Air Force and Navy certainly favor STEM majors. 85% of Navy scholarship awards go to STEM majors. Not certain of the percentage for Air Force but its quite high as well. The Marine Corps doesn't care what your major is, but then the Marine Corps is much smaller and therefore awards fewer scholarships to begin with. None of them seem to be looking great for Nursing majors lately but I'm sure some will be awarded.
 
In regards to Air Force, I believe all scholarships are now ONLY awarded to tech majors, or very very very few are given to non-tech.
 
I don't know about AROTC, but Business or Econ would not be considered Technical for the AF. Technical would be engineering or science related.

As for your nursing question, here is a link currently on the forum.http://www.serviceacademyforums.com/showthread.php?t=38928
One school responded with following:

"We have been informed that starting this year the Army is cutting back on the number of nurses on active duty so they are cutting back on the number of scholarships offered to nurses.
We do offer scholarships in other areas that your daughter can compete for if she is interested.

Also, there is the reserve or national guard if your daughter is interested in that option because they have scholarships available for nurses."

It does not appear to me that the Army is handing out a lot of nursing scholarships currently. It maybe as you stated that this college has a renown nursing program.
 
Right now being a STEM is not as important as the other branches. I am not aware of any quantifiable preference given to STEMs, but 3 Officers will review your file, and across the board we have been told that we need to produce more STEMs. What I would say is that we need non STEM majors too, so don't major in something that is not going to allow you to be academically successful. If you major in physics and struggle through 4 years you aren't going to have the same options as the business major who graduated with a 4.0. I would also tell you that Nursing is a whole different animal. See the other recent threads regarding nursing. the Army track for nurses is separate from all other majors.
 
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