Hi Nick, welcome to the forums and thank you for your desire to serve with the best 1% that America has to offer.
I am assuming that you are SOLEY applying for an Army scholarship? In this case, I have several pointers for you in completing your application.
You are hereby forwarned: navigating the Army portal can be a bit confusing!! When completing your application please note what browser you are using - somewhere in the portal, it states that NOT ALL browsers are compatible - I am a Firefox user ... and had to sulk down to the Internet Explorer world ...
In terms of actually completely your application - I do not recommend you complete the application BEFORE the end of your Jr year. There are no awards/brownie points for finishing first in this case. Besides, if you finish your application now, you can't go back to fix things. Which this might be necessary for your senior year. The Army ROTC scholarship program is the only program which looks at your high school endeavors grades 10-12; all other (Navy + MO and AF) programs look at grades 9-11. So ... if you finish your application now, how are you going to add in all the wonderful activities that you do your senior year. See what I mean?
Also, here's a tip for you in regards to standardized testing. Some applicants (myself included) do not realize the importance of completing all standardized testing BEFORE the end of Jr year. This is where timing is key - for ROTC, for colleges, that wont necessarily matter unless you are applying early action (but also, I wouldn't recommend applying early action unless your are 10000% confident you want to attend that school -->
w/ or w/o a scholarship) - but a story for another day. The point is, for the Army ROTC scholarship program, there are only 3 times the board meets to select and award scholarships to applicants. The first board is sometime in October, the 2nd board is January, 3rd board is in March.
Okay - lets look at Board 1 (October). Lets say the board meets ... Oct. 21st (please note; this is NOT the actual date, just an arbitrary number). Lets now take a look at the SAT/ACT exam dates. Unfortunately College Board has not released the exam schedule for the 2013-14 school year - but traditionally it has always been sometime around the first week of October. So, say the exam is held Oct. 8. You may think that this is fine to meet the Oct 21st board deadline but don't forget about that couple weeks it takes to process your results and then send them to Cadet Command. Oops, you just missed the first board --> and blew off your best chance at a 4-year scholarship.
Okay, ACT now. There are two test dates this fall, Sept. 21 and Oct. 26. Take the test on Sept. 21st and do great, you're in great shape for Board 1. Take it on the 26th of Oct. and again you just blew your best shot at a 4-year scholarship.
The point is, take the ACT/SAT now rather than later. If you have not taken them yet to test the waters, I highly recommend you get that squared away ASAP. I would not recommend placing your bets on a single standardized testing exam. You are too late to register for the April 13th ACT exam, but you have plenty of time to register for the June 8th ACT exam and May 4th/June 1st SAT exam. That way, if you at least take one or two now, you have all summer to max out your score in the fall.
For your application, you will not need a letter of recommendation, but you are required to send your high school transcript to Cadet Command along with some paperwork to be filled out by your guidance counselor.
For the AROTC at least, you can interview whenever you want to. The Army's application has no specific orders to complete the application before you interview; different from the AF application which you can only interview after you complete the rest of the application.
Over the summer I would highly recommend that you do some college searching - and if available go on campus on a summer visit day and get a feel for the school. AND if you also have some spare time, set up an appointment with a member of the cadre and introduce yourself. That is exactly what I did for Penn State; went up a summer day and set up an appointment with the Deputy PMS - and a couple months later I had my interview with him. I also did the same for the AF program at Penn State the same day. Here's a little motivation for you to do this - sometimes if you schedule a time to come and talk with the cadre, especially over the summer - that shows that you are taking the initiative. An initiative that sometimes justifies an award. For example, in BOTH cases when I spoke with the cadre of the Army and AF program at Penn State, BOTH gave me valuable insight as to preparing for the interview. My Army interviewer literally gave me all 5 questions he would ask me during my interview during my summer visit ... plus a bag full of AROTC goodies
Yes, you can only list 5 of your top schools and in the rare circumstance you are not awarded to one of your top 5, you may be awarded to an alternative school.
Other tips of advice:
If you haven't started conditioning yet for the PT assessment: start NOW. Do not wait until two weeks before your PT assessment to start training. I do not know how are you with runner, but if you are weak at running, do not expect to go out and run for a week or two and get times near a 4 minute mile. One of the things that some people don't realize is that to build a solid base for running, takes time. Not 2 days, not two 2 weeks, but generally over a solid 3-5 weeks to notice any sort of improvement. That also means staying consistent with your training program as well. Don't think that going a super hardcore run today, means that you can compensate by taking off tomorrow. Get in the habit of going on daily runs - and if you like it, join your Cross Country team. Also, don't start off too hard - you will stress your body which may result in injury. Start off small, maybe 1-2 miles (depending on how much you have previously run in the past) and work your way up to 5-6 miles a day. Do this, and you will be in excellent shape for the PT assessment.
I will leave you with one last piece of advice: DON'T slack off senior year. There's been plenty of great, solid and well-rounded people that just got the case of senioritis and dropped the ball. This especially wont fare well for AROTC since senior year activities are considered - and you need to continue to do well to get into your dream college. It all comes down to prioritization and time management.
Don't stress too much over my post. Take it one step at a time and you'll do fine.
Best of luck to you!
Thompson