School, Reserves, ROTC at College?

D

Dapper Dan

New Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2021
Messages
7
I have a son that is a junior in high school and a 3 year AFJROTC Cadet. He want to attend a 4 year college to get his aviation or mechanical engineering degree. We are helping him making a plan of action for his next couple of years. He is a very good student and has a high GPA of 3.8 unweighted and 4.3 weighted and he will be taking the ACT and SAT soon(no scores yet). He will also have over 40 college credit hours when he graduates high school in his degree completion( he has a college GPA of 4.0 atm). He is a member of Civil Air Patrol(CAP) and a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association(EAA). He is interested in the Airforce. His plan after graduating high school is to get his pilot's license(PPL) which will take him about 8 weeks, then go to Airforce Reserves BMT. He is not sure if he would do his AIT training next and push college until the Spring or start college in the Fall and push AIT training for the Winter between semesters or the following Summer.

My question: Is this a viable pathway. He would like to be an officer in the Airforce and is also needing funds for college. His thoughts are he will be getting paid and starting his Airforce career while in college.

I would like to know others thoughts and the pros and cons for this plan of action.
 
Does Air Force offer a reserve officer slot to scholarship cadets? I thought all Air Force and Navy college scholarships were active duty 4 years and then you can finish your remaining 4 (total 8) in the reserves? If you are accepted for pilot training - I believe it is 11 years active. But hard to keep up with changes!
 
It is my understanding that if you join the AF Reserves then join a ROTC program while in college, upon graduation, they cancel the Reserve's contract and start a new contract in Active Duty which will fulfill your obligation for the ROTC program.
 
glen said:
Does Air Force offer a reserve officer slot to scholarship cadets? I thought all Air Force and Navy college scholarships were active duty 4 years and then you can finish your remaining 4 (total 8) in the reserves? If you are accepted for pilot training - I believe it is 11 years active. But hard to keep up with changes!
Click to expand...
It used to be that if you commissioned through AFROTC you had to go AD. That is no longer true anymore. Hasnt been for several years .My son's UPT roommate who commissioned with him through Rotc at Purdue got a Reserve spot. He has to request it and not sure how many they do every year, but it is possible. Also, Air Force just told everyone at AFROTC that due to the AF being full, if you so desire, you can convert to Guard, Reserve, Navy and Marine.rOTC.jpg
 
Dapper Dan said:
It is my understanding that if you join the AF Reserves then join a ROTC program while in college, upon graduation, they cancel the Reserve's contract and start a new contract in Active Duty which will fulfill your obligation for the ROTC program.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the information! Wow - "already full"....and just two years ago the PAS at my undergraduate college was begging for liberal arts majors who wanted to fly to please come see him! Military budgets and personnel decisions are always fun to decipher.
 
Dapper Dan said:
I have a son that is a junior in high school and a 3 year AFJROTC Cadet. He want to attend a 4 year college to get his aviation or mechanical engineering degree. We are helping him making a plan of action for his next couple of years. He is a very good student and has a high GPA of 3.8 unweighted and 4.3 weighted and he will be taking the ACT and SAT soon(no scores yet). He will also have over 40 college credit hours when he graduates high school in his degree completion( he has a college GPA of 4.0 atm). He is a member of Civil Air Patrol(CAP) and a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association(EAA). He is interested in the Airforce. His plan after graduating high school is to get his pilot's license(PPL) which will take him about 8 weeks, then go to Airforce Reserves BMT. He is not sure if he would do his AIT training next and push college until the Spring or start college in the Fall and push AIT training for the Winter between semesters or the following Summer.

My question: Is this a viable pathway. He would like to be an officer in the Airforce and is also needing funds for college. His thoughts are he will be getting paid and starting his Airforce career while in college.

I would like to know others thoughts and the pros and cons for this plan of action.
Click to expand...
My cousin did near the same thing your son wants to do.

After graduating high school, he was hesitant on what he wanted to do, and his family couldn't afford for him to go to college. He enlisted in the Kansas Air National Guard sometime over the summer, and shipped to BMT in San Antonio in the fall. He had some stand down time back home, and did not go to tech school until February. This was enough time into the spring semester where he could not go start college. He then went to college after a year of Air Force basic and tech school. He had a successful freshmen year. He made it through his fall semester of sophomore year, and his unit then told him they were set to deploy in April. Again, this cut into the spring semester. He chose to go part time student and take a couple of online classes while deployed. He was set to come back to the states in November. Again, this cut into the fall semester, so he stayed part-time online. Coming back for the spring semester, he decided to switch majors which has set himself back some. This semester is his first semester joining AFROTC.

To conclude, we graduated high school the same year. I am set to graduate in May. He is still a second semester sophomore, and will probably have 2 to 2 1/2 more years of undergraduate left.

I love my cousin dearly and this is not to poke fun at him. This is just the reality he had to deal with, and I hope it can give you and your son some perspective on what can happen while in the reserves.

P.S. While he was set on only serving his reserve contract, he has loved his time in the ANG, and is the reason why he chose to join AFROTC to become an active duty officer!
 
Thanks for your feed back KuznROTC. It is my understanding that he will not deploy while he is in both the Airforce Reserves and college ROTC at the same time(ROTC overrides deployment or so I have read and have been told by several recruiters and others). I am going to make sure and get the regulation cited in writing prior to him signing up for reserves prior to college.

What I am trying to find out from anyone that has done both Reserves and ROTC at the same time from the start. Do they find it to much to handle being in the reserves, ROTC, and Engineering? Remember he will already be starting with 41 college credits so he should never have to take more than 12 credit hours per semester and ROTC of course. He is also planning to start as a freshman in college and not try to finish in 2 or 3 years but go the entire 4 years. We did this so he will have the lightest course load while doing Engineering.
 
Mmm... I'm no expert, but I think what you've been reading is the Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP). I know AROTC does this but not sure about AFROTC. Either way, your son still needs to be contracted in order to join SMP. You can't join SMP right into freshmen year. I'm pretty sure he still needs to complete 1 year of school as a non-contracted cadet. After that, his Professor of Aerospace Science (the 0-6 or 0-5) evaluates if he wants to give him an SMP contract. I've had a couple friends go this route. It took them about 1.5 to 2 years to get an SMP contract.

You also have to understand that there is a good chance that not all of his 41 college credits will be taken, especially if he decides to do engineering. You also have to take into account his AFROTC classes which many students actually forget (including me as a freshmen). Trust me. I came in with 30 college credits from high school, and did summer classes pushing me to 36 credits. I still averaged 18 credits per semester besides my senior year at 13 and 14 credits.
 
Good to know KuzNROTC, I will definitely research more in regards to being in the Reserves while in ROTC and college to make sure. If not, he would only do college and ROTC. As far as his credits they have all been approved to transfer for his degree completion. We made sure he only takes classes that actually counted for that and not all the other classes that community colleges have you take for college transfer. If people don't understand exactly what transfers for their degree completion I'm sure there is a lot of them that gets surprised when they start their degree program.
Yes Bastinglobster5 he is going to get nominated for the AFJROTC flight academy for the Summer of 2022 after his Senior year. We home schooled for his first 3 1/2 years and we started him a year early so that we could keep him and his older brother 2 years apart in school instead of 3. This way they would be able to have more time in middle and high school together and possibly play sports together. So he will miss the dead line due to being to young to compete for the flight academy for this summer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top