How does the college option work during your freshmen year? How apart of the unit are you compared to the scholarship programmers? Do you still get to do everything that they do, besides summer training, in your freshmen year even if you aren't on scholarship?
Also if possible was anyone here apart of the UPENN NROTC Unit? How was that?
Let me see if I can help you with your question. Theres two things I think your talking about here, one is the College Program, the other is the Scholarship program. The College Program is for non-scholarship students who enroll in the NROTC program, take the Naval Science classes as well as the Naval Leadership Lab. That means they participate in all unit functions the same as scholarship students, everything is the exact same, except that college programmers don't go on summer cruises. These students, if they meet the basic scholarship requirements, GPA, PRT, good standing in the unit, then towards the end of the year they are put up for Sideload Scholarships or 2 and 3 year scholarships depending on what year you are. These scholarships seemed to pick up more this year for Navy Options, Marine Options totally different story. In my unit we had three 4/c who were eligible and put up for scholarships, one got it. He had a 3.8 GPA, solid PRT scores, overall a good guy. The other two, one had 2.58 GPA, and the other had bad PRT scores, 3.0 GPA and didn't show up to some unit functions. We had 10 3/c get picked up, they were all pretty good people, good GPA, PRT's, and performance. If you don't get picked up for a 2 or 3 year scholarship then at the end of your 3/c year you can apply for advanced standing. Advanced standing allows you to continue in the last two years of the program and if you complete all the same requirements, graduate and earn a commision. They receive a stipend, summer cruises, military ID and everything that scholarships students have except they're not getting school paid for. These seem to be not that competitive, last year the number put in was something in the area of 130 and the number picked up for it was somewhere in the 120's.
The other option that they are talking is reapplying for the 4-year scholarship. Basically you show up to school in the fall, and you enroll in the Naval Science classes but NOT in Naval Leadership Lab, so your not in the program you're just taking the Naval Science classes, the Air Force calls them "Special Students". But you apply for the 4-year NROTC scholarship program on the NROTC website complete all the requirements and submit a package and hope to get picked up for that scholarship at your school. If you get picked up for that, it activates in the fall of your sophomore year because you already completed your freshman year of college, and since the previous year you took the freshman Naval Science classes, you enroll in the sophomore Naval Science classes and you are a 3/c with three years left to graduate. In previous years this seemed like the way to go but with the increase in college program scholarships they're not recommending this as much.
Hope this answers your question
