The hook is in obtaining a 4-year full tuition ROTC scholarship. That informs the school that you will do ROTC for 4 years versus dropping it after one semester. 4-year scholarship also means you are a "full pay" student. Most top 20s have students enrolled in ROTC either right on campus or at a nearby univeristy campus. If on campus the university wants to make sure they have ROTC students in the program to keep it going, just like they want to make sure there are enough soccer players to field a team. Oh and I hope your kid enjoys the 4-8 year post graduation service commitment! -Princeton ROTC alum |
The hook is the four year ROTC scholarship. If you can get that - and it's very competitive - it is a very strong hook. You get the scholarship first, and then you reach out to colleges and apply. It's similar to being a recruited athlete. If you have that four year scholarship, you reach out to the ROTC programs at the schools you're interested in. Like an athlete would with a coach. And basically, the ROTC program then supports the application through the admissions process. Getting the scholarship is what's the big deal. It's basically worth $300,000 these days. And it requires a lot - stats, real fitness, leadership, community service. Quite a few good schools have significant ROTC programs - MIT, Duke, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Michigan, Cornell, and Berkeley are probably the most notable. Get that scholarship, and they will be interested. |
Isn't the scholarship not awarded until winter/spring of senior year? |
Timing varies by service (Air Force, Army, Navy) and there are usually multiple rounds of scholarship awards. Get your application done as soon as possible in the admission cycle and you will get a scholarship decision in time to use it in Regular Decision admissions. A winter scholarship is well before RD admissions are made. |
LOL get with the program. Yes, most (all?) have ROTC. |
All the Ivy League schools have ROTC programs. |
I don’t think you understand what a hook is. Harvard has ROTC and that IS a hook. It is not, however, a guarantee. It definitely makes the applicant looked at more closely which essentially a hook. |
If URM is a hook, why enrollment of Black students went down? Check out the latest MIT stat. From my experience URM students with high stats were not admitted. |
Two guesses: 1) not as many URM students applied to MIT this year and 2) those who applied did not disclose their URM status through their essays or awards sections. |
Yes and no. Like, technically Harvard has ROTC, but they all go to MIT for classes and training, which is where the real thing is. I don't think there's anything meaningful at Yale, Brown, Rice, Columbia, Northwestern, Chicago, or Penn. The list above - Princeton, MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Cornell, Michigan, Notre Dame, Berkeley - is where it's at for ROTC among the better schools. |
At this point it is all guesses until the final data comes out but from my what I have seen this year low income appears to be a better hook compared to URM. |
Yale has NROTC directly on campus. What do you mean by not meaningful? |
+1 |
Yes, because low-income & first in family considerations are still within the law, but using race as a factor is no longer. |
I actually didn't know this. My child has zero legacies, neither my husband nor I attended college. She is literally the first person in our family to think of getting a degree so we are so clueless. |