What should I know about ROTC programs?

What is ROTC?

Many of us have heard about the 5 service academies:

1. The United States Military Academy (West Point)
2. The United States Naval Academy
3. The United States Air Force Academy
4. The United States Coast Guard Academy
5. The United States Merchant Marine Academy

In this blog post, I want to talk about ROTC programs.

Honestly, in my experience, not many students (or parents for that matter) even know what ROTC is. Your parents may have heard of “ROTC” before (aka “ROTSIE”), they may be aware that it exists, but when pressed, many don’t actually know what it is, how it works, how it differs from SAs, or what it brings to the table.

I am going to teach you what ROTC means, and I hope that you will give it serious consideration in the coming years, as it is much more flexible and attainable for most students than are the SAs.

ROTC is an acronym that stands for Reserve Officer Training Corps. And here’s how it works.

Let’s say you’re really interested in having a “military experience” in college, you’d like to serve as an officer in the military, and you’d like to have many of the same financial benefits that service academy graduates enjoy, but, you’re not sure that a SA is the right fit for you.

It could be that you don’t want your college experience to be so regimented and structured, maybe “academy life” is too intense for you, or maybe you want to hedge your bets because you know how competitive service academies are and you want other options.

No matter the reasons, ROTC programs are a great option to keep in mind as you make your way through high school.

If you have a JROTC program in your high school, maybe you’re even in one, JROTC stands for “Junior” ROTC, which is a gateway to ROTC programs.

By way of comparison, attending a service academy can be thought of as a “full-time” military experience, while attending a traditional college on an ROTC scholarship can be thought of as a “part-time” military experience.

Let me explain: As we talked about last week, when you attend a service academy, you live on the campus of that institution - the Naval Academy or West Point - for example.

When you are an ROTC student, you live on the campus of a traditional college - like Boston College, Princeton, or UCLA. And for a large majority of your time, you function as a typical college student. You live in the dorms with other students, you eat in the dining hall, you play frisbee on the quad, you stay up all night debating whether golf is an actual sport, you join the intramural rugby team, you order pizza and hot wings to your dorm room at 2am, you do nearly everything that a normal college student would do at Vanderbilt or Northeastern - except that, as an ROTC student, you have some additional military-related obligations - and these will vary depending on the branch that you're in (Army, Navy, Air Force) and the school that you’re attending.

And what are those things? 

You typically take an extra military class each semester, you PT or “work out” with the other ROTC candidates in your unit a few times a week, you wear your military uniform periodically, you might have leadership labs, and a few other things that, obviously, non-ROTC students do not do. You might think of your ROTC unit as your version of a sports team. You hang out, train, learn, drill together. You become a small team.

Obviously, this is in sharp contrast to the “lifestyle” that you would have as a cadet at West Point, for instance - where you are certainly not ordering pizza and hot wings to your dorm room at 2am. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. And later on in this blog, I will break down how these experiences differ in a bit more detail. Right now, I just want you to understand, at a very high level, the differences in the two programs.

You may be wondering, how does one become an ROTC student at one of these traditional colleges and which colleges offer such opportunities.

Let’s start with how you become an ROTC student.

Well, you have to apply for an ROTC scholarship. They are offered by the Army, Navy, and the Air Force. You apply for these scholarships toward the end of your junior year in high school. If you win a scholarship (which normally covers part or all of your tuition), you then have to apply that scholarship to a traditional college that has an ROTC program, and that you have already been accepted to.

I know that sounds like a lot of moving pieces. We’re not going to get bogged down in the details now. We will cover this in excruciating details in the coming blog years.

What you need to know now, is that ROTC scholarships exist, and that if you earn one of those scholarships, you can attend a traditional college - in some cases, tuition free - and still graduate as a military officer - just as the cadets and midshipmen do who attend a service academy. You end up at the same place, but just take a different path to get there. And, yes, just like with service academies, you also have a 5-yr commitment to serve, as an officer, after you graduate  - what I like to call a guaranteed job.

Which branches of the military offer ROTC programs and at which colleges and universities?

Here’s a quick breakdown:

The Navy offers ROTC programs on about 150 campuses (and by the way, if you have your heart set on becoming a Marine Officer, you would apply for a Navy ROTC scholarship and select the Marine option).

The Army and Air Force offer ROTC programs at over 1,000 college campuses across the country.

Translation, there are lots and lots of colleges and universities that support these programs.

What types of colleges? A very wide variety, from San Jose State, to Harvard, and Texas Tech, and everywhere in between. You can check the link below to see all of the different schools with ROTC programs in each of the branches.

Needless to say, there are a lot of options to consider. But, I don’t want you to worry about those options right now - I just want to make sure that you are aware that they exist and that you’re keeping your eyes and ears open for information about them.

Because, at this point, the preparation for all of these programs is the same (whether for service academies or ROTC scholarships). I’ll help you sort out which might be a better option for you down the road.

And, of course, you can (and I will highly encourage most of you to) apply both to service academies and for ROTC scholarships. That way, you have both options to consider.

My identical twin sons, for example, applied to the Naval Academy and for Navy ROTC scholarships. On the traditional college front, they applied and were accepted to Yale, Princeton, and Cal Berkeley, and, in the end, decided to attend Yale with their Navy ROTC scholarships.

My third oldest son, on the other hand, decided not to apply for an ROTC scholarship because he was a recruited athlete at the Naval Academy and decided to commit to them very early on.

As you can see, students have different motivations for their choices. Hopefully, someday, you’ll have the benefit of many choices as well. 

By the way, for us, as a family, it was a great deal financially, because in all three of my sons' cases, they were essentially going to college for free, two to Yale on ROTC scholarships and one to the Naval Academy on a full scholarship.  So, keep that in mind as well if college affordability is on your radar.

That’s what I want to leave you with today. Again, we will cover this in a lot more detail down the road. Suffice it to say, if this sounds interesting to you, make sure you enroll in ServeWell Academy right away.

Navy ROTC

Army ROTC

Air Force ROTC