Re: Calling all US Military Fall 2012 Applicants!
[#permalink]
03 Jan 2012, 10:19
Kudos to emont for your thoughts.
I'm not eligible for Yellow Ribbon, but I agree, if a military candidate is eligible, that's fantastic. I qualify for about 60%, and no, I have yet to verify with any current students if the whole public school = full ride is legit. However, my local ed dept tells me it's real, and the updated GI Bill website seems to validate it several times over.
The difference, in my case with 60% eligibility, is about $39K total. I combine that with a full-ride merit scholarship I received from, let's say, UCLA, and well, that's too big to pass up for anything but HSW, at least for me. I respect the idea of getting into the best school possible, but I'm personally not trying to take over the world after my MBA... I just want an interesting, decently paying job, plenty of time for my family and (maybe) enough money left in the bank to put a down deposit on a house post-MBA.
I'm mainly posting this to see if I'm an outlier or not (and please tell me if I'm off the mark) and to suggest that other folks consider this issue as well. I was deadset on a couple schools, but the financial aid offers I received changed everything. They forced me to reevaluate my decision process and left me regretting that I did not apply to more public schools where the GI Bill is generally stronger and one's chances of receiving a merit-based scholarship are higher than at most top ten schools.