The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I have a scholarship for 3 years, but I would like to pay for my last year of college myself. SMART has already paid for 2 years of college. Does anyone know if it is possible to shorten your award length without changing your graduation date? I really don't want to work for the Air Force for 3 years...

anon1 wrote:I have a scholarship for 3 years, but I would like to pay for my last year of college myself. SMART has already paid for 2 years of college. Does anyone know if it is possible to shorten your award length without changing your graduation date? I really don't want to work for the Air Force for 3 years...

Try to contact the SMART program office directly. I have a feeling the answer is no. They wouldn't even let me graduate early so I used the extra funded time to take PhD classes for the future.

I did, but the initial answer was no. I just don't really see how they can force me to use them to pay for my final year of school.

anon1 wrote:I did, but the initial answer was no. I just don't really see how they can force me to use them to pay for my final year of school.

When you accept SMART, you sign a contract essentially and the agreement is they are paying for X years of school so you owe X years of service. They want to guarantee they have someone working with your degree at the SF you're being sponsored by for that many years, so anything involving an extension or reduction in award is a problem to them. Personally I don't see why you can't pay for the last year yourself either and do the rest you owe after you graduate, but SMART unfortunately doesn't seem to like extensions or reductions, especially reductions.