by JDetwiler » Mon Aug 03, 2020 11:33 am
- I wouldn't recommend it. Unless you're doing a BS/MS, they're going to treat the degree programs separately and won't fund you.
- Here's the truth. Any other advice is just wrong. SMART is a program about procuring the future government workforce. Their number one goal is to recruit you into working there for the rest of your life. That's it. So your (persuasive style) essay should reflect that. It should be brimming with patriotic enthusiasm and "I want to work here for the rest of my life" candor. That's really all there is to it. Your job is to convince them to invest in you, and they'll only believe that when they believe that investing in you will improve the retention rate of younger people in the government. In other words, they want to know that they can own you. (And, they really do think like this, speaking from collective experience of speaking to program management.)
To really drive home how big of a problem this is for the government...the
Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) is a federal government-wide survey that had 42.6% response in the 2019 results I linked. In Appendix F, they report demographics of the 570,000+ respondents. How many are 25 and under? Just 7,269. Even worse, they report generations too: people born 1997 or later (23 and under)? Just 767 (which is 0.1%). It's bad.
And in my opinion, it's to be completely expected. With the way SMART treats their scholars, they're drawing 10% attrition (this figure derives from Sisyphus, one of the forum's mods who oversees debtor issues) from the program---10% who think paying the 5-6 figures of money back is actually better than having to stick it out for the service commitment. Why so many? Because their bottom line is retention and they
do not care about us as people or how well we fit into the assigned job and facility. There are so many reasons, but so many of us get thrown into Excel spreadsheets for a full time job when we have degrees in engineering and science.
Anyway, sorry for the derailment of answering your question. I try to inform people of the issues here before they sign the contract, if it can be helped.
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[*] I wouldn't recommend it. Unless you're doing a BS/MS, they're going to treat the degree programs separately and won't fund you.
[*] Here's the truth. Any other advice is just wrong. SMART is a program about procuring the future government workforce. Their number one goal is to recruit you into working there for the rest of your life. That's it. So your (persuasive style) essay should reflect that. It should be brimming with patriotic enthusiasm and "[i]I want to work here for the rest of my life[/i]" candor. That's really all there is to it. Your job is to convince them to invest in you, and they'll only believe that when they believe that investing in you will improve the retention rate of younger people in the government. In other words, they want to know that they can own you. (And, they really do think like this, speaking from collective experience of speaking to program management.)
[/list]
To really drive home how big of a problem this is for the government...the [url=https://www.opm.gov/fevs/reports/governmentwide-reports/governmentwide-management-report/governmentwide-report/2019/2019-governmentwide-management-report.pdf]Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS)[/url] is a federal government-wide survey that had 42.6% response in the 2019 results I linked. In Appendix F, they report demographics of the 570,000+ respondents. How many are 25 and under? Just 7,269. Even worse, they report generations too: people born 1997 or later (23 and under)? Just 767 (which is 0.1%). It's bad.
And in my opinion, it's to be completely expected. With the way SMART treats their scholars, they're drawing 10% attrition (this figure derives from Sisyphus, one of the forum's mods who oversees debtor issues) from the program---10% who think paying the 5-6 figures of money back is actually better than having to stick it out for the service commitment. Why so many? Because their bottom line is retention and they [i]do not care[/i] about us as people or how well we fit into the assigned job and facility. There are so many reasons, but so many of us get thrown into Excel spreadsheets for a full time job when we have degrees in engineering and science.
Anyway, sorry for the derailment of answering your question. I try to inform people of the issues here before they sign the contract, if it can be helped.