The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I accepted the SMART award at the end of June and was contacted to complete my SF86 in mid-August. The interview portion didn't start until the following July for me. It then took 7 more months for them to finish. If you're approved an interim clearance, you should be fine for the first summer internship, otherwise you'll miss it (what happened to me). I stayed and taught at my university, which was preferable anyway.

My SF just reached out to me last week to start my process and give me access to my eQIP account. From what I understand these can take a while, so it might be worth reaching out to your SF.

Your SF will get this process started. They should contact you before next summer, but my SF for example didn't contact us until late march of our first internship year.

I received the SMART scholarship in the most recent cycle. Has anyone else in this cohort been contacted by the FBI yet to begin the security clearance process? I'm getting nervous that I was supposed to reach out to someone to get this process started.