The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Thank you for the response since there is very little information out there on this. My original SF-50 indicated that I was already in the "Competitive Service" since my SF pretty much hired me without SMART's help. I also got put into an 18 Month Term position when my commitment was supposed to be 2 years. If I end up leaving sooner for whatever reason I might try to use that as a justification, and I guess I will just take my chance on how SMART would reconcile it.

I can't speak from personal experience, but I have two former colleagues who left somewhat prematurely.

First to answer your question, yes SMART will almost certainly notice you have left early, regardless of how close you are to completing phase 2.

Second question: If you intend to leave on your last required day, I would recommend you simply inform the SMART program about this and ask what is needed. They have generally been responsive for me.

I can tell you that one thing that would be helpful is an SF-50 that indicates you have been converted from Excepted Service to Competitive service as this indicates your obligation is done. My updated SF-50 wasn't processed until about 2 weeks after my SMART commitment was done. You may want to give your HR a heads-up about it so they can prepare it for you. However, you should know that they have no obligation to do this on the exact day of your SMART completion (I was informed of this).

About 2 months after my SMART service obligation was completed, I received an email from SMART informing me I was converted to Phase 3.

Has anyone had experience that they could share about how the service commitment ends? Based on some of the stories on here about Phase 2 hiring taking forever, I am guessing there aren't a lot of people that stick around in the program much longer than they are required to. But if the debt truly is pro-rated based on time served as I have read on here before, leaving a few months early wouldn't amount to very much being owed back. The people at my SF that I work for "inherited" me and didn't have anything to do with SMART in the first place, so if they didn't raise an alarm about me leaving 6 months early to take another job, would SMART realistically even notice I was gone or bother coming after me for debt less than about $25k? Or is there some official SF-50 I need to submit on my last day to confirm I completed my commitment in full. Thanks in advance.