The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Was the amount on the debt letter in the ballpark of what you expected based on percentage of time worked, less the internship payments and health insurance?

Congrats on the award! You seem to have a good sense that you don't want to be pushy and make it completely money-oriented since there are a lot of other factors at play, but asking about payscales is necessary during the site visit since this is a commitment you will be locked into for X number of ...

Negotiating on the front end is definitely not a binding agreement as a lot can change in the next two years before you graduate. Depending on the SF, your boss/ hiring manager could change, you could have a change of circumstances/ heart, etc. What I would recommend doing is asking specific questio...

PM me if you are interested in hearing more. I had success, but a lot has to line up for it to work.

SMART doesn't really care about the background check. I did my entire internship before my clearance was even started so I didn't have a CAC, computer access, or a badge for the restricted area on base. Still made $25/hr but it was super boring.

My school didn't have a plan like that, but since I had to move away for my internship, I had a lot of time to kill in the afternoon and nights. I took some humanities electives online at a community college and paid for it myself. The classes transferred back to my degree plan and SMART didn't say ...

Thanks. I don't want to get too in the weeds of the Handbook, but they explicitly say time on Leave Without Pay doesn't count. Do they have an actual method of tracking this or could I feasibly "pad" my exit date by a few months by emptying my PTO bank and then taking some LWOP time?

In your experience, would you recommend being very upfront with SMART when you leave? Everyone who I did my interview and internship with has left so my leadership really doesn't know much about SMART or my commitment. I am considering just resigning a few months early to take another job, but I don...

To my knowledge there is no general Discord, only one for people who left the program and have debt. I would be ok to answer questions about negotiating salary. The two main things to understand though are you don't have a ton of leverage since you owe them money and along the same lines you can rea...