The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Ms. Wright was most unhelpful during my facility change process. If/when she finally responded to email, she was condescending and quite useless when it came to assisting with my new placement. I had to find a new facility on my own through networking and spamming. And even after I found a place, sh...

^^
Congrats!!!

I'm just inside 13 months left now, but yeah, who's counting?

The privacy act statement at the top of the form makes it look they are using this form to help their vague debt collection efforts.

That is not the consensus; read through the forum and you will see there are myriad examples of scholars being promised one thing and the SF delivering another-especially when it comes to $. Be sure to return to the forum a year from now when the target 13 you are promised verbally doesn't materiali...

^^^^ Hey guys, don't worry, it gets better in Phase 2!!!

In all seriousness, it sucks to hear about continued $ issues (those of us in Phase 2 know how you feel), but hopefully the problems will get resolved before they cause everyone too much trouble.

Along the lines of OnlyJust's suggestion, I think the SMART program should reduce the remaining service commitment for Phase 2 scholars by a percentage equal to the percentage of time they have served (i.e., 75% of commitment completed => reduce the remaining 25% by 75%). Obviously for anything like...

If you apply and a scholarship is offered, I would strongly recommend making the facility hire you for an 3-6 month internship before you sign anything related to accepting the scholarship and the service commitment that comes with it. Larry has suggested similar actions before. The main objective i...

It is posts like this that make me thankful for how my placement turned out. I still view accepting the SMART scholarship as the biggest mistake of my life/career, and I have vigorously tried to dissuade as many students as possible from entering the program. I think that if potential applicants und...

Larry, How is that retention rate measured, i.e., how long after the commitment ends do you count count a scholar as staying on or not? 85% is much higher that I would have expected if the retention is measured, say, at one year after commitment ends. I agree with previous comments you made about ho...

I treated my internships as "engineering consulting" for purposes of self-employment and deducted all expenses during the period. Had to file a Schedule C, but it wasn't a big deal. I also included a note with my return explaining that my 1099 included both scholarship and internship income. I'm cer...

Thanks for posting this. Clawing back the support payments is such a dick move...The SMART program really is a terrible deal for students; I've tried to dissuade every single one I've met from even applying. I can only hope I've saved a few others from making the mistake I did by accepting it.

Larry's advice is solid.

If the program sets the precedent of collecting a reduced amount, say academic year stipend only, or something like that, I predict a mass exodus of phase 2 participants.

Since it seems that the program still hasn't started attempting to collect from recipients that left the program early, there is no way to know for sure. You are right, though- those two issues are what keeps me from jetting early. My sense is that the SMART program will try to make leaving early as...

A co-worker of mine waited a month and heard nothing from the office. He emailed them and received a letter similar to what they email when you start Phase 2 (just a form letter with nothing for him to sign). Congrats on being finished with the program! I plan to leave as soon as my commitment is fi...

Re ^^^: Or you can consider the dysfunctional nature of the SMART program and the gov as a whole and figure you won't be required to payback. The SMART program clearly doesn't have a payback process in place, and I would be very surprised if they formulated one anytime soon. Given the monetary issue...

As a couple other posters have mentioned, what your advisor/mentor says and what you end up getting paid are likely two different things. My mentor gave me a high-GS12 pipe-dream while I was interning, and when it came down to it, he had to petition to get me from 12-1 to 12-3 when I joined. Also, f...

Most everyone I have talked to has been treated the same way concerning pay. "You're a SMART student and you have to take what we offer" is the standard retort to anything you say in contract "negotiations". Whatever your civilian counterparts are making take $20k off of that figure and come to ter...

fyi, at Army Research Lab, we were told that if furloughs happen, they would start late April.