The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Just cleaned up a little more, including all the remaining reports.

I moved it to Recipients for you :)

You're not wrong, and sorry to appear like I was taking it out on the admin. It's just that no one is stopping them right now. As for suggestions...we could get more moderators, we could move to a place like Discord or Slack, or we could implement more rigorous posting and account creation requireme...

My closure has finally come on this matter. SMART is allowing the SSEP in order for me to continue into grad school full-time. They're drafting a Memorandum of Understanding between SMART and my SF to make this agreement. So, I ultimately get to go back to school, not break my housing lease there, h...

I did this (see my signature about timeline stuffs). In May 2017, I was on a co-op while I received the award on May 9, 2017 (I think). I had to move out of my dorm on May 12, and I started a summer internship May 15. On the Education Work Plan form, I had to report co-ops and internships to SMART (...

I'm sorry to say this has not been the case for many PhD students in SMART. A quick search for "PhD" on the Recipients board will result in a blast of nightmares. Narrow that down to searching "PhD screwed" to find threads with both those words and you come across this post on a topic about paying b...

Thanks for taking an interest in my particular situation. I've actually considered a number of the options you just mentioned: The STEM Student Employment Program (SSEP) would be a "full-time position" on the SF-50 submitted to SMART that would allow me to be a full-time student while working at my ...

I get it that you had a crappy grad school experience. Grad school can be like that in labs that don't treat their students properly. It's all over Academia Stack Exchange. However, it's certainly not like that with every professor, so don't go prescribing to people that grad school is the worst thi...

I was wondering about the cover letter too. I just got my bill from my school on the 15th and it already had pending credits from LMI, so I don't know.

I'll be honest though, from what you described in your reasons for not going to your SF...I don't see that flying and getting the debt validity waived in review. MAYBE you could make some case for a waiver IF you still wound up working for the DoD/providing value but... Thanks for the response. I k...

I've asked this question recently and the answer is: "service commitment may not be deferred unless it falls within the Phase 2 deferral policy, and a SAAR is completed and approved". I don't see any "Phase 2 deferral policy" in the handbook, so it might be 5.12 that they're referencing.

I haven't withdrawn yet, but I do have a bit of knowledge to share now after asking the questions. This is from the SMART Operations Lead under LMI's administration (2019). "The interest to payments is assessed by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. I believe it is a fixed rate of 1% but am ...

I think that varies wildly on the terms of the scholarship. If you have scholarship funds deposited into your bank account, you technically have discretion to spend them as you like (supposing the scholarship doesn't seek receipts). If they don't hand you the money, you have to let them know what ex...

Hi! I work at the Dahlgren facility. It's probably not polite to drop contact information of these individuals to a public facing forum, but there is an email address dedicated to handling questions about student programs. From there, you can obtain direct contact with the SMART POC here. DLGR_NSWC_...

I'm not sure what your SF is like, but in general, I don't think you're stuck at your position if you're truly unhappy with it. You are , in general, stuck at your SF. But, you can move around inside there. Talk to your supervisors or HR about moving somewhere that would "intellectually challenge" y...

I applied for a follow-on award for grad school, and was approved April 2019, until they rescinded it June 20, 2019. The reason? Because I can't start a degree on a Spring semester (Handbook, 6.5). I discussed it on a teleconference with SMART's Program Manager (Tylar Temple) who emphasized making a...