The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I am presently in high school and would love to receive this scholarship. My passion is to work for the Department of Defense in cyberterrorism or computer infrastructure support. I can see myself as being a lifetime DOD employee.

Here are my questions- When I enter college, I will have already earned 46+ college credits and enter as a second semester sophomore. I see from the boards that few "freshmen" are selected. While I fall into a different category since I will have more college credits completed? I won't have grades from my college, but I will have my high school GPA and GPA from my college courses that I completed during high school. Will they want both of those?

I really wish that I could apply my senior year of high school since I would technically be a college freshman/sophomore, but it appears that high school students can't apply.

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

Send any transcripts that you have. That means that if your college-level classes are from an institution other than your high school, send the transcripts from that institution. On the application, you'll give them your individual GPAs from each school you have attended.

I assume that even though I will have a lot of college credits when I start at my 4 year school, I still can't apply until after graduating high school. Is that correct?

Thanks!

Don't trust anything I say because I'm not a SMART representative, but I believe you can apply the winter of your senior year of high school, provided you've been accepted to a university and will be starting in the Fall of 2013 (for this next round of applications). So, if you're a junior now and get accepted to college prior to 1 December of this year, you should be eligible to apply for the 1 December 2012 deadline. Double-check the SMART website, and if you still have questions you should really email smart@asee.org instead of asking here; they'll be better able to tell you whether or not you are eligible.

That being said, apply every single time you can until you get the scholarship. There's nothing that limits the number of times you can apply and if this is really what you want to do, then you should do your best to pursue it.

I went to college with ~90 credits from high school and applied as a senior in high school and got accepted.

The idea is never, ever mention to them that you are a high school student. List whatever college you got your credits at as your current university, and state you are a transfer student to whatever university you're going to.

Send them college transcripts, not high school transcripts, and you'll have just as much chance as anyone else. Remember, at the end of the day its not tough to get past the 50% cut...you just have to be selected by an SF. That might not happen if you don't have a solid background unless you already have contacts.