The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

What does the process look like? I understand there is a high level of intrusiveness involved, but was it relatively painless? What about for those of you who have had to relocate a lot throughout your life?

Just went over everything in the SF 86 form. EVERYTHING. Took about two hours and it was relatively painless. SMART didn't tell them ahead of time I was a part of the program so that was interesting.

Awesome! What level of clearance are we getting and was the document the only thing you had to do? Were there any interviews?

Guest wrote:Awesome! What level of clearance are we getting and was the document the only thing you had to do? Were there any interviews?

Re: Level of Clearance

Fellow candidate here. I believe I read that the default is Secret unless your SF needs you to have a higher one. Like, if you're working with nukes or something.

[*]I am not a recipient of this scholarship (yet! Hopefully). I do have a clearance though. The process is *relatively* painless. You will have an interview and contact with your interviewer for a few weeks. They will do a thourough check of everyone you put on your clearance packet. DO NOT LIE. I repeat, DO NOT LIE. They will find out. I have a TS//SCI and mine took about 6-8 months to get approved. Though I cannot guarantee that yours will go that quickly. I was in the military when I received mine so I do not know if that is different than the civilian process. I can't imagine it would be very different.

Bigbym wrote:[*]I am not a recipient of this scholarship (yet! Hopefully). I do have a clearance though. The process is *relatively* painless. You will have an interview and contact with your interviewer for a few weeks. They will do a thourough check of everyone you put on your clearance packet. DO NOT LIE. I repeat, DO NOT LIE. They will find out. I have a TS//SCI and mine took about 6-8 months to get approved. Though I cannot guarantee that yours will go that quickly. I was in the military when I received mine so I do not know if that is different than the civilian process. I can't imagine it would be very different.

Baskin-Robbins always finds out...

I was never contacted by anyone, and I asked all my friends and family and none of them were contacted either. I recently received an email stating that I had been granted secret eligibility and I just had to watch some video about security clearances. It depends on your background I guess. I have friends who obtained clearances, and them, their family and basically anyone they ever looked at were interviewed.