The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Hey recipients! I know some people already got the scholarship and others are waiting for the second round to go through. Congratulations and good luck respectively! I am part of the 2012 SMART cohort and I was wondering if anyone got a position at TRAC at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico?

My initial award letter was for TRAC-WSMR. They modified it the following day toTRAC- FLVN. Not totally sure why they want a cognitive/behavioral guy at Leavenworth, but I am happy to have been chosen.

I got a position at TRAC-WSMR! Is there any info you could share?

What field/level is your degree?

I will be graduating with a BS in applied math/computation

Hey recipient! The other intern and I will be emailing you hopefully soon about White Sands. We were blindsided this summer (I was told I had to come out here four days before my first day of work), so we do not want you to be in the same position!

That would be great! Especially because I live on the east coast, so new mexico is a bit of a haul for me.

I'm from the east coast too!!

This is kind of bringing an old post back up, but I also just received the scholarship for TRAC WSMR, and I was wondering if anyone that is working their in their Phase 2 or is doing an internship right now is still active on this forum. I'm trying to figure out what the work at TRAC is like and if it makes use of our engineering skill set.

I'm at TRAC-WSMR right now! It really depends on what division you're placed into. You have a lot of say on that, especially if you make a visit during your spring break. The interns here who are the happiest are the ones who are using their skills the most. They have taken a lot of SMART interns in the past and they are getting better at placing everyone where they will actually be used and can contribute. Most of the interns who came in with engineering/computer science/math are using their skills a lot and have been able to learn others. In addition the NMSU degrees are pretty cool for you to keep learning new skills.

also I was just on this form really randomly -- so good timing!

Thanks for the response! And yeah I'm really amazed at that timing. I was just wondering because I've read a lot of negative stuff about the SMART scholarship on this forum and I just wanted to make sure that I would be putting my engineering skills to good use. A lot of people feel like they were cheated into it, but my only concern is that I really am doing the kind of work that I signed up for. As long as I am, I'm not worried about the other stuff.

yeah! To be honest I was pretty bored and I wanted to see if we were getting any new SMART interns! Yeah it really depends on your division but try and talk to the other SMART interns before you get here and they will give you a lot of great advice about which ones to request! If you're not doing what you want then you can try and work with other divisions as well on studies. Be aware though that what TRAC primarily does is operations research but there are engineering components to everything -- you just have to know where to look!