I find it incredibly unfair that the military "runs out of money" and cannot give scholarships to everyone who applied. It would be one thing if 1/2 of the dental students in the country applied, but it seems that there are not too many more people who apply than there are scholarships available. Then those people get put on the waitlist and ultimately get one.
I especially find this unfair when every time I turn on the TV or read the newspaper, I hear about the billions of dollars spend each year just training people how to blow stuff up and going on useless neverending training missions. I was watching the PBS documentary that someone posted on here recently and, while I thought it was cool to see life on a ship, I could not believe how much money was wasted everyday. They had the $60 million fighter jets with the pilots ($1 million to train each one) taking off all day every day and never even drop a bomb! Nevermind the cost of running that ship all over the world! That's just the tip of the iceberg too.
While posting on here really doesn't do anything, and if the military says they are out of scholarships, then they're out. There's nothing we can do. However, I just find it so incredibly frustrating to think that the Army/Navy/AF will put people on the OML for a year, make them take out huge student loans for a year and then take them for a 3 year scholarship. For the Army this extra cost would be almost nothing, pennies for them, the cost of a couple bombs dropped over Iraq, but for the students, its a huge burden. Plus, I'd assume there are losing a whole year of this person's contract and will ultimately have to spend a lot more money training new dentists a year earlier. Personally I wanted a career in the military, but if I have a huge student loan like that, I may have to get out after 3 years just to make a real dentists salary. A military dentists salary is fine, but not if I will have a $1,500/mo student loan payment on top of it. Finally, doesn't the military have to employ a bunch of civilian contract dentists because they don't have enough of their own? Here's a thought--take more HPSPs!
My application has been held up for so my months by a bunch of administrative crap, the recruiters being on vacation, etc. There was nothing I could do about it, and now I'm gonna pay the price. It was no fault of my own, but it feels like I'm being robbed of $90K, just because my recruiter didn't know how to pull the right strings and get my stuff in on time.
I especially find this unfair when every time I turn on the TV or read the newspaper, I hear about the billions of dollars spend each year just training people how to blow stuff up and going on useless neverending training missions. I was watching the PBS documentary that someone posted on here recently and, while I thought it was cool to see life on a ship, I could not believe how much money was wasted everyday. They had the $60 million fighter jets with the pilots ($1 million to train each one) taking off all day every day and never even drop a bomb! Nevermind the cost of running that ship all over the world! That's just the tip of the iceberg too.
While posting on here really doesn't do anything, and if the military says they are out of scholarships, then they're out. There's nothing we can do. However, I just find it so incredibly frustrating to think that the Army/Navy/AF will put people on the OML for a year, make them take out huge student loans for a year and then take them for a 3 year scholarship. For the Army this extra cost would be almost nothing, pennies for them, the cost of a couple bombs dropped over Iraq, but for the students, its a huge burden. Plus, I'd assume there are losing a whole year of this person's contract and will ultimately have to spend a lot more money training new dentists a year earlier. Personally I wanted a career in the military, but if I have a huge student loan like that, I may have to get out after 3 years just to make a real dentists salary. A military dentists salary is fine, but not if I will have a $1,500/mo student loan payment on top of it. Finally, doesn't the military have to employ a bunch of civilian contract dentists because they don't have enough of their own? Here's a thought--take more HPSPs!
My application has been held up for so my months by a bunch of administrative crap, the recruiters being on vacation, etc. There was nothing I could do about it, and now I'm gonna pay the price. It was no fault of my own, but it feels like I'm being robbed of $90K, just because my recruiter didn't know how to pull the right strings and get my stuff in on time.