I am also an osteo student (3rd) year and a HPSP (health professions scholarship program) recipient (Army scholarship). The deal is this: you get full tuition, books, medical insurance, 800$ +/month stipend, med. board expenses, and a few other miscellaneous expenses covered by them. Other pros are great training. As an osteopathic student it is often tough to get into competitive allopathic residencies (ortho, neurosurg, heent, ophthamology, etc.). We are thus often limited to osteopathic residencies. While there are good osteopathic residencies in similar fields it is sometimes difficult on the other side to find employment in high end hospitals coming out of an osteopathic training facility. If you do military training (and I am told that there is absolutely no discrimination against D.O.'s in the military) then you are on par with everyone else (so I have been told). The other good thing is that we are paid much better then our civilian peers while in residency. And many of these training facilities (military) are some of the best around.
All right the down side (depending on your slant): you owe the military pay back time. If you do a residency which involves training longer than your scholarship (3 or 4 years) you owe them this amount of time (ie. if you do ortho at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is 6 years, you owe them 6 years. You can also expect that once you are practicing, during your payback period, you will make less (sometimes a little, as with F.P. or Peds, sometimes allot, as with ortho or neurosurg) than your civilian conterparts. You also will be required to do a officers basic course prior to or during your 1st years summer break. This varies service to service (Air Force is 3 - 4 weeks, Navy 2 - 3 weeks, Army 6 - 7 weeks).
That's how I see it and how I have been told.
I chose Army because they have the largest number of training facilities and residencies and thus wanted the greatest chance of staying within the military for residency training.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
-Dan
