I am pre-medical; however, my friend has taken her DAT for dental school. Anyhow, I think people should really know what their talking about before posting...no disrespect intended. In addition, I think people should take what a recruiter tells them with a grain of salt, especially since my cousin (who is my mother's cousin) was a recruiter in the air force for several years. That being said, I will tell you that the air force recruiter here is always telling applicants they must submit their information by December, which is not true. The deadline for most officer commissions (all commissions other than future lawyers, doctors, etc) in the air force is December; however, this is not true for the HPSP scholarship, which is why they typically prefer that you receive a letter of acceptance before applying.
This is not always the case. A letter of acceptance usually garantees that the applicant would be approved by the board...and this number has a positive affect on a recruiters career. Now, for my program (medicine) schools are accepting on a rolling admission basis, meaning they accept as the applications are complete. The sooner your applications is submitted the better as it increases the chances that you will received an acceptance letter well before the air force's deadline. However, I have been in contact with the Navy for the last two years, mostly because I like to stay informed. Despite their attempts to encourage me to enter their Nuclear Program, I was fortunate enough to get a recruiter that is not only concerned with recruiting numbers. Anyhow, I was informed that they accept on a rolling basis...meaning no deadline. This does not mean that certain times of the year would either increase or decrease ones chances of being picked up. I was also informed that one can either submit the HPSP Scholarship before obtaining an acceptance letter or afterwards, but I was warned by the recruiter that my scores on the MCAT needed to be 30 and above and my GPA must be above a 3.0 if I was applying prior to receiving an acceptance letter. Not only that, but my reference letter and resume needed to be on point. Again, all an acceptance letter does is increases the chances that you will be approved for the program. With most schools, dental or medical, an applicant does not hear anything from the school until late December early January. I know that for the MCAT one cannot apply for admissions for 2012 until May 2011...as such there is no way to apply for this scholarship before you can apply to the school. Hope this shed some light on the process. I did consult the air force, and with no respect intended, that recruiter was only focused on applicants that she thought would be picked up, thus rushing or dis-encouraging applicants from applying.
