The day after my last post (Monday), the Army recruiter sent me an email in the late morning stating that he had sent my physical report over to the Air Force recruiter. Naturally, I wanted to make sure everything had been received by the Air Force, so I gave the recruiter a call. When I told him about the email I received, he checked and (big surprise) the Army recruiter hadn't sent the file. Not only was this bad because the deadline for the Air Force scholarship was that day, but the Army recruiter had lied to me. I decided that enough was enough. I called the Army guy and told him to forward the file to me for my own records, this way I could have the file myself and submit it to the Air Force recruiter. I did just that, and got everything in on time. Later in the week, the Army recruiter called me and said that I received the Army scholarship! Great news because my backup plan is in place. Now all I have to do is wait and see if I get the Air Force scholarship.

Fast-forward to this past Friday. All my paperwork for both the Army and Air Force had been turned in and everything was set to go to the committees. I got out of organic chemistry around 4:50 and had about five messages from the Air Force recruiter saying that the Army hadn't sent a copy of my physical test results and that he needed them by Monday morning or else I would miss the deadline. I proceeded to call the Army recruiter who made a few miserable excuses and said he would send the physical. Well, by 11pm that night the physical hadn't been sent, and of course no government/military worker ever picks up their cell phone on weekends. So the plan is Monday morning I will call and harass the Army recruiter until he sends it, and hopefully it is not too late. It feels as though the Army recruiter knows that there is a deadline for the Air Force and he is purposefully holding things up so that I have no choice but to take the Army scholarship. I would rather have the Air Force scholarship because overall the Air Force has better facilities and treats their people better. We will see what tomorrow brings.

So here is the problem: the scholarships given by the Army are determined by the year that you graduate from dental school and since all dental schools are four years, except one, they give all scholarships away for the graduating class in four years. This is a problem because I want to go the only three-year school in the nation. My graduating class is 2015, which means that the Army gave away the 2015 scholarships in 2011. To top it off, I had been working with the recruiter since June 2011 and notified them that I wanted to go to a three year school and that they should get things going so it would all work out. I think the recruiter didn't believe I would get into the three-year school (University of the Pacific, or UOP) so he didn't do anything until December, when I received my acceptance letter to UOP. He then started telling me that I couldn't go to UOP with the Army because they were not providing a scholarship to that school. I did a little digging and called up some other recruiters, and found out the Army is still proving scholarships to UOP. When I told my recruiter what I found out he wasn't too happy but reluctantly said he could make it happen.

TBC

Adventures

I used to think that the U.S. Army was very efficient and organized, always having the answer in a chop chop fashion. Little did I know that trying to get a simple yes/no answer as to whether I could attend a three-year dental school and still be covered by the Army Health Professions Scholarship Program would be nigh impossible even after months of reminding and nagging.
I am not a fan of debt. Never been in debt and never will. In June 2010 the reality of going to dental school hit when i took the DAT and then paid thousands of dollars in application fees, then the reality of the actual cost of dental school sunk in as I attended various interviews around the country. $300,000+ here, $400,000+ there, not including food, gas and other miscellaneous items needed to survive. I didn’t want that hanging over my head for the rest of my life (because surely it would take that long to pay off that much debt). My half-brother Tim had faced the same thing a few years back and decided to have the U.S. Army pay the bill, and in return serve as an army dentist for four years (with all the benefits, salary and post-grad training). Seemed like a pretty good deal, which is why I started down the same path.

To Be Continued