Introduction to the College Application Process (Veteran Voices)
Introduction to the College Application Process (Veteran Voices)
Transcript
Every school needs so much paperwork. So what I would do is, they give you a checklist. Get everything you need. Make copies of it, because every school's going to need it. The first one's the hardest one.
Then the next part is, once you get past that, you start writing. To get in, they ask you to write an essay. Why should you come to whatever school it is? And you can just tear apart that prompt. And definitely get someone to help you with it. But that becomes your outline. That prompt is your outline.
And so some of the resources I plugged into during the application process were using-- well, I used the VA a lot. I definitely went to the VA and asked all the questions I could possibly think of. When we separate and we go through TAP-- I'm not sure if they changed the name to that already. But when you separate and go through TAP, I went in prepared with questions, asking how I could use whatever benefit they were teaching us, or demonstrating that maybe we didn't know before-- how I could apply it to whatever school I had already applied to or had intentions of applying to.
TAP was, for sure, one. My upper chain of command-- and when I say upper chain of command I mean highest ranking enlisted person at my command. I spoke to him a lot, very candidly, about my separation from the Navy and my goals. And just having that soundboard to bounce off ideas was really helpful for me.
The single most important thing that I would say to a veteran is make sure that you keep track of your application during the entire process. Don't just submit all the paperwork and assume that it's taken care of, because that's what I did. And that almost tripped me up. If I hadn't called and said, hey, what's going on with my application, it probably would've fallen through the cracks. And I wouldn't have gotten in, because somebody sent a transcript to the wrong place.
Nothing that I did wrong, nothing necessarily that anybody did wrong, because they did send it to the college that I told them to. It just went to the wrong place. So I would say to everybody, just keep track of it. Don't assume that everything's going to be OK just because you've turned it in. When you hit that Submit button, you go, whew. OK, that's done. Yeah, maybe not.
Then the next part is, once you get past that, you start writing. To get in, they ask you to write an essay. Why should you come to whatever school it is? And you can just tear apart that prompt. And definitely get someone to help you with it. But that becomes your outline. That prompt is your outline.
And so some of the resources I plugged into during the application process were using-- well, I used the VA a lot. I definitely went to the VA and asked all the questions I could possibly think of. When we separate and we go through TAP-- I'm not sure if they changed the name to that already. But when you separate and go through TAP, I went in prepared with questions, asking how I could use whatever benefit they were teaching us, or demonstrating that maybe we didn't know before-- how I could apply it to whatever school I had already applied to or had intentions of applying to.
TAP was, for sure, one. My upper chain of command-- and when I say upper chain of command I mean highest ranking enlisted person at my command. I spoke to him a lot, very candidly, about my separation from the Navy and my goals. And just having that soundboard to bounce off ideas was really helpful for me.
The single most important thing that I would say to a veteran is make sure that you keep track of your application during the entire process. Don't just submit all the paperwork and assume that it's taken care of, because that's what I did. And that almost tripped me up. If I hadn't called and said, hey, what's going on with my application, it probably would've fallen through the cracks. And I wouldn't have gotten in, because somebody sent a transcript to the wrong place.
Nothing that I did wrong, nothing necessarily that anybody did wrong, because they did send it to the college that I told them to. It just went to the wrong place. So I would say to everybody, just keep track of it. Don't assume that everything's going to be OK just because you've turned it in. When you hit that Submit button, you go, whew. OK, that's done. Yeah, maybe not.