<p>Your son reminds me of myself at 17. I thought about joining the military since I was 15. 3 days after my 17th birthday (which was about a week after I started Senior year of HS) I signed the dotted line with my Mothers permission. She figured that if she didn’t let me do what I wanted to now, then there was nothing stopping me by time I turned 18.</p>
<p>School and educational benefits were some of the last reasons I chose to enlist, but they sure turned out to be great benefits to have. If your son enlists now (or within the near future here) he will still be considered under the umbrella of the Post 9-11 GI Bill (P911GIB). The P911GIB has been evolving over the last few years as the VA has been tweaking it to be a more effective program, so anything I give here is at the time of this writing, but some minor details can change within a couple years’ time. I mention that since it would be about 5 years before your son would use the benefit.</p>
<p>So the P911, in a nutshell, will pay (a) up to $17,500* towards tuition and fees /yr, (b) will pay a $1,000 book stipend /yr, and (c) will pay him Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) /mo that he is enrolled in school. The full benefit is for 36 months (4 school years excluding Summers) and you must meet eligibility criteria whcih include serving for 3-12 months (depending on the circumstances) and have had an Honorable or Other than Honorable discharge (so Dishonorable discharges are not eligible for the benefit).</p>
<p>(a) The $17,500 towards tuition and fees is designed to pay for the highest in-state tuition rate in any given state. So you can basically be rest assured that the $17,500 will pay full for any public institution that a veteran is recieving the in-state rate for. There are rare instances where it will not. For example, the highest in-state tution rate in CA is ~$14,000/yr (UC level) - so the P911 will cover it no questions asked. If you attend a state school as an OOS or you attend a private school where the tuition and fees exceed $17.5k, then you will need to find a way to pay out of pocket for the rest (scholarships, grants, and loans) OR the veteran may be able to use the Yellow Ribbon Program (YRP).</p>
<p>*The YRP is a benefit provided to veterans who are considered eligible for 100% of the P911 benefit and is a program that assists them in covering costs that exceed the $17.5k limit. This required the school to be in a contractural agreement with the VA to place in a “kicker” amount if the VA matches the school’s predetermined agrred upon kicker. For example, take school A which costs 25k in tuition. The P911 will cover 17.5 of that leaving the veteran to pay 7.5k. BUT, school A also has the YRP and the veteran is eligible. School A’s kicker amount is 3.5k so School A puts in their kicker amount of 3.5k and brings the 7.5k down to 4k. The VA then upholds their end of the contract and also applies an equal kicker amount of 3.5k now dropping the veteran’s cost to $500. Not every scenario works out like that, but basically that’s how it works. YRP is touchy because the amount of seats available for the program and the amount of the kicker varies from school to school, and in some instances there could be more veterans eligible for the program than the school can support and that would create some sort of waiting list where some veterans may never be able to use it even though they were eligible.</p>
<p>(b) The book stipend is pretty straight forward - you are paid $1,000/yr to help purchase textbooks and other school supplies. If those items cost you less than $1,000 in a given year, then you pocket the rest.</p>
<p>(c) BAH is a military term referring to the program that pays service members a certain amount (based on zip code) to be able to afford rents in off-base locations. For example, in Hawaii I was paid ~$1,000 per pay date (my regular salary) when I lived on base. I didn’t have to pay for rent, utilities, and barely food (I also had no car so no car insurance and got free health care obviously). So $1,000 twice a month can seem like a lot in that case. When I was married and moved off-base the military paid me an extra ~$2,000 on top of that to afford what the average rent and utilities were going for in the zip code of the area. That figure is a little on the higher side since it was Hawaii. BAH is also determined by your rank and the amount of dependents you have (spouse and children). The higher your rank and the more dependents, then the higher your BAH.</p>
<p>BAH for P911 purposes treat every veteran as an E-5 (Enlisted 5th rank, usually around the Sergeant range) with dependents for the zip code that the school they are attending is located. So, for the zip code my school is currently in I receive ~$2,300/mo that I am enrolled in school (so not during the Summers unless I choose to take Summer classes), which again is on the higher end because I live and go to school in the California Bay Area. This is on top of the $1,000/yr book stipend and on top of them paying for tuition and fees. This is the money your son will be able to use to afford an apartment near campus to pay for rent. He would technically be able to live on-campus and use BAH, but it gets to be a complicated process I won’t get into here. If you’d like to know more about how they typically work out using BAH and living on-campus, then let me know. And yes, if he lives at home with Mom and Dad, he is still paid BAH and I suppose it would be up to you to charge him rent or not. Anything left over from BAH is pocketed. It’s really one of the greatest aspects of the benefit - they are paying you to go to school, so there’s no reason not to go.</p>
<p>The P911GIB is not the only educational benefit that an Active Duty service member can be eligible for. This is one of the things I wish I knew more about while on AD. AD service members can also take free CLEP and DSST (DANTES) tests which count towards college credit in some cases and which will get them that much further ahead in completing their degrees. If they are in a more low-key Military Occupational Specialty (MOS, or the service members day-to-day job) where they have a routine set of hours (i.e. 8am-5pm), then they can enroll in school locally to base (community college or whatever) and receive a tuition and fees waiver so it’s free. So, an AD servie member can take as many CLEP tests as they’d like (up to 3 per day) and possibly have the opportunity to do night classes all for free. Taking advantage of those benefits will greatly asssit in helping the service member get head in completing their degree and will mean less use of the P911GIB which can then have months of benefit saved for grad school. However, it is unlikely that he will find time for such things if he is in a combat arms MOS like infantry.</p>
<p>
The elistment process can be . . . interesting. He doesn’t have a choice to do whatever MOS he wants - yet. Once he shows serious interest to a recuiter and has been interviewed by them and showed that he on track to graduate from HS, then he will be sent to the nearest Military Enlistment Processing Station (MEPS). For Northern CA it’s Sacramento. He will go there first to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Test (ASVAB). It will be a test on a lot og general things from math and reading comprehension skills, to electrical, mechanical, and other problem solving and puzzle skills. His score on that test will determine a list of MOSs that he is eligible for. If he scores high enough, then he will be eligible for any job. Some time later, he will return to MEPS to take a physical as well (this may be done at the same time as the ASVAB) and he will finally go to MEPS to be shipped off to bootcamp (or basic training).</p>
<p>If he scores high enough on the ASVAB and he completes basic training then they will send him to his MOS training (I think it’s called Advanced Individual Training, or AIT, in the Army). Once he completes that then they will send him to his first unit and let him in the tanks (of course he’d already have been in a few during training).</p>
<p>That’s all the technical info. Now for my opinion as a veteran going to school:
I was not thinking about my education, at all, when I enlisted. Now that I’ve been through the ringer, I can see both the pros can cons to enlisting before college, or being commissioned (going officer) after.</p>
<p>Enlisting
Pro:
-It is the pure essence of military life. Nothing compares, not even officer. Being in the trenches, literally or metaphorically, with the backbone of the unit is, despite the military stigma, humanizing and enriching.
-You get to experience things in life before you make your educational decisions which helps you forge a more defined path in life (i.e. knowing more about what you want to do and how to get there).
-School can be fully paid for after enlistment.
Con:
-You’re treated as a second-class citizen when enlisted and officer are all together.
-Hold less authority in what you do in the military (see above). This can be seen as a pro for some since it also means less responsibility.
-Given less liberties when it comes to doing personal things.</p>
<p>Officer
Pro:
-School is out of the way once you start, so you can go directly from service to the work force.
-Adds more relevant and focused job exerience to your resume since officer positions are generally more focused and more managerial in nature.
-Are treated like a full adult and are granted the proper liberties to do your personal things when needed.</p>
<p>Con:
-School isn’t paid for. Officers still have to pay off loans while they are in the military, but I do believe there may be a program for loan forgiveness if they serve a certain amount of years. Overall, officers usually pay more for their schooling than elisted end up doing on the P911.
-Assume more responsibilities, even if you don’t particularly have any effect on certain things.
-Scorned and forever made fun of by enlistees (not in all cases, but most - senior enlisted can usually tell a good officer from a bad one).</p>
<p>Overall, I’m satisfied by enlisting. I know for sure I would have majored in something totally different than I am planning to now though I still would have picked the same MOS (Marine Corps Infantry), but I would have had a hard time applying that to a future job I would want to do. However, in the end I joined for different reasons than educational so I wasn’t taking into account how any of it would apply to jobs etc.</p>
<p>You may want to consider it the same way my Mother did: if your S shows enough interest in enlisting then what is going to stop him from doing so when he turns 18? I agree a serious conversation will help to understand things.</p>
<p>EDIT:
The military certainly doesn’t hold your hand either. It seems to me there may be more reason to his reasoning than the education aspect. You should include questions about that in your talk as those reasons can be as important, or more important, to a young man than education.</p>