National Guard with Army ROTC?

I was wondering if this plan would work out:

During my senior year I enlist in the national guard, I also apply and get accepted to a college for the spring semester after I graduate high school. After graduation from high school I go to BCT and AIT during the summer and part of the fall, then in the spring I begin classes at college, including Army ROTC. Then throughout the 4 years I do national guard, ROTC, and college all together. I know that this is called SMP but I just wanted to know if this way would work out?

Would it be possible to graduate on time after missing one semester? Would I have to take a lot of extra classes?
Also I heard that it is hard to go from guard to active duty after graduation because the guard wants more people, is this true?

Ray

That's easily done. YOu don't have to contract SMP until you are ready to commit to ROTC. YOu can just keep doing your regular Guard stuff until you contract your Junior year. Good luck.

Jimmy N

well I think it's hard to go from guard to active duty because the guard sorta belongs to that state. Reserves to Active, that's fine but guard is state thing and reserves/active is more federal.

A typical college program for a 4-year degree ranges from 120-130 hours. Give or take a few hours. Most schools only allow you to do 12 hours your first semester unless from your transcript from HS it shows you were an Honor level/advanced level student, decent-to-high SAT scores and/or A/B average, than you can take a few more. Every school I know maxes out per student per semester at 18 hours, if you want to go over the dean will have to sign off on it. And he won't sign off unless they think you can do it, so maybe try to take the 18 credit hours (that's a lot, you can try 15, a typical class is 3 credit hours).

I honestly do not think you can really make it in four years (ie if you graduated high school 09, you graduating college in 2013) without a LOT of strain. The only reason I say that is because of the guard 2 weeks over the summer thing. Because yeah it's only 2 weeks, but after you get past your pre-reqs and basics (that you can knock out no problem, ie maths, english, history, sciences etc). Because the specific college you are in (ie college of business, college of science, etc) only will offer a limited amount of the junior and senior level courses in the summer, and you might miss that class/section because of the guard. So instead of graduating in the Spring, you could graduate in the fall, after all you'd only be a semester behind.

I hope this doesn't discourage you. Your advisor should help you out on the junior/senior courses offered for your major in the summer. Congrats on joining the guard and good luck .

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