Air Force ROTC questions

College Life
1

I’m interested in Air Force ROTC but I have a few questions.

  1. If I do it, do I have a smaller choice of majors. I would like to major in international relations. If I do AFROTC, is that still possible?

  2. Can I still study abroad if I do AFROTC?

  3. Can I be offered a scholarship as a freshman?

  4. How much control do I have over what I would end up doing in the military or where I would end up being stationed?

  5. Would this help me if I ever wanted to go to grad school for international relations?

THANKS

2
  1. Yes. AFROTC allows all sorts of majors but STEM majors tend to help for SFT which is summer field training. After 2 years of AFROTC, you compete and if you are not selected to go to SFT in Alabama, you will be disenrolled.
  2. Yes. You just take a semester off ROTC and take AS class online. Talk to cadre first.
  3. Yes. It's harder because of limited money but you have freshman and sophomore year to win a 4/3 year scholarship.
  4. Just do well. Going Active Duty means doing whatever the Air Force wants you to do. If you can't own up to this, then you might want to reconsider.
  5. You can get grad school tuition assistance.
3

DefineGravity already answered all of these questions excellently.

One addition is that if you are not on scholarship you can major in whatever you want, but if you want to compete for a scholarship after your freshman year the AFROTC has some restrictions on their scholarships. Most scholarships (80%) go to “technical majors”, which are a select group of STEM majors. The second-largest chunk of scholarships go to foreign language majors - but not just any foreign languages. The Air Force wants people who study critical languages - Arabic, Indonesian, Punjabi, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, etc. Very, very few non-technical, non-foreign language scholarships are given out.

You can learn more [url=<a href=“https://www.afrotc.com/scholarships/schools%5Dhere%5B/url”>https://www.afrotc.com/scholarships/schools]here[/url]. If you are interested in a foreign language major, that website also has a list of schools that have especially good foreign language majors in each of the languages the AF wants, as well as AFROTC detachments. (Since you are interested in international relations, consider instead majoring in a foreign language and minoring in international relations. And if you do choose an IR major, make sure you choose a critical language as your language study, and stick with it for four years. Then you are much more likely to be placed in a role that allows you to use your IR skills.)

As for #4, you can always express a preference, but the needs of the Air Force come first. That’s in everything. The better you do, though, the more options you’ll have. (My husband was enlisted AF and got his first choice AFSC and duty station because of his top scores and performance in basic and his training school.)

And yes, ROTC plus service in the Air Force (especially if your career is related to IR) can make an excellent impression on graduate schools for IR. Many prior military attend graduate school in this field.