My secretary’s son received a SMART scholarship and it worked out extremely well for him. There is definitely the issue that the department of defense can assign you where they want. But, he was assigned some very interesting work that he thought he would not be able to get in the private sector. He also said that once he received his security clearance he was significantly more marketable to the private sector that engages in government contracts since that security clearance takes months to complete and costs companies a lot of money. Finally, the DOD ended up sending him to grad school on their dime, and although he had to extend his commitment, he thought that he was earning a strong salary at the time and doing interesting work and increasing his marketability.