From the Military to College
First published on April 11, 2016
Working on your transition from the military to college education? Lets cover some essential resources:
JST
The Joint Service Transcript replaced the AARTS and SMART a few years ago as the official ACE-approved document containing your training and experience with college credit recommendations. The unofficial transcript lists your residential courses (ie. Airborne school), SSD (and presumably other branches’ equivalents to NCOES), your job title(s), and ACE credit recommendations. The summary file simply shows ACE-evaluated courses with credit recommendations. Neither the unofficial transcript or summary will list much online training, likely only Joint Knowledge Online (JKO) and other joint service training. You can also request an official transcript be e-mailed to your college for free.
VMET
The Verification of Military Experience and Training is another important document to share with a college while looking for transfer credits. The VMET displays everything from your JST but adds online courses from Skillport and ATRRS/ALMS. Don’t be surprised if your VMET is over twenty pages long. Even Ammo 67 and similar courses are listed. Keep in mind that the VMET is only updated once a fiscal quarter, but it can add up to twenty credit hours to your degree plan. Even if it only counts toward electives, #AllCreditHoursMatter.
GI Bill Comparison Tool
The GI Bill Comparison Tool is THE tool for figuring out what your GI Bill will get you at a specific school. There are many more links I’d recommend you use to get a better overall understanding of the school’s statistics and reputation, but this will give you a lot of important info regarding your benefits in a format that’s easy to grasp. It lists details such as fees, housing allowance, but also tells you how committed the school is to helping Veterans. Yellow Ribbon? Student Veteran Group? VetSuccess? 8 Keys to Veteran Success?
There’s also Service2School and College Scorecard.
LinkedIn & Lynda
LinkedIn offers Veterans an one year free premium job seeker account to help you get more attention from employers and see how you compare to other job seekers. You can also apply for one year of free access to an entire collection of video tutorials and training on Lynda.com. The content spans from technical skills to business tools for professional development.
SFL-TAP Training
The Soldier for Life – Transition Assistance Program website lists eight online courses you can take online via JKO meant to provide more guidance and information to help with your transition. The courses cover interview tips, skills development, and family concerns. You may prefer to attend one or some of the in-classroom courses for the ITP (Individual Transition Plan) instead (if that’s still an option) but you can complete the JKO courses anytime. Also, if you login to JKO and search the title keyword “TGPS”, which stands for Transition Goals, Plans, Success, you will find courses that cover the same material as those classroom ITP courses – technical training, higher education, employment, entrepreneurship, finances, employment, and VA Benefits. Or you can select the “Community” tab and download the PDF files from the “Transition GPS” link. Because choices.
Justice Outreach
Veterans Justice Outreach and Justice for Vets are valuable resources regarding criminal justice relating to PTSD, substance abuse, TBI, and similar issues.
RallyPoint
Rallypoint . . . Because Reasons including resources and networking.
Tags: military
