Hannah Sinoway | July 9, 2015
Read: Service to School
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As a veteran transitioning from service to higher education, I found it difficult to figure out what the next steps were, and how to maximize my educational benefits. Many veterans find themselves in the same position, knowing they want to pursue an education yet not knowing where to begin. Service to School was founded to ease that transition, and provide clarity to the process. Our mission at Service to School is to help every transitioning military veteran gain admission to the very best undergraduate or graduate institution for them.
The organization was founded by veterans, for veterans, and is fully not for profit. We exist solely to share what we’ve learned about the process to fellow members of the veteran community, and we provide our services at no cost. The S2S core leadership group are alums at both the graduate and undergraduate schools of institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NYU, Columbia, and the University of Chicago.
We are currently receiving upwards of 40 enlisted veteran signups per month, with numbers climbing consistently. This past cycle we were able to help enlisted veterans gain admission to schools such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Amherst, Williams, the University of Iowa, the University of North Carolina, and Penn State. Our successes are growing every application cycle, and it is in changing the academic and career opportunities for vets that we draw inspiration to continue our work as volunteers.
Recently we launched a new initiative, VetLink, which will identify high achieving veterans and promote them as candidates to VetLink member schools. The primary aim of this new VetLink program is to increase veteran enrollment at our partner schools, leveraging our relationship with their admissions committees to ensure that extra attention is paid to VetLink applicants and their time in service.
VetLink partner schools consist of Yale, MIT, Cornell, the University of Chicago, Williams, and Smith. Applicants interested in being considered for VetLink should sign up the way all our S2S applicants do at: http://service2school.org/sign-up/
We welcome all veterans to sign up with us for help with their college applications, no matter which colleges they are interested in, no matter where they are in their journey in higher education.
IAVA is partnering with S2S to connect veterans with their services, this is a guest post by S2S staff member Mike Anderson.