Senior Lyle Dietrich has always had an interest in the Navy. “It might sound a little stupid. When I was a little kid, I would watch a documentary on the Navy, the same one over and over again. So I began to love the Navy in that way,” he said. He began to take his future in it more seriously last summer after attending the United States Naval Academy (USNA) Summer Seminar.

Now, Dietrich is committed to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UMN-TC) to study neuroscience while also participating in Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a program that prepares full-time college students for military service.

Dietrich is one of many Edina High School seniors trading their summer breaks for early military training, dedicating themselves to their country.

While the military academies each enroll over 1,000 new admits each year, Army ROTC alone enrolls over 30,000 students a year and serves as the more popular route for college students. Students who graduate from the military academies and ROTC receive a bachelor’s degree and are commissioned as officers in the military with the rank of Second Lieutenant. Military academy graduates are obligated to serve five years in active duty. ROTC graduates generally serve four to five years.

The major difference between the two options is the structure of classes and work, in addition to the financial aid opportunities. The military academies cover the full cost of tuition, room and board, and healthcare, in addition to potential stipends. ROTC students may apply for a scholarship that can cover different levels of tuition for different numbers of years.

Senior Kennedy Robertson received an ROTC scholarship that will cover her full cost of attendance at Minnesota State University-Mankato, where she plans to pursue nursing and ROTC in the National Guard branch.

Robertson chose Mankato due to its proximity to a base, among other reasons. “It’s perfect. I don’t even have to travel that far,” she said. To complete her ROTC requirements, Robertson would need to train every weekend for four years and serve two years as an officer before beginning to work in a clinic or hospital as a nurse.

“They need a lot of nurses in the army,” Robertson said. “And I’m excited, because I feel like it’s gonna help me build a platform for my nursing career, so I can get into clinics and hospitals easier because I would have background knowledge of… [helping people] injured in combat [and handling] pressure.”

Dietrich did not receive the ROTC scholarship this year but plans to reapply for a three-year scholarship next year. His schedule differs from Robertson’s, as he will be completing daily physical training and classroom education at UMN-TC. Dietrich also explained that on Fridays, there are freshman activities that aren’t elaborated on. “I think that’s on purpose,” he said.

“What’s nice about ROTC is you can, in your first or second year, decide it’s not for you and pull the plug with no consequences,” Dietrich said. “I would like to still be a pilot, and I see myself spending the better part of a decade in the Navy after college.”

Senior Emma Keller is following a different path than her peers in her pursuit of service. Keller enlisted in the army while still in high school after she turned 17 and received her Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) in “68 Whiskey” or combat medicine shortly after.

Keller’s father graduated from West Point and was stationed as a Green Beret in Germany and Panama. “So I’ve grown up around it,” she said. “When I was exploring post-secondary options, I first wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to college or not… and I knew I definitely wanted to go [into the] Army in the military, because that’s what my dad did.”

“And so I met with a recruiter, and we talked a little bit, and it just piqued my interest the more that we discussed, and I decided to do Split [Training] Option (STO) so I could also get an education,” Keller continued. 

STO allows high school students to finish their high school education as they begin training and also consider ROTC while being enlisted in college. Keller plans to attend the University of Mississippi as an ROTC student. 

However, Keller’s experience will be different from other ROTC students because she already has a job in the army, and she is also signed to a ten-year contract that includes her four years of schooling and six years of active service afterward. Her application process was through the Concurrent Admissions Program, an application process through the Army, and allowed her to send a letter of intent to enroll at numerous colleges partnered with the Army. With the Montgomery GI Bill, Keller is also eligible for three years of full tuition for her service.

“I’m just doing ROTC so I can commission as an officer once I graduate school. So I don’t have to do any of the training that the rest of the ROTC students do, because I will already have done that when I enlist,” she said.

Knowing that she wanted to have a service job, either in law enforcement or healthcare, Keller found that combat medicine synthesized those two options into a different career. She begins her basic training this summer. “To prepare for basic training, I work out every day, so that’s been a really big goal for me, is just to meet the physical standards before I go,” she said. “And then once I’m there, the psychological part of it, I think will be probably the biggest challenge, because that’s not something I can really prepare for.”

Keller is nervous about the limited outside contact and one phone call a week regulations during training. “But I think that kind of change is something that some people need in their lives because it creates a lot of discipline, and I think that’s really important, especially with people nowadays who can be reliant on their phones and just not getting as much social activity as they need,” she said. 

Keller’s MOS will change upon graduation. “My hope would be to be a field artillery officer and then eventually work my way up,” she said.

At the Summer Seminar, Howard had to learn how to belly-crawl through trenches. Courtesy of Michael Howard.

Most of the seniors recommend that any student interested in pursuing a military opportunity after graduation fully understand if it is their passion before applying to military academies or ROTC programs or enlisting.

“If I didn’t have a ‘why,’ like, a true why… I probably would have just said it and never done it,” Robertson said.

For Howard, his “why” was “kind of a humility thing.”

“Right now, I’m [at] the point where everyone’s congratulating me and it’s exciting, but once you get there, everyone’s in the same boat, and it’s like you’re doing it not for yourself, but for others,” Howard said.

Dietrich encourages students to apply for a tour or a summer program at an academy to gauge what would work best for them. “If you’re like me and you love the military aspect, but you want a different life, different major, then ROTC is your way,” he said. “It also can be a good determinant of if you don’t like the military aspect, then you tried it and you don’t like it, and you don’t have to pursue that path.”

For those interested in enlistment, Keller suggests giving local recruiting centers a call. “Especially at bigger high schools like Edina, or Minnetonka, or Wayzata, it can be really hard sometimes to make a post-secondary choice, because not everybody thinks college is the best fit for them, or even if they do, maybe there’s another option that they want to explore while they’re in college,” she said.

Additionally, Keller believes that joining the military not only opens up new opportunities for her, but allows her to connect with a diverse range of people. “There can be a lot of opinions about [serving] because of certain political views that [people] associate with being in the military,” she said. “But… I mean, already, I have met people who are completely different from me, people who are very similar to me, people with backgrounds and stories that you would not believe that join the military.”

“There are so many more options than just joining active service and basically being tied to the US government because that’s not really what it is,” Keller continued. “It’s a job that you know that you would go in for every day, just like any other job, just it requires more training and more physical and mental grit.”