My Army HPSP Experience
This website is for those who are going through, or who are at least interested in, the Army's Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP).
The description of this program offered by the Army's HPSP website and by healthcare recruiters, while technically accurate, is uncomfortably vague. This makes sense. Everyone's military experience will be different, so the Army does not want to make promises that it can not keep. I have made this website to share my experience with you and to fill in the blanks of your HPSP picture. Your results will likely vary, but I hope I can answer some of your fundamental questions I, too, struggled with earlier on in the HPSP process.
I have always been intrigued by the aura of strength and value of selflessness displayed by the armed forces. I had always excelled in school so I thought that I could achieve more than the military could offer. I did not know how flawed this perspective was. While going through the pre-med motions in college, I discovered the HPSP and I was instantly hooked. This was my chance to explore both my interest in medicine and the armed forces, not get buried in debt, and to help those who fight to help us all. I sat on this decision from my junior year of college until the Spring semester of my Masters of Public Health program. Confident I was making the right choice, I contacted a recruiter in March of 2015 and was sworn in as a Second Lieutenant that June.
I began medical school in the Fall of 2015 and my journey is underway! This website will keep track of my progress through my HPSP mission for both your reference and my own. I promise to be both honest and fair in my descriptions. I have organized this site to highlight each aspect of the program in the different pages. I will keep this website as up-to-date as possible and will attempt to answer all of your questions to the best of my ability.
I hope you enjoy this website and that it appropriately guides your decision to join, or your continued journey of, the Health Professions Scholarship Program. You may reach me using the "Contact" page and I will try to get back to you in a reasonable amount of time.
*The other military branches have analogous programs within their respective HPSPs, so this reference may give you a general idea of what to expect.