Understanding Grades and Academic Probation

If you have a bad semester and get a few bad grades, you may suddenly find yourself on "academic probation" or "academic warning."  What does that mean?  It sounds pretty bad, and many veterans wonder if they should stay in school or just drop out.  This article will help you understand what academic probation means, and how it affects your VA benefits, so that you can decide what you want to do next.

VA Reimbursement for National, Licensing, and Certification Exams

If you are a student veteran or beneficiary, you may have heard that veteran education benefits will reimburse you for certain exams, but do you know how the program works? It’s a little tricky, and for most students, the entitlement cost and hassle is more than the benefit is worth. Read on to learn more, and decide if this benefit is right for you….

 

Dealing with Academic Difficulties Due to PTSD and Other Challenges



Following a previous blog post, a reader asked about changing schools after a particularly bad couple of semesters dealing with PTSD.  The problem is common enough, and the answer is long enough, that it deserved its own post.

No matter how smart or talented or resilient you are, you are bound to experience a culture shock when you transition from military service to a college campus.  That transition often makes the first few terms on campus much harder than you expect them to be, which can lead to some serious academic issues.

To make things worse, the symptoms of anxiety, depression, grief, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and other serious issues usually start to show up during the second or third semester of school, compounding an already difficult transition.

If you're facing serious academic difficulty, and are thinking about dropping out or changing schools, this article will help you weigh your options.  Read on....

Calculating Entitlement Use

Once you start claiming VA educational benefits, you start burning them up.  Sooner or later, you may get concerned about how long those benefits will last, and how to manage what remains.  The key to budgeting your benefits is understanding how the VA calculates “entitlement use.”

All VA beneficiaries are awarded a set number of months of benefit entitlement, usually 36 months for most forms of the GI Bill, or 45 months for the Chapter 35 Survivors and Dependents’ educational assistance program.  VA Vocational Rehabilitation is a completely different type of program and the initial entitlement might vary, but the concept of “entitlement use” is the same.

It is important to realize that your entitlement is not based on calendar months, but rather payment months.  Thirty-six months of benefits is not the same as three years, because the 36 months do not have to be consecutive, and you don’t get paid for the breaks between terms or time that you take off.

That’s really important, so let me say it again: your entitlement is not based on calendar months.

Think of it like money in a bank.  If you go to school and claim your benefits, the VA will pay you out of that entitlement “account” until you stop attending or use it all up.  When you are on break between terms, or if you stop going to school for a while, the VA stops paying you, and you aren’t using up any of your entitlement.  Your remaining entitlement will just sit there until you are ready to start using it again, or until it expires (your “delimiting date”).

Taking a Break from Classes

No matter how carefully you plan ahead, there may come a point in your educational career when you decide that you need to take a break, for any number of valid reasons.  You may have been called back into active-duty service.  You may need time to take care of a family member, recover

from an illness or injury, buy a house, get married, or have a baby.  Sometimes people have to face an unexpected crisis or disaster, and need time to deal with it.  Perhaps you are in the process of changing your academic goal or career focus and need a little time to sort through your options.  Sometimes people get stressed out or overwhelmed, and just need a change of scenery for a while.  Whatever the reason, sometimes you may just need to take a break.

Before you do, make sure you understand all the rules and implications of your decision, to avoid any unpleasant surprises.  Here are a few things to check when you’re thinking of taking a semester or two off:

Surviving a Government Shutdown on VA Benefits

As of this writing, President Obama signed a bill to temporarily suspend the budget debate and get the federal government back to work.  However, even if the VA processors get back up and running immediately, there may still be a delay in benefit processing as they work to clear through the backlog that has built up over the past few weeks.  So, veterans would be well advised to expect a delay next month, and budget accordingly.

Whether a delay is attributed to a government shutdown, technological glitch, missing paperwork, a processing error, or other issue, it's important to have a back up plan to ensure that you can continue your studies while working though the delay.  Here are some resources to help you put your contingency plan together: