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Review of Verifying Your Enrollment with the VA

Hi everyone and welcome (or welcome back) to the blog “Soldier to Student”. This blog is going to be my honest and personal review of the Veteran Affairs (VAs) education benefits enrollment verification system. So there is a little process after you receive your award letter and decide you are going to use the GI Bill but it is pretty straight forward. I reached out to my veterans center on campus and they had me fill out a form that let them request the benefits on my behalf from the VA. After that there may be a wait for the VA to get you enrolled, but after that you will begin to receive your benefits. There is a stipulation however, that you have to verify your enrollment monthly to continue to receive your benefits. There are different ways to verify your enrollment based on which benefit it is. For Post 9-11 GI Bill users you can verify via text, email, online through Ask VA, or by phone. For Montgomery GI Bill users (this is me), you can verify online using their tool or call. I have only called and so far have had very little to no issues at all. The first time I called to verify, I used the automated system and then directly after called and spoke to a representative to confirm it went through and that I did it right. The very kind representative checked and confirmed that it went through, and since then I have just continued to use this method. The only downside to this option is you do have to go through a semi-long call menu that has a couple of options that could be confusing the first time using it. Personally, I do not mind navigation through a call menu and once you do it the first time, all the times following that are easy. I know the VA gets a lot of negative reviews and opinions, mostly about how accessible they are, that being said their education benefits enrollment verification system is well set up. It is user friendly and as I mentioned before I found there to be little to no issues at all using it. I would be very interested to see if anyone had a different experience, so please leave a comment if you did or have any specific questions related to this topic!

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