Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post 9-11 GI Bill vs. Montgomery GI Bill

Hi everyone and welcome (or welcome back) to the blog “Soldier to Student”. In this post I am going to compare the Post 9-11 GI Bill with the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB). Both of these are federal education grants offered to qualifying veterans. To qualify for the Post-9/11 GI Bill you must have started your service on or after September 11, 2001, and one of these must be true: you served for at least 90 days total on active duty, you served for at least 30 days on active duty (without a break) and were honorably discharged with a service-connected disability, or you received a Purple Heart. To qualify for the MGIB, the required service start date depends on certain factors, like when you served on active duty and whether your military pay decreased. Y ou must have served between 2 and 4 years. The minimum amount of time you must have served depends on other factors. Both benefits provide 36 months of coverage but note, in certain situations, you may be eligible for more than 1 educa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four Grants that Could Apply to You

Hi everyone and welcome to the blog ‘Soldier to Student”. This blog is going to cover the four educational grants you may or may not be eligible for. Since these grants are very complex, this post will be more of a broad overview with future posts going more into depth on individual grants. These grants include the Post 9-11 GI Bill, the Montgomery GI Bill, the Illinois Veterans Grant, and the Illinois National Guard Grant. The Post 9-11 GI Bill (PGIB or Chapter 33): This is a federal grant given to those who have served on active duty or in the Selected Reserve for 90 or more days after Sep. 10, 2001. The payment rate depends on how much active-duty time or federal service a member has. What it can pay may include… Tuition and fees Money for housing  Money for books and supplies Money to help you move from a rural area to go to school      Below I am going to link the official page for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs  which will include a more in-depth...
Post a Comment
Read more

What If the Illinois Veterans Grant Went Away?

Hi everyone and welcome (or welcome back) to the blog “Soldier to Student”. In this post I want to talk about what would happen if the Illinois Veterans Grant went away. Now I just want to preface this by saying this is all hypothetical and I am only bringing this up because it would be interesting to analyze the impacts it would have. Unfortunately I was unable to find the number of veterans using this grant, which I was going to use to illustrate the number of veterans who would be affected, but regardless of how many it affects I am going to talk about what we would see. First of all, veterans would receive no state funding. The Illinois Veterans Grant pays tuition and mandatory fees at all Illinois state-supported colleges, universities and community colleges for veterans who served a minimum of two years and enlisted from and returned to Illinois. I personally use this grant and losing this money would mean solely relying on federal funding for school. Right now since I am using t...
Post a Comment
Read more