Is it better for me to go Resesves or Active duty in the Army if I want to get a degree in Criminal Justice?

Answer 1

A bit of advice- Most good jobs in CJ don't like people to have a CJ degree.. They would rather them to have other degrees... I would suggest that you start active and go reserves, it might let you have more experience and then you can experience ARMY life fully before you become a reserverist...

Answer 2

I'd agree with that statement that CJ degrees are not prefered. History, polysci, sociology, etc are all better. That's statement is by the way true of people wanting to go to law school as well.

Far as Active versus reserve, if your objective is a degree, don't go active. The tuition assistance benefit is exactly the same for active an reserve: 4500/yr. Only in the reserves you can actually use it, while on active duty you don't have much time and schedules don't work well with school.

The best option for you is national guard. There's a couple reasons I'll tell you for that. First is in addition to that same 4500/yr TA, you also get state benefits (varries state to state, mine is an additional 4500, so 9k per year). The second reason is there are more MP units in the guard and you get a lot of law enforcement training related to your state mission where you are not limited by posse commitatus. Plus there's a real nice bonus. If you like the idea of a couple years active duty to start and then coming to a reserve component so you can go to school, then the guard has a new program where you can do just that, and the bonuses are insane - up to $60k depending on the job, not sure of the exact numbers for MP. If you like it you can become an officer as well.

Far as jobs, rather than MP, you might look at something like Military Intelligence. That requires a Top Secret clearance rather than just secret like everyone else has. That clearance can help you more than the experience in getting a lot of jobs, like federal agents and such. Good Luck, and please feel free to msg me if you want some more information.

Answer 3

Take the test, see if you qualify for MP School. Don't enlist unless you get it in writing. Go active. I have met several guys in Law enforcement that were MPs, SP, AP or CID before being a cop or FBI agent.

SSG US Army 73-82

Answer 4

Depends on how you want to go about it, if that's going to school full time and working part-time (probably getting deployed) or working full time and going to school part time (almost certainly getting deployed). Ask your local Army recruiter what sort of tuition assistance and other educational programs are available to you in both the Reserves and Active service.