There are a few "boards" that release scholarships, a lot like early action decisions for colleges. But the entire process is complete Feb HS senior year.
There is a bit of a loop that takes place where a student can gets a scholarship award on an early "board" and not be admitted to the school (the military awards the scholarship and the school the attendance) and that can run into the spring of HS senior year to get sorted... Again this process has changed a few times over the years but essentially it runs a couple months ahead of college applications.
The standard commitment is 4 years active duty military service followed by 2-4 years reserve (that can be active or inactive.) There are situations where the commitment is longer:
- you want to fly for instance
- you choose a certain specialty such as military intelligence and the Army guarantees the area (instead of infantry for instance) and you pick up a couple more years active duty
The student can also apply for a reserve or national guard commission and those are 8 years in length. I have one that took this option so that he could pursue medicine and did not want to wait until after active duty.
The Army is not for everyone but our family has had some positive outcomes/ good learning/ and a nice dose of what it is like to be with a different cross section of the US.