When Ryan Pavel didn’t get accepted to his college of choice at 17 years old, a Marine Corps recruiter redirected his life’s path.

“Instead of licking my wounds and just staying at home, I’m gonna go do something else,” Pavel thought at the time.

He went on to serve as a linguist and deploy twice to Iraq. His time as a Marine was formative in shaping his world view, and he knew that once he separated, he wanted to return to school “with a lot more focus, a lot more drive,” he said.

He did an online search for “Arabic, veterans and college,” a non-strategy he doesn’t recommend, but that led him to apply to the University of Michigan. His application was rejected.

“The difference was that, at that point, I had a lot more drive and I had grown,” Pavel said. “And so I called the admissions office.”

Pavel was told something simple but important: “You have to show you can be a good student.” With that, he took community college classes on base and was conditionally accepted to Michigan, where he eventually earned his bachelor’s degree. Later, he earned his law degree from the University of Virginia.

Turns out, he was a good student.

Now, as the CEO of the nonprofit Warrior-Scholar Project, Pavel uses the fails and wins of his educational journey to equip enlisted service members and veterans for success in higher education and beyond.

Warrior-Scholar Project’s flagship academic programs place service members and veterans on college campuses for intensive, one-week boot camps in one of three tracks: college readiness, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and business.

Warrior-Scholar Project has served around 2,800 veterans through these boot camps and other workshops, and nearly 90% of boot camp alumni have completed or are on track to earn bachelor’s degrees, like Marine veteran Paul Donato.

Donato, a DAV member, attended two back-to-back Warrior-Scholar boot camps in 2022: one in college readiness at Harvard University and one in STEM at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Motivated to enlist after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Donato served on active duty from 2008 to 2013 and in the Marine Reserve until 2016. He attended community college as a reservist, but Donato said he lacked direction, and the college experience didn’t meet his expectations. He soon unenrolled and started working in manufacturing.

The next time he got the higher-ed bug, he discovered Warrior-Scholar Project. Unsure if he belonged in college, Donato said he was excited to be part of a program that understood the veteran experience.

What followed was a week of long, rigorous days of learning, discussion and assignments alongside like-minded people—like college.

“We’re all there to be the best version of ourselves,” Donato said. “And I think everybody came out of the program extremely hungry and eager to just learn.”

Tom Nelligan, a former Army cryptologic linguist, is entering his junior year at Harvard University. Nelligan attended a Warrior-Scholar Project boot camp in 2022 while he was still on active duty. He knew he wanted to go to school after service, and at the time, he was particularly interested in Georgetown University, which is where the boot camp was held.

“It really just gives you the confidence to say that, yeah, I do belong in these places and these are not too far out of reach for me,” Nelligan said. “It really gives you that agency of your own, kind of like destiny in a lot of ways, which is just remarkable.”

In addition to Harvard and MIT, Warrior-Scholar also partners with Brown University, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan State and more.

Donato said he was also introduced to other resources supporting veterans, including DAV. DAV is partnering with Warrior-Scholar Project to deliver benefits webinars to its boot camp attendees and alumni, ensuring more veterans know about the benefits they’ve earned through service and how to access them.

The boot camps don’t offer college credits, but that’s not the point, Pavel said. The goal is to help service members and veterans envision what higher ed is really like and how it fits into their goals and to equip them for the transition into college or university.

After his two boot camps, Donato—who grew up in an immigrant household where work was prioritized over education—said he knew he wanted to return to school and had the confidence to believe that he could do anything.

Donato is now a sophomore at LaGuardia Community College majoring in applied math. He hopes to transfer to Princeton University and eventually work in equity research, providing financial analysis and recommendations to investors.

The program is gearing up for its next series of boot camps, held in summer. Visit warrior-scholar.org to learn more and start the application process.