The way voc rehab works is that they are all about numbers and stats. A guy taking 2 months to get a crane license, and successfully getting a job shows as 1 success. A guy taking 4 years and costing 500k to get a job shows as 1 success. The program is looking for a bunch of easy "wins" so that they can show how successful it is.
Some things to know about...
1) First, if you have a degree like biology (garbage degree for a job), you request to continue education for employment. Show how hard it is to get a job with your degree. Then your counselor has to deem your degree "Insufficient for employment".
2) They will then have you discuss what further education you need. usually they want you to at most get a masters degree or some crappy certification program. When I mentioned med school originally (i had already been accepted), they laughed at me.
3) They have you do a bunch of silly busy work to "help" you decide your career. They have you choose like 3 careers. I choose 3 different M.D. Subspecialties. They continued to not like this and tried to change my mind. I pushed on.
4) They then approve or deny your career goal. If they don't like it they will try to first say that your disability would not allow you to complete med school. I fought this by pointing out that there are plenty of careers in medicine that would fit someone with disabilities. For example, a radiologist can elect to be diagnostic only and sit down all day.
5) If they finally are like... "Fine, we are okay with your plan, but you simply don't have the amount of benefits left to even pursue a 4 year medical degree". This is utter BS. It's BS because all you need is a waiver for that. The same thing goes for tuition. If tuition is over the limit, you just need a waiver for that too.
6) If you a hint of trouble, write your congressmen and senators. While they don't really do to much, it does place a little pressure on them because now they are forced to respond to congressmen about your case.
Not everyone in the VA are bad, it really depends what office you go to. The one I started at was notorious for being poor to veterans. Currently I have a wonderful counselor and the program is beyond excellent. I feel like it is way to hard to get into, but it was worth the fight. Sadly, most vets don't even know about this program. It's sort of kept on the down-low.
Anyone with questions, feel free to PM me.