Aren’t West Point students offered admission without tuition in exchange for serving their country upon graduation ? So yes he could have construed that as a “scholarship” school.
Yes Really.
Everyone accepted to West Point gets a scholarship. Everyone accepted to a University of Illinois doctoral program (as I was 35 years ago) gets a scholarship. If the program chair at the U of Illinois told me I would get into their program, I would interpret that as a scholarship offer.
Technically, it is an encouragement to apply with the heavy assurance that a formal scholarship offer would be forthcoming. Let’s not crucify Dr. Carson with semantics.
Yes. Really. Anyone who has had a military recruitment pitch would say it was an offer of a scholarship. For anyone who has had a military recruitment pitch and then did not follow it to the military would always think that is what it was a scholarship especially if had been pitched by general Westmoreland. You trouble yourself much for semantics because of your dislike for Dr. Ben Carson?
I’m not a Carson fan but...
As far as I know, there is no tuition to go to West Point. Either you are accepted and you go for free in exchange for your service or you are not accepted.
If a high ranking member of the military said he could guarantee that Carson would be admitted then that is the same as saying, “You could go to our school for free”