The following dialog is for questions 13 to 16.

Ambrose: When you were very small, did you have any interest in General William Mitchell's trial?

Armstrong: I don't recall. I knew the name Billy Mitchell and I knew about his demonstration of the effectiveness of air power, but I' don't recall things about his trial. l may have known, but I don't remember.

Ambrose: You were a sophomore at high school when World War II ended, weren't you?

Armstrong: That's approximately----let's see. Yes, I was between my sophomore and junior year.

Ambrose: The assumption among young men at that time was, "As soon as I graduate or as soon as I get to be eighteen, I'm going into the service." But then the war ended when you were fifteen. So you completed the high school without any ''I'm going to enlist" kind of feeling.

Armstrong: That's correct. We had a few people in our school who had either lied about their age or were a little older than the class, who had gone into the service, and came back and finished high school after the war was over. We had several of those fellows in our school, but the youngest of those would probably be two years older than I was.

Ambrose: You got a Navy scholarship to Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, immediately after graduating from high school, I gather.

Armstrong:I believe that the test for what was called the Hollaway Plan, the Naval Aviation College Program or Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), was administered nationwide while I was still in high school, probably shortly before graduation, although I cannot remember the precise date. It was early enough so that we could pick a school. If we were accepted into this program, we could pick any accredited school in the nation to attend.

(Adopted from: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/dfault/filesi 62281 main_armstrong_oralhistory.pdf (July 25, 2019))

What advantage did Armstrong get from the Navy scholarship?