If you failed to register with Selective Service, Section 12(g) of the Military Selective Service Act allows non-registrants to receive benefits under specific conditions. As a veteran, or part-time National Guard or Reservist, you satisfy those conditions with your DD Form 214 showing the dates of your military service, or a current military ID card if still on active duty or a member of the National Guard and Reserves. These documents serve as evidence that your failure to register was not knowing and willful. 

A person who volunteered for military service would not deliberately defy a process that might result in military service. Therefore, men who served on full-time active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces should not be denied student financial aid, loans, or grants; vocational training under WIA; government employment; and security clearances, on the basis of their failure to register with Selective Service. 

As long as you have proof of your active duty military service, such as your DD 214, or current military ID card if still on active duty or a member of the National Guard or Reserves, your subsequent failure to register should not be a bar to any benefits or programs, contingent upon registration compliance, for which you are otherwise qualified.

NOTE to Student Financial Aid Officers –

“A student who served on active duty in the armed forces but who did not register before turning 26 is still eligible to receive FSA funds because it’s reasonable to conclude that he was not trying to avoid registering for the Selective Service. Ask the student to provide a copy of his DD Form 214, ‘Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty,’ showing military service in the armed forces—other than the reserve forces, the Delayed Entry pool, and the National Guard.”

[Student Financial Aid Handbook, Volume 1, Chapter 5, Page 1-70.]