Thin scars mark a portion of Michael McPherson's face, as if someone slid an ATM card across his cheekbone. But taking a little shrapnel to the face is something the 19-year-old shrugs off.

McPherson joined the Army Reserve three years ago. He spent most of his time in Iraq where he worked in road clearance, locating improvised explosive devices.

"We didn't blow them all up," he says. "Some we would bring back to intelligence to find out who made them."

McPherson came home last September and enrolled at SUNY Brockport, where he says he's getting a chance to live a whole new life. But he still has nightmares about his time in Iraq.

"I try to keep that part of my life to myself," he says.

Fellow students either put him on a pedestal, he says, or they tell him that what he did was morally wrong.

"They always ask the same old question, ‘Did you kill anybody?'" he says. "But I don't go into that because they don't understand."

There are more than one-million veterans living in New York, says Andy Davis, a spokesman with the state's Division of Veteran Affairs. And as of 2008, he says, at least 15,000 of them had enrolled in college after tours of duty in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, wars that the US has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for the better part of this decade.

McPherson is one of about 2,500 veterans from the Rochester region going to college.

And this is only the first wave. Men and women leaving the service and reintegrating to civilian life are expected to swell college campuses nationwide, making up as much as 20 percent of the nationwide student population during the next five years. Their exact numbers are unknown because the VA only tracks those students who identify themselves as servicemen and servicewomen. It doesn't track soldiers who are attending college, but aren't using GI assistance to pay for tuition.

Many veterans face serious challenges as students. They are usually older than their classmates; some are married and raising children. And while many of their fellow students were spending their last year of high school at football games and proms, the student-veterans may have been rebuilding war-torn infrastructure or dodging roadside bomb blasts.

John Celentano has those precision good looks you see in military recruitment ads, and he stares intensely when he speaks. He joined the service when he was 19 as a CB, sort of a Navy acronym for Sea Bees - men and women who usually work on land in construction battalions.

"We were never on ships," he says. "We flew everywhere. We would do construction, work with weapons, and set up our own defense."

Now a student at Monroe Community College, Celentano is studying for a career in physical education and works as a personal trainer. He says that he hopes to someday open a gym. He's in great physical shape and admits to being a little rigid about nutrition.

"I originally wanted to play football at SUNY Brockport or Cortland," he says. "But then 9/11 happened and I wanted to serve my country."

Celentano, who joined the Navy shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says that he knew he wanted to go to college someday, but he needed help with tuition. Even though tuition-assistance was his initial attraction to the military, he credits his service with helping him become a responsible adult.

"Military service makes you mature very quickly," he says. "I don't regret my decision."

Coming from a military family, Celentano is sensitive to criticism of veterans and of the Iraq War. His father was a Navy man and both of his grandfathers served in World War II.

Celentano says that he didn't know what to expect on a college campus after hearing stories of how Vietnam War veterans were treated. Public attitudes toward the Iraq War are a concern that a lot of young veterans share.

But the public has generally directed its anger about the Iraq War at the Bush Administration; not the military. With better support programs, veterans entering college today find a much different campus atmosphere than veterans of the Vietnam era.

There are about 500 veterans enrolled in MCC, says Patrick Taricone, a professor and student counselor with the college. MCC, like many community colleges, offers veterans a local opportunity to explore their educational interests and to brush-up academically.

The MCC Veterans Club caters to student-veterans, mostly ensuring that they experience a sense of belonging to the college community. The group holds weekly meetings, and weekly counseling sessions are available through Rochester's Veterans Outreach Center.

"Veterans are very different from most students," Taricone says. "They tend to keep to themselves. They don't have a lot in common with their peers."

Veterans have a wide range of experiences; some do return home unscathed, both physically and emotionally, Taricone says.

"But some of these soldiers have gone through two and three tours," he says. "Some have been traumatized. And the separation has affected their relationships with their spouses, their children, and friends."

MCC helps veterans reintegrate into a home life and to obtain an education.

"Starting off to college when a lot of men and women their age are finished and have jobs can be stressful." Taricone says. "So we work on both."

Neither McPherson nor Celentano have suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or other long-term physical disabilities as a result of their service, but they say that they know vets who have returned with problems.

"Oh, yeah. I've seen many a guy get a ‘Dear John' letter," McPherson says. "It seemed like for the guys who left girlfriends behind, it wouldn't take more than three months. Some take it really hard."

MCC is coordinating a summer camp for children of parents who are deployed. And the college is planning a conference concerning veterans on Saturday, August 22, and Sunday, August 23. The first day of the conference is aimed at medical and mental health professionals who work with veterans, helping to provide them with information on local and government resources available to support veterans.

The second day is to provide support for family members and friends of veterans.

A dramatic change in the GI Bill is the main reason that colleges are seeing a steady increase in the number of veterans applying for admission.

Congress passed the GI Bill for the 21st Century in June 2008 to accommodate the educational needs of the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The peacetime GI education benefit passed after Vietnam paid 70 percent of the tuition for a public college and 30 percent for a private school. The 21st Century Bill funds full four-year scholarships for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who serve for three or more years. The benefit covers the cost of tuition and books for public institutions, and it matches scholarships from private colleges, which tend to be more expensive.

Nazareth College was one of the first private colleges in the country to participate in the Yellow Ribbon Program. By offering veterans scholarships worth $7,500 per year, which are then matched by the federal government, attendance is virtually tuition-free. The college's School of Health and Human Services - consisting of physical therapy, arts therapy, nursing, and social work - coordinates its services for vets with the Veterans Outreach Center.

The majority of veterans rely entirely on the GI Bill's benefits to attend college. But they'll frequently say that money for college was not their first reason for joining the military. Many say they wanted to serve their country, while others joined because they didn't know what they wanted to do after graduating from high school.

John Park joined the Navy in 2004 because he wanted to get away from home and "to see the world."

As a cook on a frigate - smaller vessels that are usually used for escort and patrol - Park says that he got to explore the culinary field long enough to know it wasn't the career for him. And he learned that he didn't like being out at sea on a ship.

Park left the Navy in 2008 and briefly enrolled in a community college before transferring to the University of Rochester, where he is majoring in economics.

"To me, learning is the most valuable thing I can do for myself," Park says. "Now I know exactly what I want to do."

Park, 25, is drawn to statistics and says that he wants to become an actuary. If he had pursued college right after high school, he says that he wouldn't have done well. He credits the military's emphasis on structure with helping to focus his mind on specific goals.

"Before, I would have partied all night," he says. "Now I'll put studying first."

He still wakes up early in the morning, calls the bathroom ‘the head,' and is punctual for every appointment. They are Navy habits that Park says he'll probably always have.

Veterans have to apply and get accepted into college, just like everyone else; military service alone doesn't guarantee acceptance. But many of these veterans, though certainly not all, were not great students in high school.

Once they get into college, many have to learn for the first time how to be students.

"I fully appreciate that they have had a reorientation of their motivation," says Jonathan Burdick, the University of Rochester's dean of admissions. "I can get around some of the shortcomings they might have had in high school. What I can't get around is whether they are able to sit next to our students on day one, and be ready to meet our high academic standards face to face."

The UR participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, too, and there are 11 veterans on its campus. Burdick says that he hopes to get that number up to 100 soon.

"The experience vets have offers all of us a different perspective," Burdick says. "To me, it's an advantage, a blessing that we are not in a bubble, that we are not removed from the reality of the world."

Tell that to Krista Englert. Now 35, she's been in the Army Reserve for seven years. She's been deployed to Iraq twice, and could be sent back for a third tour. Englert, who looks younger than her age, is a student at SUNY Brockport. She says that she gets a little impatient with students who take the many opportunities they have for granted, especially after meeting Iraqi men and women who risk their lives trying to build a new country.

"Like some students will be in the back of the room talking while the professor is talking, and I just think it's disrespectful," Englert says. "Little things like that kind of irk me."

She says that it's hard to listen to young people who have never left Monroe County voice such strong opinions about the world.

"I listen to that and go, ‘O.K., whatever,'" she says. "I've lived on my own. I'm married. I've lived in a few different states, and I've had to make my own way in life. Probably that's why I didn't bitch very much through basic training about the living conditions. It's like it's rent-free, food is free, and the gym membership is free. It's not so bad if you've ever been at a point in your life when you didn't have a pot to piss in."

Englert says that she's been called a baby-killer and a pawn of the f-‘d up Bush agenda. But students have also thanked her for her service.

"It means a lot; it really does," she says. "But I was always told that your only act of bravery is when you sign your enlisting papers. Everything after that is just in the line of duty."

Englert's husband is also in the Army Reserve and was deployed to Afghanistan. He's home now and works in the city.

"He's been there, so he knows the kind of stress you can be under," she says.

Englert, who has a bachelor's degree in economics, hoped to pursue a career with the United Nations. When that didn't work out, she joined a voluntary fire department and became an EMT, and that sparked her interest in nursing.

Englert was able to train in the medic and licensed practical nurse programs in the Army, and she got a lot of hands-on experience. But she's been frustrated, she says, because that experience hasn't been as helpful in the civilian world as she expected.

"The medic and LPN programs have a wider scope of practice in the Army," she says. "There are a lot of procedures you get to do as either a medic or LPN in the Army that you don't get to do in civilian life, even as a registered nurse."

In addition to attending SUNY Brockport, Englert is an LPN at Highland Living Center, where she works with elderly patients who are suffering from dementia and-or orthopedic problems.

She likes to call college "one facet of my complicated journey."

Many of the veterans are in their mid-20's, going to college alongside 18 and 19-year olds. If just those few years make a difference in terms of maturity, Englert says, imagine being a student-veteran in your 30's.

"When I went to college, there wasn't an Internet," she says. "Everything was done using books. I talk about going to the library and using the card catalog, and everybody looks at me like, ‘What the hell is that?'"