Reply to West Point or Air Force or Navy academies? Anyone with experiences to share?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "West Point or Air Force or Navy academies? Anyone with experiences to share? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My son is in Air Force ROTC. He is a freshman and it has been a good experience for him. Made most of his friends through AFROTC. He is not on scholarship. Students can apply for a (very competitive) scholarship freshman year, but if they don't get that, they can still join (they do get a few perks even without the scholarship, like selecting courses first each semester). Summer after sophomore year, they go through basic training, and if they get through that, they then officially commit to service and receive a scholarship ($18,000 year) for the remaining 2 years of school, plus a small stipend (I can't remember how much but maybe $400 a month?). [b]It is a serious time commitment and playing a sport on top of that would be a really serious time commitment.[/b] My son looked at doing Corps of Cadets at VT and that seemed more extreme than he wanted so he went with ROTC. If your DC does ROTC I'd recommend making sure the detachment is located on campus (one detachment may serve several nearby schools, I think my son's AFROTC detachment has members from 5 colleges, but his campus is the home base, and where most of the activities occur).

My friend's son graduated USMA and is now in a top medical school. It is a great path because the military pays for medical school but be aware that they also only allow so many kids from each graduating class to choose to go to medical school, so the ability to apply is gated in some way.[/quote]

Thanks for the response. Can you say a little more about the time commitment during the school year? I’ve heard mixed things. Relatives told me it’s just a fairly easy class a semester and then obviously time in the summer for boot camp. Is there a lot more than that during the school year? If ds did ROTC, he would not do a D1 school for his sport. He’d go to a D3 school with ROTC.  The sports is a must, so we have to find a way to balance that as ds is dead set on continuing in college (and admittedly that’s an admission hook for him)[/quote]

DP, but I was on Army ROTC scholarship.  I think it would doable with a D3 sport.  Especially freshman and sophomore year, when the ROTC requirements aren’t as heavy.  There is a class one day per week and a lab once per week.   Neither are academic rigorous, but you do need to attend and participate.  Then there is physical training that happens 3 mornings a week.  If you are on scholarship, this is mandatory, however, I do think they would work with a student athlete.  While you could miss every PT session, because it is part of your larger training/testing, I think it could be adjusted. There are very few weekend requirements, maybe once in fall, once in spring. Otherwise weekend activity and training is typically optional and part of rotc subset clubs.  Junior year involves more time commitment because you are training for your summer evaluations.  Not a huge amount more, but they will be less likely to let a student skip things junior year and maybe an extra weekend training.  Then the summer before junior and senior year you go to a “advanced leadership course” where you are given various leadership roles and evaluated.  That is about a month long.  It is NOT basic training. Senior year you are given a leadership role within ROTC. Some roles are a large time commitment, some aren’t.  Students that have difficult schedules/majors are typically given the lighter roles.

All in all, ROTC is ran by real people and they have the ability to be quite flexible, if they find it in their best interest.  I had a very difficult major, but also an in demand future army role- and I was given a lot of flexibility.  I imagine they would extend the same to a student athlete if they felt he/she was a great candidate and would serve the army well. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics