No, but they should make you not give a rats ass about "rep."
Hey, just trying to keep up with the 17-year old future jet pilots with about 300 rep points. My word has to be at least as good as theirs.
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Accelerated Training
- Thread starter Python
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Hey, just trying to keep up with the 17-year old future jet pilots with about 300 rep points. My word has to be at least as good as theirs.
has anyone done the accelerated course through vt-27 or 28?
Alright, I know this is an old thread but someone revived it and I have almost as much time on my hands as Master does these days so here goes.
Quoting directly from the MPTS Master Curriculum Guide.
g. Grade Calculation
(1) Phase Aggregate Score (PAS). The calculation for the PAS is as follows:
From a population of previous students
PAS=.9[50+10(S-M1)/S1] + .1[50+10(M2-TGI)/S2]
S – Student’s Score: Sum of the student’s grades for gradable maneuvers in the aircraft and the simulator divided by the sum of the MIF for those maneuvers. (Grade/MIF)
M1 – Average Score
M2 – Average of Total Graded Items (TGI)
S1 – Standard Deviation Score
S2 – Standard Deviation of TGI
Once the population has been determined for the given month, a student’s AS can be calculated at any time during the month by using the formula, given the Student’s Score and the number of graded items.
h. Accelerated Students. Students with prior flight time, excluding IFS or IFS equivalent flight time, shall be considered accelerated. During the accelerated period, the student may progress to the next block of training once MIF is met within the current block of training. The following criteria will be used as a guideline to decide how long the student will be accelerated:
Private pilot license: C4000-C4390
Instrument rating: C4000-C4390
Squadron commanding officers have the authority to tailor the student’s accelerated syllabus based on the student’s past
If you look at the score formula the whole TGI thing only impacts 10% of your overall NSS. It's not really much of an advantage, if any. Basically your NSS gets adjusted by one point up or down for however many standard deviations you are from the mean number of TGI. Yes it does mean that if you are accelerated at the end your NSS may go up from what it was projected to be. This is because you got to skip flights. However it's not that big of an advantage because if you look at the flights you are missing out on it's almost always the flights where MIF is very low. As a result that other 90% side of the score equation isn't as high as it could have been so you kind of need that bump to balance it out.
Also, when you are accelerated you have to accomplish the same maneuvers with less practice so while you have fewer flights, you have to do more maneuvers (so more graded items) in each flight. Also, in the RI sims for Corpus non-accelerated kids knew exactly what they were doing on each sim. I don't want to say canned, but they were very scripted to say the least. Accelerated kids, however, had to show up ready for anything as their chimera of an event had to accomplish the same things in half the time and was often thrown together ad hoc by the instructor in the briefing space. Granted, since I wasn't accelerated I am getting that second hand, but I heard that from more than a few accelerated guys. In the end it's not some insane advantage and really I think it is just a way to balance out the fact that you aren't getting as many hops where MIF is ridiculously low.
I wasn't accelerated and I did well. My roommate was accelerated and he did well too. From my limited experience I would venture to guess that the reason a student does well has much more to do with his skill and work ethic than whether he was accelerated or not. Just my two cents.
Oh and a third cent. A 10 minute class on NSS equation at API and a 5 minute refresher in primary would do wonders to cut down on bad gouge about NSS that gets circulated by students and instructors alike.
Quoting directly from the MPTS Master Curriculum Guide.
g. Grade Calculation
(1) Phase Aggregate Score (PAS). The calculation for the PAS is as follows:
From a population of previous students
PAS=.9[50+10(S-M1)/S1] + .1[50+10(M2-TGI)/S2]
S – Student’s Score: Sum of the student’s grades for gradable maneuvers in the aircraft and the simulator divided by the sum of the MIF for those maneuvers. (Grade/MIF)
M1 – Average Score
M2 – Average of Total Graded Items (TGI)
S1 – Standard Deviation Score
S2 – Standard Deviation of TGI
Once the population has been determined for the given month, a student’s AS can be calculated at any time during the month by using the formula, given the Student’s Score and the number of graded items.
h. Accelerated Students. Students with prior flight time, excluding IFS or IFS equivalent flight time, shall be considered accelerated. During the accelerated period, the student may progress to the next block of training once MIF is met within the current block of training. The following criteria will be used as a guideline to decide how long the student will be accelerated:
Private pilot license: C4000-C4390
Instrument rating: C4000-C4390
I2000-I2304
I4000-I4105
I4000-I4105
Squadron commanding officers have the authority to tailor the student’s accelerated syllabus based on the student’s past
If you look at the score formula the whole TGI thing only impacts 10% of your overall NSS. It's not really much of an advantage, if any. Basically your NSS gets adjusted by one point up or down for however many standard deviations you are from the mean number of TGI. Yes it does mean that if you are accelerated at the end your NSS may go up from what it was projected to be. This is because you got to skip flights. However it's not that big of an advantage because if you look at the flights you are missing out on it's almost always the flights where MIF is very low. As a result that other 90% side of the score equation isn't as high as it could have been so you kind of need that bump to balance it out.
Also, when you are accelerated you have to accomplish the same maneuvers with less practice so while you have fewer flights, you have to do more maneuvers (so more graded items) in each flight. Also, in the RI sims for Corpus non-accelerated kids knew exactly what they were doing on each sim. I don't want to say canned, but they were very scripted to say the least. Accelerated kids, however, had to show up ready for anything as their chimera of an event had to accomplish the same things in half the time and was often thrown together ad hoc by the instructor in the briefing space. Granted, since I wasn't accelerated I am getting that second hand, but I heard that from more than a few accelerated guys. In the end it's not some insane advantage and really I think it is just a way to balance out the fact that you aren't getting as many hops where MIF is ridiculously low.
I wasn't accelerated and I did well. My roommate was accelerated and he did well too. From my limited experience I would venture to guess that the reason a student does well has much more to do with his skill and work ethic than whether he was accelerated or not. Just my two cents.
Oh and a third cent. A 10 minute class on NSS equation at API and a 5 minute refresher in primary would do wonders to cut down on bad gouge about NSS that gets circulated by students and instructors alike.
OK here it is....again. If you have the experience to accelerate, in order to reap the benefits, you need to rock your flights. If you screw the pooch, it will backfire, and you will have been better off flying the whole syllabis....which you probably should be doing if you screwed the pooch.
If you want to game the NSS thing, accelerate through late FAMs and RI's, not early ones and accelerate maybe a BI. If you arent absolutely comfortable flying IFR, you arent going to be successful in the T-34 accelerating. If you manage to get jets, you are going to fall on your face in the T-45 where you are partial panel 70% of the time in instruments. Unless you have airline time or are an NFO to pilot (S-3/EA-6B/F-14/FA-18) you probably should not be accelerating. PS- High NSS does not equal awesome pilot.
Remember though that it is not really up to the student to decide on whether or not he/she will be excellerated. Only if performance warrants it will they actually skip a flight (or more).
I was accerlated and I didn't even know it until I was scheduled for Fam 4 following Fam 2 (*not sure if they counted back then as part of the overall grade). I also skipped Fam 8 and ended up with a pretty decent NSS.
I respectfully disagree with the notion that you shouldn't acclerate unless you are able to rock your flights. The Fam maneuvers are quite easy once you get basic airwork under control. For those that can do that, there really isn't a reason to waste time on performing the same maneuvers over and over.
SDNalgene... I also disagree with your assumption that you have to do more maneuvers in fewer flights because of being accelerated. The only reason you should have less graded maneuvers on a particular flight is because you weren't able to work as a certain area (in Contact stage, that would be high, low, or pattern work). Otherwise almost every maneuver will be graded in each flight. There is some gamesmanship on the part of the IP to "limit" the number of items actually graded. If you go purely by the CTS though, this shouldn't happen.
Ok folks... let's hear some comments! I'm RDO with nothing to do.
I was accerlated and I didn't even know it until I was scheduled for Fam 4 following Fam 2 (*not sure if they counted back then as part of the overall grade). I also skipped Fam 8 and ended up with a pretty decent NSS.
I respectfully disagree with the notion that you shouldn't acclerate unless you are able to rock your flights. The Fam maneuvers are quite easy once you get basic airwork under control. For those that can do that, there really isn't a reason to waste time on performing the same maneuvers over and over.
SDNalgene... I also disagree with your assumption that you have to do more maneuvers in fewer flights because of being accelerated. The only reason you should have less graded maneuvers on a particular flight is because you weren't able to work as a certain area (in Contact stage, that would be high, low, or pattern work). Otherwise almost every maneuver will be graded in each flight. There is some gamesmanship on the part of the IP to "limit" the number of items actually graded. If you go purely by the CTS though, this shouldn't happen.
Ok folks... let's hear some comments! I'm RDO with nothing to do.
Alright RDO, perhaps I didn't get across what I meant to say. I agree that contact flights are mostly just repetition, but in RI flights you have a certain number of maneuvers that need to be done, but only two flights to do them. It isn't more maneuvers in fewer flights; it's the same number of maneuvers in fewer flights which results in more maneuvers per flight. You do only get graded on the headwork/sa/general knowledge type items once so that definitely does cut down on graded items and you don't have as many repeated grades so that helps too. Even so, the accelerated student would do a greater variety and number of approaches on each flight, so on each those two flights he would have more graded items than a non accelerated student would on each of his four flights. Overall the accelerated student has fewer graded items, but he doesn't have two flights less worth of graded items. Moreover his flights are busier and he gets less practice, but then again he needs less practice in theory. All I was getting at is that by being accelerated you aren't getting some ungodly advantage as a result of your fewer graded items over the students that aren't. Clear as mud?
Yeah that bell curve is a bitch.
I don't necessarily mean the equation, but if they could point out things like to determine your NSS you compared against the last 200 completers from your squadron it would stop people from freaking out because their roommate in a different squadron has better scores than they do...
All I am saying is that for as much as people talk about NSS it's remarkable how few have the slightest idea of how it's calculated or what it means. You don't even need to read the incredibly in depth thread that Helaujin put out a while ago to get some working knowledge of it. It's a great thread if you are interested though.
SDNalgene has posted the best explanation on the impact of accelerated training yet.
Here is what the analysis showed. Take a completer's grades and remove a couple random flights as though he had been accelerated. Then compare full syllabus NSS with accelerated NSS. On average, the full syllabus NSS will be higher than the accelerated NSS for exactly the reasons provided by SDNalgene.
Won't happen for every student. And it depends what random flights are removed. Perhaps a few of the removed flights were very bad days for the completer and a number of below MIF maneuvers were removed from the calculation.
Low NSS completers tended to benefit more than high NSS completers since they had more below MIF graded items.
The take away from this is if you are shit hot, fly all the events. If you suck, fly all the events (you need all the practice you can get). And, as stated above, it isn't up to you anyway.
By the way, the NSS calculation is easy. It is just a T-score. Next to Average and Mean, this is the simplest statistical model around.
Here is what the analysis showed. Take a completer's grades and remove a couple random flights as though he had been accelerated. Then compare full syllabus NSS with accelerated NSS. On average, the full syllabus NSS will be higher than the accelerated NSS for exactly the reasons provided by SDNalgene.
Won't happen for every student. And it depends what random flights are removed. Perhaps a few of the removed flights were very bad days for the completer and a number of below MIF maneuvers were removed from the calculation.
Low NSS completers tended to benefit more than high NSS completers since they had more below MIF graded items.
The take away from this is if you are shit hot, fly all the events. If you suck, fly all the events (you need all the practice you can get). And, as stated above, it isn't up to you anyway.
By the way, the NSS calculation is easy. It is just a T-score. Next to Average and Mean, this is the simplest statistical model around.
Yeah, that makes sense.
One more quick question... who actually sees what the NSS equation is?? I'm not interested in PAS, just NSS.
I think just the wing (in Wing 5, anyway). Stucon and Ops Admin weren't given the juice to compute it. We asked for it in prep for CCX, but it was no go.
Is NSS just PAS once the correct population has been determined? The PAS seems awfully NSS-ish to me. I don't really see the difference because the PAS equation is based off a normal distribution with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10, as is your NSS if I am not mistaken.
DON'T LIE
Okay, I can't sit back anymore. I was the STUCON officer in VT-XX when a kid lied about having prior time. I don't mean just a little prior time, he was multi-CFI-Inst-etc. Idiot boy not only lied, but sat there in the blue chairs and spouted off to the others SNAs how he was rocking the system and could fly better than (and I quote), "Those idiot helo IPs". We found out because fellow SNAs dimed him out on a course critque sheet, and someone else managed to get his ratings Xeroxed and left them in my inbox.
Long story short, we put him up on UCMJ. Got Congressional attention and he got off on a technicality. Meaning his check in ppwk disappeared and I lost my evidence that he lied. I know what happened to the ppwk, or at least I suspect that an E-4 working in STUCON has a lot of things they can do with a little extra money given the opportunity to earn it. Like I said, that was just my suspicion. We eventually turned up his ppwk, but the sheet that asks for SNAs to list prior time was a Xerox of HIS original with the line about prior flight time being blank instead of saying "no" like he had originally wrote.
He got jets BTW... hope you Hornet guys are enjoying him.
Accel
As for all the other "talk", you're going to have to work hard to convince me that being accelerated sucks. If you're doing well, you're wasting time and fuel going up hop after hop crushing the syllabus. You get put on accelerated and you don't lose anything (from my era at least). The syllabus flights you skipped are accounted for via a multiple that is applied to your grades when you end a phase and then again when you select.
Basically, if you were accelerated and did "average" under the pre-MPTS syllabus (and I mean dead ruler-job average of 3.0), your NSS was still going to be near 50 to mid-50 after the multiple was applied! We actually ran the numbers. Fact. So it was only in the best interest of the SNA to step up and fess up.
...and as always, if you had a crappy flight you IMMEDIATELY came off accelerated and back on the normal syllabus. So instead of playing I have a secret, help out yourself and the overworked IPs and make it efficient for everyone involved.
Oh yeah... for those whiners that say "...but Sir I was accelerated and I got screwed". Well, I can't speak for you in particular, but those guys who say that were going to do shitty anyway, with or without prior time. Again, fact. Sorry truth hurts.
So there.
BTW: I don't think MasterBate's has as much time on his hands anymore... saw him on the SIM schedule for today.
As for all the other "talk", you're going to have to work hard to convince me that being accelerated sucks. If you're doing well, you're wasting time and fuel going up hop after hop crushing the syllabus. You get put on accelerated and you don't lose anything (from my era at least). The syllabus flights you skipped are accounted for via a multiple that is applied to your grades when you end a phase and then again when you select.
Basically, if you were accelerated and did "average" under the pre-MPTS syllabus (and I mean dead ruler-job average of 3.0), your NSS was still going to be near 50 to mid-50 after the multiple was applied! We actually ran the numbers. Fact. So it was only in the best interest of the SNA to step up and fess up.
...and as always, if you had a crappy flight you IMMEDIATELY came off accelerated and back on the normal syllabus. So instead of playing I have a secret, help out yourself and the overworked IPs and make it efficient for everyone involved.
Oh yeah... for those whiners that say "...but Sir I was accelerated and I got screwed". Well, I can't speak for you in particular, but those guys who say that were going to do shitty anyway, with or without prior time. Again, fact. Sorry truth hurts.
So there.
BTW: I don't think MasterBate's has as much time on his hands anymore... saw him on the SIM schedule for today.