Degree Requirement Question

[kparrott154]

If this has already come up just point me in the right direction, I did a search but found nothing.

I'm a Flight Technology major and I'm looking at majoring in Communications as well. I talked to an Officer Recruiter and I believe I remember him saying something about the degree needs to be "technical."

Maybe he never said that, or I'm making things up, but can anyone shed light on this?

Thanks for the help everyone

 

[ASHWND]

I may ne wrong on this, but from what I got talking to my recruiter, the only Navy Officer career path that required a technical degree was Nukes. It seemed to me that as long as your degree included 1 year of advanced calculus and 1 year of advanced physics it is considered to be technical. Though I have a friend who is doing engineering and he has not taken physics, but I think his degree would be considered technical. I am not sure how accurate this info is, so please hear everyone out, this was just my observation. If you find something offical please post it.

What community are you hoping for?

 

[kparrott154]

What community are you hoping for?

I'm hoping to get SNA. My only problem is I have a 3.1 GPA and a year to graduate(I've only been in college for a year, but took a year of college classes my senior year of high school). I feel that having a lower GPA in a flying degree could hurt my chances. So I plan on taking a semester to bump up my GPA and apply, then apply again after Spring semester.

 

[Rass]

.... Though I have a friend who is doing engineering and he has not taken physics, but I think his degree would be considered technical. I am not sure how accurate this info is....
What community are you hoping for?

I am a senior majoring In Mechanical Eng. and I am certain that Calculus based physics 1 and 2 are required for all engineering fields by the ABET accredidation program.

 

[sanders]

Several years ago, before I became interested in the Marines, I applied for a 3 year Navy NROTC contract and was rejected. I had a 3.6 GPA and a near perfect PFT score... but apparently having a business major hurt me because at the time, the Navy was only looking for technical majors. That being said, I know several people who have recently picked up contracts with non-tech majors. I think the whole tech-only majors is a thing of the past.

Good luck

 

[Sticky]

Are you sure it's an officer recruiter? I called the Navy people and they said to just come in and they'll set me up. I didn't know there was a difference so I actually talked to an enlisted recruiter. The reason I bring this up is because he told me exactly what you said so I'm worried you might not be talking to the right people. He told me that my art degree won't go well since it's not technical, so I should enlist. Then he told me my 3.1 gpa is not competitive, and I should enlist.

People with lower gpa's and animal science majors get pro recced (for SNA and other things) all the time, so don't let those things discourage you, good luck

PS-There is nothing wrong with enlisting if that's what you want to do of course!

 

[BACONATOR]

No a technical major is not required. Music majors are flying hornets. Technical major is only required to get BDCP up to 36 months before graduation. Non-tech is 24. I can't believe it took this many posts and no one has answered with this yet.

 

[kparrott154]

No a technical major is not required. Music majors are flying hornets. Technical major is only required to get BDCP up to 36 months before graduation. Non-tech is 24. I can't believe it took this many posts and no one has answered with this yet.

Thanks for clearing this up, thats exactly what I was looking for.


And it was an Officer Recruiter, the Enlisted Recruiter didn't know the BDCP even exsisted and gave me the number of the Officer Recruiter.

 

[nombrescreeno]

Would a technical major give you an edge when applying to be an Navy Officer, no matter what route?

The "whole person" concept applies no matter what* - so if you aren't a technical major, but have a good GPA, show leadership, good letters of rec, community involvement, good ASTB, etc. can all make up for it

*Note: The nuclear programs and CEC do require engineering / technical major classes and heavily prefer engineering majors...

All that being said though, a technical major helps - but that also depends on if your GPA is good and what school you went to. A 2.1 in Aero Eng from random unknown school isn't going to look better than a 3.5 in Business form Harvard or something... so again, the major isn't the deciding point

That being said, if you *are* a technical major, that's no excuse to not do your 100% best at shooting for good grades. Good grades in a hard major at a hard school will always look good, military or civilian

edit: And yeah, I don't think I've ever heard of an engineering major not taking a year of calculus based physics... in fact, most schools I know divide physics into calculus based, algebra based, and physics for poets.

 

[BACONATOR]

Would a technical major give you an edge when applying to be an Navy Officer, no matter what route?

All things being equal, if an Aerospace Engineering major with a 3.5 was being compared to a poly-sci major with a 3.5, then very likely yes. Let's face it. An engineering major is a lot harder to earn than a poly-sci/history/English/music/basketweaving major. It just is. If anyone is butt-hurt by that, I'm sorry. Sometimes the truth hurts. They are measuring your ability and potential based on historical performance. An AE major is likely (overall) to be more successful with the stress and workload of flight school than is an English major.

 

[BACONATOR]

Depends on how you measure difficulty. Is the material more difficult in an engineering program? Uh, yeah. But is studying for a engineering test or writing a 40 page thesis in 10 days more difficult? Apples to oranges, I think. With that said I would still wage that an engineering degree is more difficult at a vast majority of universities, but some proactively work to make degrees equal in non-material difficulty/time/stress. My school was one of these and I usually spent more time working as poli sci major than my roommate the EE major. Writing 400+ pages a semester on top of readings was not uncommon for me, just as an example. I still think I would rather waste away in front of a computer than have to study engineering though

It truly is apples to oranges. Just because you had time-consuming work, doesn't necessarily mean it was "hard" work. 400 pages just takes a LONG time to write. Maybe your friend was smarter than you... could be a bunch of things.

Ultimately, my time spent in my required English and Humanities courses was a joke compared to the work and knowledge required in my Engineering courses. At least with a paper you can virtually always bullshit your point as long as you put SOME thought into it. But in the various courses where we spent weeks/months/a semester designing something, and then stood before a panel of Engineers and guys from industry explaining our project, they could rip you apart if they knew you were full of shit (and they basically did).

 

[nugget61]

... So I plan on taking a semester to bump up my GPA and apply, then apply again after Spring semester.

Saw this and didn't see a reply to it - bad idea. Apply now, apply often. If you can get a BDCP slot on your 3.1 then you just got a whole semester of cash you weren't expecting. And if they turn you down, you'll be good to reapply in 6 months with a better gpa.

 

[nombrescreeno]

Ultimately, my time spent in my required English and Humanities courses was a joke compared to the work and knowledge required in my Engineering courses. At least with a paper you can virtually always bullshit your point as long as you put SOME thought into it. But in the various courses where we spent weeks/months/a semester designing something, and then stood before a panel of Engineers and guys from industry explaining our project, they could rip you apart if they knew you were full of shit (and they basically did).

You're right its apples to oranges in terms of the type of difficulty. Usually when my friends liberal arts majors complained about work, it was cause they had to take a ton of time to read and write a paper more so than understanding the content

This isn't to start a d!ck waving contest between technical majors and non-technical majors but, to go off your example, I find that most of the time the engineer will be able to take the liberal arts classes and understand a good percentage of what's going on, whereas the opposite would almost never understand much of what is going on.

That actually happened at one class. It was scheduled in a building that typically was for poli sci majors. As I'm walking out, my friend is walking into that classroom and she looks at me then looks the board which still has the differential equations on it. She sees things like dx/dy and all sorts of letters arranged on the board and says "Wow, are you learning Swedish?!"

Try to explain electron doping to them and they think you're talking about a new drug