First Duty Station

[Highlander51]

For all the current and former marine SNAs and NFOs, what did your duty station selection process look like after winging? Did you have any say in where you went or did you get the old "needs of the Corps" line that we've all heard? Just trying to get an idea of what to expect after flight school, recent duty station selection is obviously more relevant but any information is better than none, thanks.

 

[croakerfish]

For all the current and former marine SNAs and NFOs, what did your duty station selection process look like after winging? Did you have any say in where you went or did you get the old "needs of the Corps" line that we've all heard? Just trying to get an idea of what to expect after flight school, recent duty station selection is obviously more relevant but any information is better than none, thanks.

When I was the winging officer for my HT squadron, I generated the selections for our wingers. The process was similar but not identical for my USMC counterpart. Everyone gets racked and stacked based on NSS. Flights, sims, academics all get mashed together and corrected so the whole winging class ends up ranked together. For the Marines, the top graduate gets 1st choice by instruction. Everyone else goes where 1. there's a billet allotted and 2. where their NSS results in quality spread. The IP who is making the list gets with the other winging O's and they hash out a solution to 1 and 2 that dicks over as few people as possible.

Edit: To elaborate, when someone has to get something they don't want, we tried to ensure that higher ranked wingers got something closer to the top of the list. In one case a .1 difference in NSS meant the difference between a guy getting his 2nd choice or his 7th. That came down to the JO IPs wheeling and dealing since the quality spread wasn't affected much, but it made a big impact on the happiness factor.