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NROTC vs. Academy

DanMav1156 said:
Am I being being a dumbass but hasn't there not been an O-10 since the 40s? Halsey in 1945 was the last one right? My point is that DSL is talking about women being O-10 but there just aren't any more O-10s since then.
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O-10 = 4 Star

I think you're thinking of Fleet Admiral.
 
PhillyPhinest said:
made a whole new set of Academy friends out of guys I never met before API, but hung out with because they were in our "Academy group" during A pool
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This is exactly what I was getting at in my post. Even if I didn't know the guys from school, I knew their friends or there was some sort of connection.
 
DSL1990 said:
these are the statistics. and yes, i think my chances of making Admiral from VMI are not good at all. i may not like that, but that's what the statistics say.

not IMPOSSIBLE. you can see that 8 OCS grads also bucked the odds and made Admiral. But why make it hard on yourself, if you are accepted into the USNA system already?

if you want to argue, argue with the defense department that appointed 220 USNA grads to Admiral!

lol.
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1.) The USNA used to be the only way(barring the ability to buy a commission) to commission into the United States Navy, hence why NROTC was developed.

2.) Tell all of the admirals that VMI has produced that their chances were not good.

3.) If you think VMI is going to hinder your career then apply to the USNA. It sounds to me as if you have no desire to go to VMI. Drop your appointment and let someone who wants to be here go in your stead.

4.) @Phrogdriver: You're probably right, that might explain why there are so many heavy drinkers at VMI. :)

The AW :) Lamp is ON and shining brightly.
 
As someone who had done both NROTC and the Academy.... and who has had this argument with one of my NROTC friends many times.
The instructors in the NROTC were more interested in developing you as a leader and you normally get that leadership experience. You also get to be more social with them on a personal level away from the unit. However when it comes to the military you only wore the uniform once a week (though Id typically be at the unit every day. Plus the retention rate is not that good I know in my rotc unit (pre 9-11) you'd get 40 freshman start and then only about 10 or so come back for the second year, and I think 7-8 actually finished the class. Because of the small size you tend to get more hands on leadership experience.
The lifestyle at the academy is more 24/7 and you officers tended to be more disciplinarians. The only time I saw my company officers was when something was wrong. As for the chiefs, all my academy chiefs were even worse and were just a pain in my ass and gave me a dislike for chiefs in general (Disclaimer....I have not served in an operational fleet unit with a chief working for me on a daily basis and I have yet to have had a great chief to change my mind) You live in close quarters with the same 35 people your whole academy career so you tend to be pretty tight with them, though you have your squabbles with them. I came out a lot more low key than the eager beaver i went in as. The academy itself is a institution and it can be sometimes hard to make useful changes even when you reach midshipman leadership. By the time your done your usually ready to get out of there. Between USNA and CNATRA and NMITC I had developed a profound hatred for training commands.
 
DangerousDan, it seems as if your Co. Officer/SEL experience was terrible. My company officer is very involved and I've seen him fairly often and have only gotten in minimal trouble. I've had two Gunny's as my SELs, one was amazing, the other one was on a steep learning curve with respect to just how USNA operates. The company officer I had in plebe summer was a grad and he was and is a fantastic company officer. There are several here that I'd say I look up to. My Batt-O plebe year embodied nearly everything I'd consider to be good leadership. But even with the bad ones, you learn quite a bit from. To be honest, I've learned quite a bit from the interaction, both friendly and professional, of several of the officers in Luce, many of whom have been my professors in PRODEV classes. I'm just saying this, because I've referenced interaction with officers here as a strength. While some I view strictly as disiciplinarians, the vast majority I look at as competent leaders with valuable experience to learn from. This may or may not be (one possibility) because most of my officers have been deployed in combat (and yours, I presume, at least the JO's, had not, as you mentioned it was Pre-9/11?)... But either way, I came in without even thinking about exposure to officers and now part of the reason I'm glad is because of the exposure to so many and to learn vastly differing and effective/ineffective leadership styles.
 
I completely agree with Danmav. While the first two company SELs I had were nothing special, our current chief is a real resource for me, especially now that I'm coming up on graduation. By and large, the vast majority of SELs here now are like that, tough when they have to be, but more than willing to impart their acquired knowledge to us. The same goes for most of the officers I've come in contact with here.
This brings up another good point that I don't think this discussion has touched on. At the Academy, you interact with dozens of officers and SELs, with hundreds of years of combined fleet experience. You see the good and the bad here, and it helps you decide what kind of officer you want to become.
Additionally, you are exposed to some of the top leadership of the fleet. We just had the CNO give us a lecture this past week, and it seems like there's some kind of optional brief from one flag officer or another almost bi-weekly. I don't think that most ROTC units typically get those kinds of opportunities.
Don't get me wrong, the Academy has definitely been tough, but IMHO, it's worth it.
 
SWCS242 said:
I have a friend who went to Westpoint and another at the USAFA, both have agreed that the difference between the academy and NROTC is this:
Academy= long and hard
NROTC= long and not so hard
OCS= short and hard
Both of my friends also told me that they wish they would have had a normal college experience with full summer vacations, being able to go home on a whim if need be, being able to sleep in and skip class after a long hard night at the bars, and not getting in trouble for breaking "stupid" rules that do not exist at a normal college.
Heeding their advice, I chose not to even look into the academies.
Anyhow, I am not speaking from experience just from hearsay. Having the Naval academy on your resume wouldn't hurt, but college is so much fun, why would you want to miss out on that?
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I still have people who give me grief for going to military college, especially paying for the experience. They usually laugh and talk how much fun they had partying and skipping class. I just usually ask them if they ever partied all night in Roppongi, bar crawled in Rota, Spain or have sampled all that Bangkok has to offer. While they ponder that, I also ask how long it took them to graduate. I did get to experience 'regular' college life during my summers off and it was not that much better than my weekends in Charleston.

So to each their own, I enjoyed my military college experience and would not trade it for anything. Either way, if you make it to a fleet squadron you will have an experience that would probably blow any college experience away, whether it is USNA, Harvard or the University of Phoenix.
 
I've been to a lot of libbo ports too. So have most in the Navy/MC.

I'm just not getting all this business about the military college "experience." Especially you VMI/Citadel guys who actually paid for it! I still remember dear old Penn fondly too. Big deal. I think the moral of the story is to go to the place that you think suits you. There's no "one size fits all" solution. And going to an academy does not mystically make you better prepared for a "long and successful naval career," regardless of what some factsheet says.
 
BlackBearHockey said:
I can understand the emphasis, especially considering how technically oriented the Navy is; but compare that to UMaine, even with the largest engineering college in the NE and arguably the school's bread and butter, we still have about 80 majors, not include the honors college, interdisciplinary curriculums, minors, certs, concentrations, etc.
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I don't know that comparing U Maine with respect to the Naval Academy is necessarily a valid comparison. U Maine has over 9,000 students and a doctoral program. USNA has 4,000 students and only undergrad. More Students + Tuition Payments = More Majors.
 
Ditto to what danmav and cfam have said about the company officers/SELs. For the most part, the Academy grad officers were usually good, if for anything because they understood the place. Many of the non-Academy grad officers were good, however some would try and change everything because they didn't understand the tradition or how the Naval Academy operated. Of my SELs, we had three. Our first two were absolutely amazing, while the third... not so much. With him it seemed to be a case where he tried to micromanage everything and really overstepped his bounds in not allowing the CC and XO to take charge of the company.
 
PhillyPhinest said:
Ditto to what danmav and cfam have said about the company officers/SELs. For the most part, the Academy grad officers were usually good, if for anything because they understood the place. Many of the non-Academy grad officers were good, however some would try and change everything because they didn't understand the tradition or how the Naval Academy operated. Of my SELs, we had three. Our first two were absolutely amazing, while the third... not so much. With him it seemed to be a case where he tried to micromanage everything and really overstepped his bounds in not allowing the CC and XO to take charge of the company.
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I am glad to see that my assessment of Company Officers and SELs is well recieved by others. My company officer (who is towards the tail end of his time here) is a non-Academy guy, and he learned fairly quickly; really focued on Academics. I've always thought of his as someone to learn good things from. I really beleive the officers here are one of this place's greatest strengths.
 
I don't have a dog in this fight, but in the interest of comparing apples to apples......

Don't most folks take more than 4 years to graduate from your typical civilian school? Probably averaging 4.5 to 5 years? If that's true, then the whole "losing a year because of NAPS" argument loses some of its validity.

My point is that the day that you pin on 2ndLt will likely vary by little more than 6 months or so. That seems rather inconsequential to me.

If you'd rather do NROTC for "more fun" or "college life", then fine. If you're doing it to get commissioned quicker, then I think that logic is slightly flawed.
 
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