PRK/OCS timeline deal

[Eph5]

I am a college senior interested in flying USMC(because I think I could get a pilot slot easier, right?) or Navy(because I wouldn't have to do basic and all that stuff before I went to flight school, right?). I have mildly bad eyes -2.5 and -3.25, but i understand i can get PRK done BEFORE OCS (correct?).
1. are you knowledgeable enough to give me a timeline of events and locations for your first few years as a pilot going through OCS? (where will I potentially be and for how long for the next few years?)
2. is there anyway to increase your chances of getting a pilot slot? do recommendations from cool people help?

 

[lthackston]

Well, I can tell you about the PRK stuff. I had it done in December of 2002 and sent off my OCS application that spring. By December of 2003 I had been accepted for an April 2004 class. PRK can take between 3-9 months to completely heal, so if you want to have it done, do it as soon as possible, and then when you are on the road to recovery, submit your application. People used to say that if you had PRK your application would be less appealing to the Navy, but these days so many people are having it done you'll be fine as long as you have the medical records from the procedure.
As for #1, for the Navy side anyway, you'll go to OCS for 12 weeks, then you'll wait for API for several months which lasts six weeks when you do finally class up. Both of these are in Pensacola. Then it's off to Primary at either Whiting or Corpus which'll take you more than half a year to finish (counting another class-up waiting period) and then after that your guess is as good as mine as to where you go or how long it will take.