Advice for me??

SHJ516

5-Year Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2013
Messages
9
Hello everyone, i'm still quite new to this forum but i feel that it is a great place to seek advice. It's been my dream to go to a service academy and it would be amazing to gain admission into one. I'm still in high school so i think i still have a bit of time to improve my application so any advice or tips would be helpful. All suggestions are welcome. Thank you.

- I am currently a sophomore in a nyc high school.
- I am an Asian-American male.
- I take all honors courses and one advanced placement course (world history). I have a 91 average and i'm working on improving it. I will also take several more a.p. classes before applying.
- I am president of the freshman/sophomore honors program, i am a staff-reporter for my school's newspaper (i'll hopefully be an editor by next year), i am in the student council, and i am the main double and electric bassist for my school's jazz band. I also play guitar and piano well.
- I am active in my school's JROTC and i am currently one of the few staff sergeants in my year (most sophomores are corporals or sergeants). I also work in a JROTC staff sector that deals with personnel management (S1). I am hoping to be a major by senior year and i feel that i have a decent shot at it.
- I am definitely not ready to pass a service academy's physical fitness examination and i am working hard towards being physically ready. I was on the junior varsity swimming team in freshman year and i'm on the varsity golf team this year. I'm worried that golf is not really considered a sport in a service academy's eyes but due to schedule conflicts i couldn't stay on the swimming team. I am trying to make up for golf and join the JROTC raider team, a physical fitness team that requires members to be able to perform 50 pushups in 2 minutes, 50 sit ups in 2 minutes, and a 2-mile run in 15 minutes.
- I currently have a little over 50 hours volunteering in the therapeutic recreation department of a rehabilitation pavilion and i will have a lot more hours before i apply. I also volunteer for the special olympics a few times a year through my dad's company.
- I'm not sure how well i'll score on my SATs but i took a practice SAT before and received a little over 1700 (i was told that this was pretty good for a sophomore...true???). I am also planning on taking 2-3 SAT subject tests.

Sorry for the long post...please give me advice on what i need to improve upon. Some advice on how to receive a nomination would be awesome too.
 
Subject tests are useless for a service academy. BE IN BETTER SPORTS. They like team sports, which golf is not. Do your best to get into boys state, and find leadership positions.

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Subject tests are useless for a service academy. BE IN BETTER SPORTS. They like team sports, which golf is not. Do your best to get into boys state, and find leadership positions.

Sent using the Service Academy Forums® mobile app

Do you think the raider thing i mentioned will suffice as a team sport? I'm confident that i'll be able to join by this academic year. It is definitely one of the more physically demanding teams in my school and there are a lot of team exercises involved...i think that it's a JROTC version of the sandhurst team.
Unfortunately, i'm pretty sure that it will not be possible to join any of the big team sports like rugby, football, soccer, etc. in my school because the teams have already been made. It's still possible for me to join track or wrestling...do you think that any of these two will look better on my app. than varsity golf (there's no way for me to know for sure if i could get into varsity for either of those two sports and i'd need to quit golf for them)? Also, i know that boys state begins in the summer of junior year. I was hoping to attend the westpoint summer seminar and fear that it will collide with boys state (if i could even get in...) But on the chance, i get into both, which should i attend??
 
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If you manage to get accepted to both (they are very competitive), go for Boys State. The summer seminar (supposedly) has no bearing on admission and is only used to foster interest in particularly strong applicants. Boys State will help a lot more and look good on your application and resume. It also helps a lot with public speaking. If you have any questions about Boys State, PM me.

Good luck on becoming a c/Major by the way. That was my rank the beginning of Senior Year. I'm now currently a c/LtCol, and am being promoted to c/Colonol. (Only 2-3 cadets in my unit can have this rank at any one time.) I also made c/2LT at the end of my sophomore year. JROTC will get you far.
 
Do boys state hands down. Sign up for both in case you dont get bs and if you do just tell the academy you won't make it to sle for bs and it'll be fine.

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Boys State is an honor, hands down. It shows you are a student leader, and worked hard to have been able to go. Also, try to keep up that GPA (Class rank is more important than GPA, but you need a high GPA to have a high class rank)
 
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