District Appointments

justiceforall

justiceforall

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Dec 17, 2014
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Alright, huge question. This may get confusing so try to follow along. It is a fact that each congressman is allowed up to 5 students in each academy, so each year may have one appointment. Some years, there may be a removal of one spot, rendering two appointments a year. Here are my questions:
Does that mean only 1 of 10 nominees will get an appointment? If so, that would not match past statistics where about 40-50% of nominees were appointed. That would mean only 10% of nominees, besides the circumstance of less than 10 nominees in a district.

Does that mean the principal nominee is the 1 of 10, or does it not count as the 1 of 10?

Same with LOAs. Do they count as 1 appointment of 10 nominees ?

What happens to the other 9?

According to Rep. Olson's (TX-22) site, last year had 4 appointments to West Point. http://olson.house.gov/2014-press-releases/olson-honors-military-academy-appointees/
Rep. Culberson had 5 West Point appointees last year: http://culberson.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=385167

This may be a chance that there were 4 open spots that year, but I find that highly unlikely. Can there be more than 4 or 5 appointees at the same time?
 
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I think you've gotten a little confused and are comparing apples to oranges.

All appointees, by definition, have a nomination - otherwise they cannot be appointed (ignoring rare exceptions). So the 40-50% of nominees who are appointed (or whatever the number is) is from the total body of nominees. Many of these folks are appointed from the National Waiting List.

You're correct about a MOC being able to nominate up to 10 people for each empty slot they have at the academy. Normally, provided at least one of these nominees is fully qualified, 1 person out of the 10 will win the "slot", as you describe. The remainder will move to the NWL and they can be picked up from there.

One of the reasons that MOCs have more than 1 appointee in any given year, besides the multiple empty slots, is that additional people from their district were selected from the NWL. Also, someone from their district could have gotten in with a nomination from their Senator. Being politicians, MOCs are going to take credit for as many as they can whether the appointee was charged to their slate or not. And thus the MOC press releases about the large number of appointees they had in some given year.

What really matters is what slate your charged to (in a sense). Many folks with LOAs are nominated by their congressman and the MOC will often also name a principal nominee. So if the principal nominee is qualified, they win the MOCs slot. The academy then needs to use another slot (perhaps from NWL) to charge the person with the LOA to. That approach provides a MOC with a way to guarantee at least 2 folks from their district get in, and further enhances the press releases discussed above.

Hope this makes sense.
 
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So if the principal nominee is qualified, they win the MOCs slot.
Click to expand...

As I posted on another thread and as this statement implies....principal nominees who are qualified ARE NOT guaranteed an appointment -- we saw this plenty of times last year on this forum and this was passed down the BGO chain of command from USNA Admissions. We need to squash this misinformation. Thanks!

Additionally, as a candidate, your only concern should be to obtain all the nominations you possibly can get...you cannot control HOW USNA "charges" the nominations, therefore you can't really worry about it. To kinnem's point, you do not need to worry if a candidate in your district receives an appointment and you haven't heard anything.
 
I remember seeing that, what's the point of doing that? Doesn't that make a principle nomination the same as a regular nomination then?
 
I don't know the actual logic behind it, however, I wouldn't worry about that...even if it was the case where USNA was obligated to take a fully qualified principal nominee and you were not the principal, what would you do? You can't worry about things you have no control over. All you can do is your best and maybe a little more.
 
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