USAFA Nomination Question Unranked?

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Nov 13, 2015
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“Hypothetical question” If your Congressman or Congresswoman does not rank but you are the only candidate going for USAFA. And you get a nomination from that Congressman or Congresswoman would that nomination be considered a principal nomination or just a regular nomination to SA ? If you are 3Q’d would you most likely get an appointment? Thank you in advance for your answer.
 
No. If the congressman does not rank there is no principal nominee, only a list of one.
If the candidate is 3Q'ed, he is a candidate with a nomination.
In your hypothetical situation, the chances are very, very good that the hypothetical candidate would get an appointment but hypothetically the candidate could be passed over if they are not a designated principal nominee.
 
BUT... if he is the only nominee on the slate and the MOC thinks him worthy, why would he/she NOT make him a principal nominee? Seems like a no brainer for the MOC.

Of course the academy must find him/her triple qualified, but assuming that was true, why not?

By the way... there are hundreds or even thousands of applicants that would love to be in that situation.
 
Actually, there could be an excellent reason not to designate the lone candidate as a principal. Most Congressmen do not like to get sucked into the game of giving favors for contributions, believe it or not (they prefer the money with no strings attached). By continually staying with the unranked slate method, they pass the appointment buck, so to speak, to the Academy. In that case they can always say "The Academy made the choice not me" and cannot be accused of "selling an appointment" to a big contributors kid. This method works only if you do it year in and year out no matter who applys.

There is a flip side to this coin (that has nothing to do with the original question). On occasion, an Academy has offered an appointment to one of the 10 unranked nominees and the nominee turned it down for one of the usual reasons. Common sense would say that the Academy should go back to the original list of (now) 9 nominees and pick another. BUT it is not a legal requirement and sometimes the Academy picks no one from that Congressman's list and fills that slot in the class using another type of nomination. Needless to say, that pisses off a lot of Congressional staffs and Congressmen due to the work put into the screening and interviews and the fact no constituent's kid goes yet it is a taxpayer-funded school. For the next round, they subtly say to the offending Academy "If you don't like us giving you the choice of candidates, then we will pick the appointment with the principal and ranked alternates method. Screw you, Jack." That was almost verbatim what I heard from a staffer and good for them.
 
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Actually, there could be an excellent reason not to designate the lone candidate as a principal. Most Congressmen do not like to get sucked into the game of giving favors for contributions, believe it or not (they prefer the money with no strings attached). By continually staying with the unranked slate method, they pass the appointment buck, so to speak, to the Academy. In that case they can always say "The Academy made the choice not me" and cannot be accused of "selling an appointment" to a big contributors kid. This method works only if you do it year in and year out no matter who applys.

There is a flip side to this coin (that has nothing to do with the original question). On occasion, an Academy has offered an appointment to one of the 10 unranked nominees and the nominee turned it down for one of the usual reasons. Common sense would say that the Academy should go back to the original list of (now) 9 nominees and pick another. BUT it is not a legal requirement and sometimes the Academy picks no one from that Congressman's list and fills that slot in the class using another type of nomination. Needless to say, that pisses off a lot of Congressional staffs and Congressmen due to the work put into the screening and interviews and the fact no constituent's kid goes yet it is a taxpayer-funded school. For the next round, they subtly say to the offending Academy "If you don't like us giving you the choice of candidates, then we will pick the appointment with the principal and ranked alternates method. Screw you, Jack." That was almost verbatim what I heard from a staffer and good for them.

Thank you very much for all your well thought-out replies. That makes perfect sense to me Spud. It seems in my State, furthest from USAFA.
that this is the way all the MOC’s do their nominations. Thank you once again.
 
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