Yes, last year they did clean house quite a bit too, HOWEVER for some reason (whether it be increased recruiting or shear coincidence or our group having a larger amount of people intent on commissioning) our year group is significantly larger than last year's group and we started out that way. This year has seen a severe weeding out process, practically no medical waivers went out this year, anyone who may have had a chance in previous years but are a long shot this year have been "encouraged" to either leave or try again next year, mistakes that were once forgivable are now an automatic out. Idk how it's been at other dets, but here there's been a steady stream of cadets dropping/being disenrolled for one thing or another since packages went up for the boards Feb 22.
Even with all of that, our class's numbers are still up 20-30% (and sometimes 40%) across the board. Why? Big contributing factor may be that the AF just somehow attracted more people for the FY2016 group than they did for last year's group. Not sure how much retention rates have gone up for my group as opposed to last year's group. We started with ~70 new cadets in the fall of 2012, now we have ~27 including 250s that entered this year. In fall of 2011 our det had ~60 new cadets, they had 23 go up for EAs, l18 or 19 got them, now their group is down to the mid teens. So, considering how many cadets each class started with, the retention rate seems to be about the same. It'd be interesting to see the nation wide stats on this.
Another thing to think about is that right now the AF is not just trying to figure out numbers for FY2016, they are also trying to figure out numbers for FY2017. What with many colleges designing their STEM programs to last 4.5-5 years, many of us tech majors who are going up against the boards are set to commission FY2017. So now they have to decide how many of the next year group's commissioning slots will go to us too. Makes me wonder if in the past command has had a set percentage of how many EAs they will allow for 4.5-5 year cadets to commission with the next year group.
Edit:
Won't be a surprise at all if stats are lower than last years, only question is how much of a hit are we going to take? Even if the number of given EAs stays the same, there is still a larger class that likely contains more competitive candidates than last year. There is no chance # of EAs will go up, so we're looking at either percentages in the 80s if # of EA slots stay about the same or something in the 60s if we take the 300+ dip many are predicting. With Max 6 being canceled, they can probably fit a couple more cadets in each of the remaining Max's, but Maxwell can only house so many FT cadets at one time in the 2 dorm buildings they have set up for us. Unless they decide to commandeer some OTS dorms....Man, I just want them to come out with it already. Really hoping for tomorrow, but with most NATCON cadets still being on the road then, I'm wondering if they would still go ahead and tell us or wait until everyone gets home to call us up or make appointments for the next day. At this point I'm thinking releasing in a group setting is not appropriate, but at the same time, neither is waiting any longer than necessary to tell us. After this week the little cushion they had left for bag drag, distributing orders, etc. will be gone.
