AFROTC Majors

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usafmk95

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Hello everyone. I'm currently a candidate for the Air Force Academy class of 2018 and am also enrolled as a freshman in ROTC. I just wanted to know if anyone had suggestions in regards to majors for the ROTC program. I'd like to work in an investigative or intel field, but want to pick a major the Air Force would consider for commissioning.

Any info is appreciated!


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The AF gives 85% of their scholarships to tech majors. They give an edge to tech for SFT selection.

You need to major in what you enjoy, not just what will give you an edge.

OBTW for AFROTC they are the opposite than AFA. As a freshmen you are a C100. Seniors are C400s.
 
I know they give the majority of scholarships to tech majors, but when it comes down to field training slots or earning a commission, does a person's major impact that? Such as would someone doing psychology have an edge over someone in communications, etc?


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When it comes to SFT and AFSC they break it down in two ways. Tech and non-tech. Now if they have a critical manning degree within that category they will get an edge, otherwise no, a non-tech major is a non-tech major.

One thing to understand when choosing the major because it gives you an edge for SFT is it can bite you for your AFSC, especially if you want to go rated. For example, ME or it might be EE has been considered critical manned for a few years, the AF limited the number of these majors for rated slots due to their manning issues.
 
A little contrary to what Pima said,

Academic major can matter greatly in terms of what non-rated job you want when you are a 400 level cadet going for the non-rated board. During your 400 year, you will fill out the AFROTC form 53. Here you will list your major, test scores, GPA, and most importantly a breakdown of your credit hours into 25 categories. That being said a history major and information systems technologies major will have a different credit hour breakdown, same with different types of tech majors.

Now I cannot say how each field is weighted but for Intel or investigation but you will probably want to look at majors that:

1) You are interested in
2) Gives you credit hours in science, statistics, information technology, and information systems.
 
@ Pima, Have you received the PM that I sent to you on Monday? Looking forward for your response. Thanks much!
 
No Batman I didn't get it. Please resend.

Power,

I am not disagreeing with you, but the OP is a freshmen and right now his concern should be SFT. I did a broad stroke on his future. The OP has yet to understand that an AFROTC cadet is not a C4C, but a C/AS100. Going into the AFSC and 25 categories can be cranium splitting.
Our DS was govt.and he went rated in 12. He is at UPT currently, expected to wing in April. I bow to you for non-rated and AFSC process.

JMPO, the priority is to become a POC, not AFSC careers for the OP, I don't want to muddy the waters.
 
Pima said:
No Batman I didn't get it. Please resend.

Power,

I am not disagreeing with you, but the OP is a freshmen and right now his concern should be SFT. I did a broad stroke on his future. The OP has yet to understand that an AFROTC cadet is not a C4C, but a C/AS100. Going into the AFSC and 25 categories can be cranium splitting.
Our DS was govt.and he went rated in 12. He is at UPT currently, expected to wing in April. I bow to you for non-rated and AFSC process.

JMPO, the priority is to become a POC, not AFSC careers for the OP, I don't want to muddy the waters.
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Just for clarification, an AS 100 and a C/4C(Cadet 4th class) are the same thing. You have an AS class and then a rank. AS100s have the rank of C/4C, 200s are C/3C (Cadet 3rd class), and then POC rankings for 300s,400s, and 700s are determined by their specific job in the wing (i.e C/2nd Lieutenant all the way up to C/Colonel for the wing commander).
 
My son went non rated. He picked Cyber warfare, computer stuff top choice, and procurement, second choice. While he had a few computer courses, based upon his major, economics, Cyber was a stretch for him. His commander told him to try for it, he did, but he ended up in procurement. This was what he had planned on going with since he joined ROTC, so he wasn't upset at all.

All that being said, I would say ROTC and College is all about planning and hard work. You have to do well enough at each step to make it to the next step, but those choices you made your freshman year very quickly limit what you will end up doing after graduation. If he had known freshman year he might want to go Cyber he probably would have taken some more computer courses to help make him a better candidate for that field.
 
It is important to understand that each service has different needs and expectations with respect to its ROTC programs, which influence their priorities with respect to academic majors. The Army is big, and has a broad scope of jobs that can be filled by junior officers with almost any academic degree or interest. In the Navy, junior officers (at least those who aren’t flying) are almost exclusively engaged in the immediate supervision of a ship-based division – a “generalist” leadership job.

By contrast, most non-rated jobs in the Air Force are related to engineering management – overseeing the efforts of defense contractors to design and build new aerospace and weapons systems. In order for a junior officer to successfully perform these jobs, an engineering degree is a significant advantage, if not a virtual necessity. That is why AFROTC gives such a heavy preference to engineering majors – they are the ones who will graduate with the particular skills that the Air Force needs.

Of course, the Air Force isn’t exclusively in the engineering business, and there are slots in other career fields like intelligence, finance, and law enforcement that junior officers can be assigned to. But the reality is that an AFROTC cadet with a non-technical degree who doesn’t get a pilot slot is just not all that critical to the mission. I would be surprised if the Air Force cares much about the comparative value of various non-tech majors.

I do not mean to discourage anyone who wants to join AFROTC as a non-tech major, but I think that you ought to go into the process with realistic expectations – not just for your odds of getting a scholarship, or for SFT selection, but for the job that you are going to be commissioned to do. If your interests really do lie outside of the technical field, you may find that the other services offer a much better opportunity for you. And as a corollary, if you have the aptitude to successfully pursue a technical degree, and really want to be a valuable asset to the Air Force, you should seriously consider majoring in engineering.
 
Moosestache said:
My son went non rated. He picked Cyber warfare, computer stuff top choice, and procurement, second choice. While he had a few computer courses, based upon his major, economics, Cyber was a stretch for him. His commander told him to try for it, he did, but he ended up in procurement. This was what he had planned on going with since he joined ROTC, so he wasn't upset at all.

All that being said, I would say ROTC and College is all about planning and hard work. You have to do well enough at each step to make it to the next step, but those choices you made your freshman year very quickly limit what you will end up doing after graduation. If he had known freshman year he might want to go Cyber he probably would have taken some more computer courses to help make him a better candidate for that field.
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I was in the same boat with one of my friends. We both went for the Intel career field. I was able to list 30+ information science credits, and with an addition of maybe 50+ science, math, and technology courses. My friend on the other hand is in the liberal arts college with far better overall stats (GPA, test scores, and FT ranking) but could only list about ~20 credits on the entire Form 53 (there are no spots to list english/history credits). Long story short, I wound up getting intel and my friend unfortunately did not. Not exactly sure if this was the tipping factor for me to get the slot, but in all honesty I was really surprised at the result.
 
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