CFA?

[d.mcknight]

Has anyone on here ever thought of making a CFA section of its own? There seems to be quite a bit of talk concerning either scores or advice on how to get better. Maybe expand it to all physical tests concerning SA's and ROTC programs. Just a thought.

 

[TacticalNuke]

d.mcknight,

Thank you for the recommendation. We understand that the physical tests are an important part of academy admission. However, given that each academy may utilize the test different, I don't think at this time it makes sense to dedicate a forum to the tests.

I will, however, keep it in mind as one way to better serve that discussion topic.

Thank you for your time.

-TN

 

[Mongo]

While each Academy might, in fact, utilize the data differently, they will never publish which events that they weigh differently. So for the candidates, for all academies, they should look at the CFA the same.

The CFA was designed as a unified test for all SAs so that high school PE teachers would not have to administer up to five tests to a single candidate. Therefore, to keep the test fair, each SA will tell every candidate to strive for the maximum score on each phase.

Since the phases are sequential with no time between each event, the test is designed so that the latter events will be at less than 100% capability. Suppose Candidate A was only applying to one Academy and knew that only events 1, 3, and 5 were considered. By 'resting' on events 2 and 4, he would most likely achieve an unfair advantage as compared to Candidate B who was applying to all the academies and had to strive for his best on all 5 events.

 

[time2]

I agree with Nuke....if you make it a single category that applies to all of the academies, the nuiances of how it is interpreted differently would get all jumbled around. People don't often read all posts carefully within a thread and it would be very confusing to those new to the entire application process. People would constantly have to qualify their remarks as to which of the academies they are commenting on and if they didn't the advice could be misinterpreted with regard to which of the academies they are referring to. My vote is also to leave it as it.

 

[Christcorp]

Agreed. Such information should stay within the individual service academy forums. While the CFA may indeed be similar for all the academies, the academies themselves are different. And while the CFA is no more important for the Air Force than for the Army, how you do your application and the CFA is different. I.e. For west point, they can give out Letters of Assurances without the application having been done or the CFA having been completed. The air force on the other hand won't even look at an applicant's application until it is 100% complete. And that includes the CFA. So for logistical reasons, air force applicants need to weigh an "X" score on their CFA in the hopes of getting their application completed early enough to possibly take advantage of an LOA or possibly an appointment if they already have a nomination. Or, if they are working with average GPA's and SAT/ACT with an average application, the air force applicant might want to hold off with the final step of their application, (The CFA), until they can kick it's butt and hopefully make up for some lower academic areas. For West Point, if they have an LOA, they simply need to get an average/passing score on the CFA.

Definitely need to keep all facets of the application process separated into the individual academies. There's too many differences in how the application process is handled for each academy. And suggestions for the CFA given by a West Point cadet, parent, MALO, or alumni might backfire if followed by someone applying to a different academy.