I saw the title for this on the main page and couldn't pass it up...
I applied to all of the military SA's (USCGA, USAFA, USMA, and USNA) initially but started to narrow down my choices. The first to go was USMA because I realized I wasn't interested in doing infantry.
The next to go was USNA. It's a great school, and I really wanted to fly, but I'd heard bad things about the navy as an organization.
So that just left USCGA and USAFA. I come from an Air Force family, so I had the natural bias towards USAFA. But the Coast Guard intrigued me. Here was a service that - as my father pointed out - didn't just train. They actually performed their jobs daily. I really liked the idea of saving lives and stopping drugs as I had seen what drugs can do to a family as a kid.
Going to AIM only solidified that. Hopefully one day I'll be in the cockpit of a helicopter interdicting drugs and pulling people out of the water....