Downsizing Contracted AROTC

For the Army. Athletics WAS 10% of the 15% of physical. So that is a total of UP TO 1.5% of the 100 points. As someone pointed out. the number of years you participate, and wheter it is varsity versus intramural is also considered So I would assume a 4 year varsity player would get the full 1.5 points. So it is not a huge factor. Breaking news on the LAX front for us. My son already decided to concentrate on the books at least for this year and apparently had been speaking about it with the Cadre. They would have made some scheduling changes to allow him to do both. But what was kind of cool, is the coach put him in touch with a Junior high team that needs some assistant coaching. He met the team last night and is going to community coach as his time permits.

Glad your DS has found a way to stay involved in a passion and still keep academics his focus for a while. Maybe you can even go watch his "team" play to ward off the parent withdrawal:smile: DS and DH went on a scout outing while he was home last - my two big kids can't stay away:wink:
 
Glad your DS has found a way to stay involved in a passion and still keep academics his focus for a while. Maybe you can even go watch his "team" play to ward off the parent withdrawal:smile: DS and DH went on a scout outing while he was home last - my two big kids can't stay away:wink:

Yea, I'm not sure that will be cool. But if I stopped by the game on the way to taking him out for a steak for dinner--that might be acceptable.

It will be a different spring for sure. My daughter is in chorus-- I'll try to adapt:confused:
 
10 will get you 20, stopping by early so you can take him out for a steak dinner will be fine by him, especially if the car is also loaded with treats...pop tarts, chips, soda/water, etc.:shake:

Bribery works well.
 
Pima - a minor correction. I've seen you post a couple of times about AROTC cadets attending LDAC after their sophomore year, but LDAC cadets typically attend LDAC in the summer after their junior year.

Cadets with no prior ROTC or military experience go to LTC the summer after their sophomore year, but most (at least at my son's school) enter ROTC as a freshman and do not.

Small point, but I know prospective cadets and parents read these forums for every bit of information they can get.
 
Last edited:
Pima - a minor correction. I've seen you post a couple of times about AROTC cadets attending LDAC after their sophomore year, but LDAC cadets typically attend LDAC in the summer after their junior year.

Cadets with no prior ROTC or military experience go to LTC the summer after their sophomore year, but most (at least at my son's school) enter ROTC as a freshman and do not.

Small point, but I know prospective cadets and parents read these forums for every bit of information they can get.

Interesting. Looks like LTC is roughly equivalent to SFT. LDAC looks roughly equivalent to NROTC MO OCS. Thanks jcc!
 
Interesting. Looks like LTC is roughly equivalent to SFT. LDAC looks roughly equivalent to NROTC MO OCS. Thanks jcc!

Close, but not quite.

LTC is a summer training program for students that have completed their freshman and sophomore year of college without participating in AROTC. Usually these are students that are transferring from a 2 year college to a 4 year school or they have been recruited by the onsite ROO to join AROTC at the end of their sophomore year. There are also those that just decide after 2 years of college that they would like to join AROTC. These students apply for the Advanced course that starts the junior year, if accepted they are sent to LTC over the summer before their junior year, the course is designed to catch them up on what they missed by not being in AROTC the first two years.

LDAC is an assesment course that every cadet is required to attend the summer after their junior year, this include those that have gone to LTC. There are some cases where a cadet will attend after their senior year and then commission at the end of LDAC. These are cadets that may have had an injury or academic issues that prevented them from attending LDAC after their junior year. There are also cases where a cadet may get injured at LDAC and is required to come back the next year, in other cases a cadet may fail the first LDAC and if the Army feels they can bounce back they may be allowed to try again the next year, agin commisioning at the end of LDAC providing they pass the second time.

The Marines are a differnt animal altogether. The OCS that cadets go to is the same OCS every marine goes to, PLC or straight to OCS out of college with no ROTC. The Army has incorporated there officer training BOLC into their Branch BOLC, they used to be seperate, this is completed after graduation and commissioning during the first phase of their Branch BOLC training. Personally I kind of like the way the Marines do it.
 
Yea, I'm not sure that will be cool. But if I stopped by the game on the way to taking him out for a steak for dinner--that might be acceptable.

It will be a different spring for sure. My daughter is in chorus-- I'll try to adapt:confused:

Anything followed by a steak dinner is cool with my DS, shoot, a hamburger off campus is cool(meal plan leaves a little to be desired:thumb:).

Good luck with chorus, at least no worries she'll injure anything but her vocal chords:biggrin:
 
Quick update on DS and his standing with the cadre since failing his run...

Quarterly counseling session was Thursday, went well - no new ranking based on most recent APFT available, but 75% of his fellow MS1 cadets failed it too, so the cadre isn't expecting there to be a big change in the internal OML(he will probably stay 6-8 out of 16 contracts available for now), unless he doesn't improve APFT. Also, DS found out in 2 weeks he can challenge APFT again and possibly regain some lost points and get out of remedial PT(must score above a 210 passing all areas).

Read Jcleppe's amazing post about not just winning a scholarship - but keeping it, contracting and comissioning being a long path full of potential pot holes to avoid. I think DS clipped one of these but hopefully hasn't run himself off the path completely. As I told him "run, Forest, run....":wink:
 
The downsizing of ROTC will have many secondary effects that you should consider before choosing which program to join.

Many BN templates have been adjusted recently. Some inexpensive private schools and state schools will get a larger template, ie more instructors and more slots for contracts and scholarships, especially if their Cadets have performed above average on the National OML. MOST programs will be downgraded in template or retain the same template. Even programs that retain their template will most likely see the allocations for that template shrink, ie Template G 2012 > Template G 2014. Some programs will be combined with other programs or eliminated completely.

Officer and NCO positions are being downgraded, ie O5 becomes O4, and contractor positions are being reduced.

These changes are for the most part, making policy reflect existing realities. Programs that have seen their size shrink over the last few years due to lack of support from university admistration, lack of financial accessibility for non-scholarship Cadets, or not attracting the right caliber of student, will be the first to be targeted.

If you visit a school, count the heads in the Commissioning photos from the last few years. If the school has commissioned the same number of 2LTs for the last 4 years it is unlikely to have their template downgraded, unless that number is extremely low.
 
That would be helpful information to check into for those assessing programs while applying for scholarships!

For my son, he was in the Commissioning Brochure, even though they didn't commission him, as his disenrollment happened so close to the time of the ceremony!
 
I think gojira illustrates why counting the heads on a picture may not be the way to go.

These pics are usually taken in the spring for the brochures. If not spring, 1st week fall, and a lot can change between those few short months.

I get where Marist is coming from, about how programs are changing, but I also think that as parents of cadets/mids other questions need to be asked, such as avg cgpa for their career field, percentage of that picture entered as an MSI, etc.

What good does that picture do to show the size if we don't know the details of the unit?

Would you feel differently if you saw a commissioning class of 50 and they started with 250 compared to a class of 15 that started with 45? 1 in 3 compared to 1 in 5 chance?

What is the goal? Getting the scholarship, or being commissioned?
 
I really wonder how many of the students who started with a STEM major in my son's class actually changed to a less rigorous one, which would protect their GPA and thus future career and commissioning possibilities? I know several of them who did change - and it paid off for them.

I know this was the case in my son's class at his unit.

Now that NROTC doesn't allow changing tiers for scholarship recipients, I wonder what the attrition rates will be and how many students will lose their scholarships or fall off track for commissioning for grades.

http://www.nrotc.navy.mil/scholarship_criteria.aspx
 
AFROTC for yrs has made it incredibly difficult, almost impossible to change from STEM to non-tech, I would say at least 4-5 yrs.

Another reason to stress to candidates that if they are using STEM because 85% of scholarships for AF/NROTC recipients have this to re-think it if they believe they can after the 1st semester change to business and keep the scholarship.

Chances are in this day and age of budget constraints they will say NO.

I suspect the attrition rate will drop drastically, not only due to changing majors, but the inability to maintain the gpa required.

My curiosity is more about AROTC since their cgpa is much lower than sister services, but their cut in troop sizes are much higher due to the DOD budget.

Can they maintain a 2.0 cgpa for scholarship recipients, or will they push it up? Will they go to the 85% STEM like AF/NROTC? Will they go to something like NROTC where as their end of soph yr they need to be on scholarship? Will they do AFROTC where end of soph yr you must attend field training to become a POC?

Maybe they will do none of this, maybe they will do parts of it, maybe they will do their own thing. I don't know. I am just a citizen like all of us, and wondering how the Army will downsize 15% in manpower from their current AD level.

I know it seems like I am dogging on AROTC, I am not. I am thinking about this as a parent, like gojira, and feel that before you as a candidate makes a choice, or you as parent believes you have 4 yrs of college paid for to understand that both gojira and I have seen as parents kids within months get their commissioning revoked and for gojira as she stated in other posts it is just not about emotionally hugging her child and moving on.

For me this is not A/AF/NROTC, it is about understanding there is no guarantee. NONE.

Crap happens...1 bad semester gpa, low PFT, and it can equate to 4 yrs of a different life after graduation.

We as parents want the best for our kids, but sometimes we as parents are naive.

One thing anyone in the AD world will say is TIMING is EVERYTHING. Imagine gojira if he was born 2 yrs earlier, this wouldn't have been issue. It may be hard for him to understand, but with time comes wisdom, and he and you will realize it wasn't about what he knew or how good he was at it, it was poor timing for him with the Navy. I hope that helps.
 
LDAC

Regarding AROTC, does anyone know what is the failure rate at LDAC? Or the cause of failure (APFT, land nav, not getting along with peers)? What has been the repercussion or remedy for failure?

If the Army wants to ruthlessly trim the size of the rising class of MS4s, this would be an opportune time.
 
Regarding AROTC, does anyone know what is the failure rate at LDAC? Or the cause of failure (APFT, land nav, not getting along with peers)? What has been the repercussion or remedy for failure?

If the Army wants to ruthlessly trim the size of the rising class of MS4s, this would be an opportune time.

EDelahanty,
I am not sure if this answers your question but this was posted by Marist regarding LDAC for summer of 2011:


So far 367 of 6639 Cadets at LDAC have been dismissed without credit. The leading cause has been APFT failures. The second leading cause has been Land Navigation failures. Medical dismissals has been the third leading cause.
 
Last edited:
Marist posted this last summer

So far 367 of 6639 Cadets at LDAC have been dismissed without credit. The leading cause has been APFT failures. The second leading cause has been Land Navigation failures. Medical dismissals has been the third leading cause.

Hello EDelahanty,
I really enjoy your posts.
My son said this was probably the first group. The later groups fared much better. He had a lot of great kids in his group from all over. He said you really need to be in shape. That has to be maintained and come from within each DS. Land Nav, learn all you can before you get there. Then it is a matter of just relaxing and trusting yourself. I think They would hit AROTC before LDAC. It's got to be very expensive to send all the cadets to Ft Lewis.
 
Thanks for your responses, MissIndependence and NorwichDad

The remaining question is: If you fail, say, APFT or Land Navigation at LDAC, is your ROTC career kaput or do you get another chance?
 
Back
Top