In general terms, how common is a max 200 score on the AROTC PMS interview? And, in this competitive environment, is it close to being a "must-have"...a "necessary but not sufficient" kind of asset?
I am not surprised by marist comment that hardly anyone got a scholarship without perfect interview points, and then only half of perfect score applicants got the scholarship.
When I looked into it last year, I felt that bar is set pretty low for max scores for scholar, athlete and leader dimensions. For instance, if I remember correctly, if you have taken any AP class, and your SAT is over 1200, that already gets you a max score for the academic part. This is not a hard thing to pull off. Regarding the subjective assessment by the PMS, well, it does not take a genius to get the full points. You need to be coherent & sincere, looks dedicated for the military career,and be respectful. I don't think PMS sits there expecting the applicants to deliver a nobel prize winning thesis on meaning of life and the role of US military in the post modern society.
Given that scholar, athlete, and leader aspects are scored again and again during the board evaluation phase, and the PMS interview max score criterion is pretty easy to meet in these dimensions, I wouldn't be surprised if a vast majority of the scholarship winners got max scores, and it's a really uphill battle for anyone without the max PMS interview score to receive a scholarship.
Especially, the competition is getting tougher and tougher: so getting max points in the PMS interview is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition by any stretch of imagination.
To receive the max points for the academic section of the interview sheet you must have the minimum of a 3.0 GPA, 24 ACT or 1100 SAT, and at least one AP course.
I agree the real value of the Officer Interview is the ability of the PMS to judge the honest DESIRE of the applicant to serve their country by leading soldiers in harm's way. There is no score for that, but it comes out in the comments at the end. If I were on the Scholarship Board, that's really the only thing I would care about the Officer Interview report... and I'd read those comments very carefully, several times.
dunninla said:If I were on the Scholarship Board, that's really the only thing I would care about the Officer Interview report... and I'd read those comments very carefully, several times.
When I was pregnant with our DD, the OB Doc was a doppleganger for my BIL. He was a top notch OB, didn't matter how good he was, because he looked liked my BIL, I had a preconceived opinion about him.
That's life. That is why for the WCS the boards do not place as much weight on these comments as people think. It is subjective. It is a % of that 20% of the 100% for the WCS.
The candidate may just rub them the wrong way personally and it has no reflection on their ability. No reflection on the interviewer. In this case it is a personal judgement.
Envied, our DS was also informed by his ALO he was the only one to get Max points for the interview in his group. Some actually are very open. DS never saw the score, just was told.
None of the students that I interviewed that got less than 180 received the scholarship. One student that got 180 did receive the scholarship. Less than half of the students that received a 200 received the scholarship.