Well stated, LLP. Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective.
I think that he nailed it. Now, my only experience with state schools is at Mass when I was taking some QI courses and at TAMUG for QI classes and when performing ABS surveys on the Clippers and the research vessels. I consider Mass to be a bit more regimental than Texas, but neither compare to the KP experience.
As to the sea time, my exposure to the school ships was, as stated above, with the TEXAS CLIPPER and TEXAS CLIPPER II. In the weeks before the cruise, there seemed to be a party atmosphere among the cadets as they did deck maintenance before the voyage.
As to the KP cadet shipping, I felt that it prepared me for sea far better than what a school ship would have done. Like anything, however, it is what you make of it. I would get a lot of comments onboard that I was "working a lot more than that last guy". It IS hard work, or can be, but I was young, in shape and loved it. By the time I was half way through my time on my second ship, the first engineer pretty much just gave my work list at the beginning of the day and left me alone, unless there were bigger jobs that required more hands. I don't know how they assign ships these days, but I was onboard 6 ships and certainly felt ready to sail on a license by the time I got out of school.
As far as shore time? LLP got that right, too. Then again, if you are at sea, you are onboard to work. There were days when work had to be done (no piston pulling for me, but certainly hand cleaning superheaters-typical for the Lykes Pacers-would take up a day), we would do it. For the most part, I found that if you spent a day or two working instead of heading ashore at that port, you would get time in the next one. Most times, however, we would get our nights free and that was when we wanted to go ashore anyway. More importantly, that reflected what happens in the real world. Even to this day, I travel quite a bit for my job and rarely get "tourist time" at the places I go to. To be honest, I really don't care and that was probably ingrained during my sea year.
Tough choice, but I can say that as a Kings Pointer, especially when you may want to come ashore, it carries quite a bit of weight when looking for work. Just the other day, I was meeting a client that I hadn't met before and it certainly made an impression. For me, however, the best part of KP was the cost. If you can get accepted, it would certainly be tough to turn down an appointment.