Navy Army AF -which one?

cdh50193

5-Year Member
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Jul 20, 2010
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Just trying to decide on which path to take on. Which one would you recommend? Please consider:

-Overall College experience
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW)
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs
-Uniform coolness :shake:
-Physical training
-Prestige/Respect

If Navy, would you do marine-option?

And whatever you can think of, or any personal experiences would be great.
 
I don't think you can make any decision right now. Do some research; which mission do you like best? Where (sea, air, land) do you see yourself? Which schools are you applying to? Do they all offer all three ROTC?

If you are applying for a scholarship and are content with any service, apply for all three scholarships and see which ones you get picked for and go from there.

Although the Marines are a sub branch of the Navy, they are not similar at all. They have different required classes (Navy option has a few more than MC option), they go on different cruises, have different PT schedules (Marine core has 3 a week, Navy has 2), as well as many other differences.

I personally am only picking Navy and a few reasons went into that decision, including what my parents don't want me to do (MC and Army), my love for the ocean, my indifference to flying, and the schools available.
 
Air Force
-Overall College experience- Air-ish
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW) Good shot, but still hard
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs- Mainly technical
-Uniform coolness- If you like looking like a bus driver...
-Physical training- 1-2 day
-Prestige/Respect- Your in the military, but then again, it is the air force... ;)

Army
-Overall College experience- Dirt
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW)- RW
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs- Killing, telling people to kill, where to kill, and why they should consider killing
-Uniform coolness- New blues are sexy, Alpha greens shows army, but I like blue better
-Physical training- 2-3 days
-Prestige/Respect- Your in the military... Just be wary of marine fan boys

Navy
-Overall College experience- Wet
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW)- FW
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs- Above water, under water, or coming out of water
-Uniform coolness- SDBs- Pimp. FDW- Pimpin
-Physical training- 1-2 day
-Prestige/Respect-Your in the military, however, you may never see or fire a weapon smaller than you are... not necessarily a bad thing though. Tomahawk>4 pirates n a boat with RPGs and M4s

Marine Corps
-Overall College experience- Wet, and dirt
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW) Both
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs- Killing, swimming, flying, repeat.
-Uniform coolness- Oh, you'll get some alright ;)
-Physical training- 2-3 days
-Prestige/Respect- Your in the military, and people tend to say Marines are the most bad ass mofos in town... Just go along with that, haha.



PS I treat all members of the military equal, and in no way am I trying to shoot any branch down, this was all for comedic purposes.


Bottom line: Do what you feel you will enjoy best
 
I think scutrules' advice is sound: apply for all three scholarships and see what turns up. Life is all about walking through doors that happen to open up for you.

I am of the belief that there really isn't that much difference among the services (I know that I'll likely get flamed for that statement!). The life of a Navy Intelligence Officer is not much different than that of an Army or Air Force Intelligence Officer. Adjutant General Corps or Medical Service Corps or JAG, Transportation, etc. is very similar as well. Likewise, Army Rangers or Special Forces is not much different than Marine Corps or Navy Seals. Moreover, I expect that the Professors of Military Science in AFROTC, AROTC, and NROTC have very similar daily routines.

True, you don't find too many tanks in the Navy or too many submarines in the Army, but I think for the bulk of officer ranks, the day-to-day mission is the similar. Most officers in the military are not flying, nor are they in submarines or in an Abrams tank.

The other problem with weighing everything now is that you will find yourself saying, "Hey, that's cool" to a lot of opportunities within each of the services. At the end of the day, you'll end up right where you started: Navy Army AF -which one?

The one thing that I can say is that the vast majority of AFROTC scholarships go to those who are science/engineering-focused. If history is your preferred area of study, Army might be bettter. I would just apply to them all and then evaluate the opportunities at that point.
 
I agree with both above.

Most applicants are not awarded scholarships, so if you are committed to service in all four Branches, by all means apply to all four, including the three academies if you are into the 24/7 experience. For that matter don't rule out the Coast Guard Academy.

If you are not awarded a scholarship, then either enlist or join the Reserves, or get to campus as a freshman and get to know all four (of course it helps to be on a campus that OFFERS all four :) ) and decide then which you would join as a non-scholarship participant. I don't know about AF or Marine Option, but Navy Option and to a much greater degree Army do offer a limited number of full scholarships that are 2 or 3 years to high scoring non-scholarship unit members who are freshmen or sophomores.

As to your third point, "Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs", the Army about 70% larger in terms of personnel than any other Branch, and therefore will have a greater variety of jobs due to its sheer size.
 
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I would think that you have colleges on your list now. Go to them and meet the BN/Det commanders for a one on one.

From there after you have listened to all of their why them, you will be able to whittle it away down to the route you want.

For example, your number 1 college choice may only have NROTC on campus, but AROTC x town. You may decide that you don't like the NROTC det feel and are not willing to do the X town, thus, you go down the list to the number 2 college.

As was stated before AFROTC gives the majority, about 95% to technical fields. I believe that NROTC is this way too, so your major is going to play into the equation.

Also from what I understand AROTC is the only ROTC program that does not require AD in the traditional sense. AFROTC will require you to pay back in the AD AF world for many yrs. It will be your 8-4 job.

If you are interested in flying talk to them about the committment time owed and the % of ROTC cadets that are selected there. For example ERAU has more number of cadets that get UPT than any other det, but statistically they give out less compared to the national avg.

The AF requires 10 yrs as payback for UPT. I do not know what the Army or Navy require. The clock does not start ticking until you graduate from UPT which is 1 yr long, and it can take you 9 mos before you go to UPT. That means you will really not be able to leave for 12 yrs...or 34, and that is before you start talking accepting promotions and PCSing.

It might sound fun and cool now, but take the time to investigate it thoroughly because if you look at it you are only 17, and now I just whisked you forward to show you that when you can leave if you take UPT you will have spent the exact same amount of yrs that you are alive in the AF.

Finally from the scholarship process, the AF is the red headed cousin, they do not do it like their sister services. The AF allows you to take the scholarship to the school of your choice that accepts ROTC scholarships. They award from a nationalistic approach, the college does not matter in the awarding of the scholarship.

Also, one thing to do right now is to start getting your resume in shape. It is important to understand that candidates who apply for ROTC as plan A also go up against candidates who are applying as plan B (fall back in case they don't go the SA route).

Not every ROTC candidate applies to the SA, but 99% of the candidates applying to the SA apply ROTC too. Look on the SA websites and use their incoming class as the marker of what you want to be competitive with. If they have 1350 SAT and you have 1260 use the spring and take the SAT again because they superscore. If you don't have any APs, fill your schedule for SR yr with APs. No athletics, get on the ball...become a life guard, try out for track or golf or LAX. No EC's start volunteering.

Colleges and ROTC look at the WHOLE student, book smart is one thing, but they are more likely to take the kid that iis well rounded with a 3.8 uwgp over the kid that is 4.0 uwgpa and only has academics in their profile.
 
pima said:
Finally from the scholarship process, the AF is the red headed cousin,
in more ways that you listed. For example, a non-Engineering major with AFROTC is awarded a 50% scholarship, as best I could tell when researching, whereas NROTC is 100% (though requiring 85% of all scholarships to be applied to Engineering (40% FY10) or Science/Math (45%FY10). Army is 100% scholarship for 4 years (or in some cases 3 years) while having ZERO stipulations as to college major.

Here is what I found on the AFROTC site:

type 1 – Pays full college tuition, most fees and $900 per year for books. Approximately 5% of our four-year scholarship winners will be offered a Type-1 scholarship (mostly in technical fields mostly related to careers in the Air Force that have a scientific basis such as engineering, chemistry and meteorology, and that the Air Force considers a need for its officers. ).

type 2
– Pays college tuition and most fees up to $18,000 and $900 per year for books. Approximately 20% of our four-year scholarship winners will be offered a Type-2 scholarship (mostly in technical fields). If a student attends an institution where the tuition exceeds $18,000 per year, then he/she pays the difference. All three-year scholarships are type 2.

type 7 – Pays college tuition up to the equivalent of the in-state rate and $900 per year for books. [75%] If a student receives a Type-7 offer but wishes to attend a college/university where they do not qualify under the guidelines above, the student can convert the four-Year Type-7 scholarship to a three-Year Type-2 scholarship. You cannot activate a Type-7 scholarship at a non-qualifying school and pay the difference.
 
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Army
-Overall College experience- Dirt
-In terms of becoming a pilot (RW or FW)- RW
-Variety and extent of opportunities/jobs- Killing, telling people to kill, where to kill, and why they should consider killing
-Uniform coolness- New blues are sexy, Alpha greens shows army, but I like blue better
-Physical training- 2-3 days
-Prestige/Respect- Your in the military... Just be wary of marine fan boys.

I enjoyed this immensely. :thumb:
 
One thing also I have in mind is that I applied Early Decision to one of my schools which is located directly in NYC. (It is NYU). And most likely I'll probably have to commute. If I have to take the 1.5 hour bus/train ride to school for PT in the morning, I don't know how I'll manage to handle this. So I'm going to pay a visit to its host schools for each branch and see how they work it out.

And as of now, I applied for a scholarship only in the AF because of my citizenship status. (Army and Navy wouldn't let me). PLUS I'm going for an International Matters major, or something in that area, so I most likely won't be getting a scholarship. But not getting a scholarship won't hinder me in any ways, maybe I'll try to grab a campus-based scholarship where I'll apply for my first year in college.

But as many of you may have noticed, I'm highly interested in flying. And if anything, I'll go Army as a Warrant officer, but in that case I can't attend ROTC. But I really DO desire participating in ROTC during my college years. So Navy and AF is pretty much all I have as of now, and so far AF is in my mind.

So that's my current situation now.
 
Our DS is non-technical and on a 100% scholarship, so the AFROTC does offer these to non-tech or at least that did for Class 12.

The thing is they only offer about 5% of these scholarships to non-technical, so you have to be extremely competitive.

I have never heard of anyone on this board, even non-tech getting a 50% scholarship.

Type 1 is the rarest and to be competitive for one of these you need to look at the acceptance scores for the AFA because that is who you really are up against.

Type 7 is the most common, but many cadets convert it into a 3 yr type 2 because they do not fall into the parameters of type 7 if they are going OOS or private.
 
aglages said:
What is a 50% scholarship?
. Right. I mean Type 2. $18,000 tuition cap is roughly 50% of the full tuition/fees at most Privates, which range from about $32,000 on the low side to about $43,000 on the high side for this coming year.
 
From a parent who has a non-tech son on AFROTC scholarship I have to say that AFROTC scholarships are incredibly competitive and these kids stats are very high. The majority of them not only get AFROTC, but a lot of merit money from the colleges they apply to, for some they can go full ride just because the college offered it and not due to any amount of money the AF offers. Our DS got merit money from every college and not just a pitiance, for some had he not gotten a scholarship we would have only had to pay a few grand for him to go private our OOS.

A way to try to see if you are going to be one of these is also to be honest about your college matches. Not from any perspective other than if Duke/Princeton/MIT is a perfect match academically you have a good chance of a Type 1, even as a non-technical. If Duke is considered the stratosphere for you than chances are you will not get Type 1.

Remember and never forget 99% of AFA candidates will be applying with you and the AFROTC program does not remove them when they take that into consideration for offering a scholarship. It is cranium to cranium competition.

AFA only accepts @17% of those who start the process. Out of those qualified with noms, about 500-600 will be not apptd, that means they are going plan B AFROTC. Only 5% of all AFROTC scholarships are type 1. So if you do the math you can see the bar you want to set to get a type 1 non-engineering has to be very high...Duke has to be at least a match!
 
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