We made that mistake our first time through. (I figured two months before the deadline sounded pretty darn early. I had no idea that early meant 5 or 6 months before the deadline.) Plus, was it just that your part of the application was done in November? Do you know when the interview was submitted? Our recruiter took a long break through the holidays so even though the interview was in mid November, he didn't send it in until mid January.
I'm also surprised that your son didn't get a nomination at all for USNA. We come from a hyper competitive nomination district so I understand it's hard but I imagine your son's SAT's are well high enough. I imagine he also took the hardest classes and has a great GPA & EC's, despite not having cured cancer.
Have you spoken to someone at Pensacola to ensure that they have received a complete application? Our second time through DS app was misplaced for a few months although the website showed it as tracking.
Good luck to you!
Thanks, basilrathbone! We did have a slight delay in submitting the application, because DS had HS transcripts sent to Pensacola. Interviewer was waiting for transcripts to be sent to him. But the delay was only a few weeks as I recall. By December, I think packet was complete. We did talk to someone in Pensacola, and DS's file appears to be complete.
As for USNA nomination, that decision was actually made by a staff person in the MOC office without any real connection to credentials. MOCs like to "spread the wealth" among their constituents, with no candidate getting a nom to all four SAs. So one kid gets a nom to USMA and another kid gets a nom to USNA and another kid gets a nom to USAFA. This way, three kids get the opportunity as opposed to one kid who can only attend one SA. This is actually a fair system, because it enables three kids to serve our country as opposed to just one kid.
The one thing I can say about this whole selection process is that there are a lot of arbitrary factors that come into play that are totally beyond the candidate's control. Each of the "elite schools", the SAs, and ROTC try to make their rosters represent America. I support this 100%. For example, the SAs use the nom process to distribute the appointments across America. The "elite schools" do this by starting out with a 50/50 distribution of women/men and go from there. So if you have an expected class of 1000, then only 500 come from the male gender. If you then take the 500 number, this works out to about 10 per state on average. If you take 10 per state, then that means less than one candidate per high school and so on and so on. It is a brutal process, but I think it is the best way to give opportunities to as many people as possible, because I think it would be unfortunate if the opportunties became concentrated in our "wealth centers" (i.e., big cities) across America.
The only way for candidates to mitigate this numbers game is to cast their net as broadly as possible. My DS did make a major mistake in this regard (actually, it was my fault for not getting involved sooner), because he missed the deadline for Senator nominations in our state. DS was advised that our local Congressman's deadline was October 31, but the Senators had set a deadline of October 1. When DS focused on this on October 2, he was already way behind and missed the Senator nom process entirely. I won't make that mistake again with DD!!
The only other thing I can say to those just starting this process is this. Just because you might think you only want Navy, you should definitely apply for the opportunities in the other services as well. Contrary to popular belief, there is actually a lot of similarity among the services. For example, what's the difference between a military police officer in the Army and a shore patrol officer in the Navy? What's the difference between a transportation officer in the Air Force, and a transportation officer in the Navy. What's the difference between a helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard and a helicopter pilot in the Navy? These are actually the bulk of the junior officer grade jobs in the services. A lot of folks start this process thinking they are going to become elite submarine officers, but the odds are that they will get assigned elsewhere, like Finance Corps, by the time commissioning comes along. If my DS had solely focused on the Navy when he started down this road, he would have had very limited opportunities at this point.
So much of our lives is actually guided by fate.
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