I think most recipients do one thing wrong which Vista touched upon. They get the scholarship and spend the rest of the year being a kid having fun. They spend the summer hanging out and playing with friends...nothing wrong with that, but like Vista stated, it is 20 minutes of your life for a paycheck!
Our DS was fortunate because his Dad was an officer that also went through ROTC. He was a stickler with DS and on him. Not insane, but just enough to make sure his form was perfect, and made him get accustomed to not training in a normal way. He would wake him up at 6 to go for a run, even if DS only went to bed at midnight.
~ College you will have sleep deprivation. Hanging out late with friends, dorms are noisy and can keep you up, last minute papers, but you will still have to get up at that time to do PT and lack of sleep can impact your scores
Bullet also would make him run in every type of weather. He would run at the height of the heat of the day. He would run in light rain. Both of these things will impact your score if you don't train in less than perfect conditions. THE PFT will be scheduled for a specific day and unless the weather is insane it will still occur. If you only run when it is 80 and sunny, you are doing yourself no good!
Bullet also had him do sit-ups and pushups outside. Harder to keep a perfect form on unlevel ground! Some units will do PT outside on the parade ground. You usually have to keep resetting your body, while the clock ticks away. When he had that accomplished, Bullet amped it up for him, allowing him to do it inside but push ups were one arm side. Threw in butterfly kicks before doing sit ups.
The point being is DS easily maxxed right out of the gate and for the rest of his AFROTC career when he was home that was how he trained. During the winter break he ran early in the morning so his lungs were use to taking in the cold air. During the summer he would run late in the afternoon when the temps were the highest. He also would run as soon as the sky looked like rain was on the way, highest humidity and the road would be slippery during the run. His target goal was always 10 minutes for a 1 1/2 mile. If he was slower than 10:30 (7min mile) he was running every day until he was at 6:45 min mile.
Those are the type of cadets you will meet! That is AFROTC, so I am sure for AROTC he probably would be average!
Good luck!
PS Vista that pic made me LMAO . It brought back memories of the first time DS trained with Bullet! DS got mad at him during the sit up portion. He even stopped and yelled at him. Dad, you aren't counting. Bullet: I am you just happen to be not completing it properly for me to count it! DSs 1st job in AFROTC was flight PT instructor and became the guy that said 41, 41, 41!