SA required to accept at least one?

For a slate submitted under a "Principal and 9 ranked Alternates" method:

If the Principal Nominee is not qualified, the academy must appoint #2. (yes, I know you said "declines appointment" and that is different from "not qualified" - just pointing out another scenario) :wink:

ummmm; I did say that. "#2 on my list of 3".
3) Ranked: The MOC prioritizes all 10 nominees. The academy MUST start at the top and take the first qualified applicant.
Same scenario that you posted. Now; if this individual they appoint, turns it down, the academy doesn't HAVE TO go back to the list and continue on. (Basically, the rest of the thread discussion).
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AJM. ALL nominees who did NOT receive their MOC's available slot; ARE ALL PLACED in the National Pool. So YES, the wait list must come from the National Pool.

The part you might be confusing is the "SLATES" trying to be filled. There are a lot of different slates being filled. If an appointed individual turns it down, does the academy HAVE to go back to that slate and choose a replacement? NO they don't. HOWEVER: If they DO go back to that slate; e.g. presidential; then the ONLY INDIVIDUALS that they can "Consider" to fill that slot, MUST be on that slate. So yes, if a MOC's appointee turns it down, and the academy CHOOSES to fill that MOC's slot, then they can ONLY CHOOSE SOMEONE from that slate of 10 nominees. But that person, being s/he was on a slate, is automatically put into the national pool upon not being appointed initially. Inside of that pool, they are on NUMEROUS RANKINGS.

1) National Pool Rank: This is the list that the ACADEMY can choose from to fill the class with however many they need to get to the number they want to appoint.
2) MOC Rank: This is the list(s) that you are on that has you ranked in case the person from this list who DID receive an appointment turns it down, and the academy CHOOSES to fill this slot.
3) Presidential Rank: This is the list of the 500+ individuals who have a presidential nomination, but was NOT one of the 100 appointees. If one of the 100 appointees turns down the appointment, the academy may choose to go back to this list to fill this slot.

There are others too like ROTC, MOH, and other military related nominations. The question begs then: "Why would the academy CHOOSE or NOT CHOOSE to fill a slot if the original appointee turned down the appointment. Because if the academy got greedy and didn't fill these slots FROM THE SLATES that originally nominated the individuals, then the next year, that MOC would have an EXTRA available slot. Here's the Worst Case Scenario to scare the living crap out of admissions at the academy.

SCENARIO: The academy got greedy, and EVERY slot that got turned down, they filled themselves from the national pool with who they wanted, and they didn't back fill the MOC's available slot. On average, each MOC has usually 1 vacancy per year. That's 535 appointees. (435 representatives and 100 senators). Now; if ALL these MOCs had 2 available in a particular year, and they went ahead and each presented 2 slates, the academy would be bound by law to fill EACH of those slots for each MOC. In theory, that could be 1070 appointment. That's MORE than was given for the ENTIRE Air Force Class of 2016. That doesn't even leave room for all the OTHER military slates like presidential. That leaves NO ROOM for any other nominee at all. This would be a suicide trap on the part of the academy.

So yes, sometimes they CHOOSE to not fill a MOC's slot if the original appointee turns it down. This happened in my state this year. We have 2 senators and only 1 representative. Between them, we had "5 vacancies". However; when one of the 5 appointees turned it down, the academy only kept the other 4. They didn't give the 5th appointment to our MOC. Our MOC will have an additional one available next year. But the academy has to be careful doing this. But they have a lot of experience. They also have to balance this with HOW MANY ARE GRADUATING. Remember; a MOC can only have 5 at the academy at one time slated to them. If they have 2 in one year and 2 in another and 1 after, they could go a year with no available slots. And if not careful, they could even have 3 available in the same year. The academy definitely doesn't like this to happen. It's a major balancing game.
 
AJM. ALL nominees who did NOT receive their MOC's available slot; ARE ALL PLACED in the National Pool. So YES, the wait list must come from the National Pool.
Candidates are appointed, by law, from the National Pool by order of merit. This is not necessarily true for the USNA waiting list. Maybe I should have said "national pool competitive" instead of "national pool eligible".


SCENARIO: The academy got greedy, and EVERY slot that got turned down, they filled themselves from the national pool with who they wanted, and they didn't back fill the MOC's available slot. On average, each MOC has usually 1 vacancy per year. That's 535 appointees. (435 representatives and 100 senators). Now; if ALL these MOCs had 2 available in a particular year, and they went ahead and each presented 2 slates, the academy would be bound by law to fill EACH of those slots for each MOC. In theory, that could be 1070 appointment. That's MORE than was given for the ENTIRE Air Force Class of 2016. That doesn't even leave room for all the OTHER military slates like presidential. That leaves NO ROOM for any other nominee at all. This would be a suicide trap on the part of the academy.
This is actually a good argument for making every effort to fill each opening every year with MOC primary/principal nominations instead of going to the national pool.
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Any selection process must survive legal scrutiny. An arbitrary selection process as you describe, whether to use the MOC's nominations or the national pool would not survive this scrutiny. The selection process at USMMA is basically the same. Here is a recent legal decision as to the exact same situation which you have presented:

http://www.dot.gov/ost/ogc/Domine.pdf

Please note, that contrary to your arbitrary selection method, USMMA understood from federal law that it was mandatory to return to the MOC's list if the primary/principal turned down an appointment. This is as Luigi has stated. Secondly, USMMA feels that to capture desired students, that effective April 1 each year, it is necessary to finalize the class as rapidly as possible in order that all offers could be made prior to the May 1 college offer deadline. Therefore, on April 1 they shift from the MOC's list to the National Pool. I think USNA, and probably the other major SAs have similiar processes. Actually the lawsuit alludes to this for both USNA and USMA. I don't think USNA is quite as concerned about the May 1 deadline as USMMA is and extends the April 1 swithcover closer to May 1, but it is a similiar process.

To present an arbitrary selection process is not fair to either the SAs or the candidates.
 
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AJM. The academies DO fill all the MOC slots. Or I should say do their best to fill all slots. But you can't fill a class with just MOC slots. On average, there is 1 availability for each MOC. That's only 535 appointments. You need another 500-700 appointees. Yes, there will be 100 presidentials and about another 150 other military/prep school/etc... But that still leaves 300-500 vacant slots. You can't get away from the pool.

And as far as the pool goes, you still don't understand. I know you keep saying you do understand, but you don't. You keep mentioning the national pool by RANKED order, which is true, and then the wait list; as if they are totally 2 different and unrelated items. They aren't. They are very much related to each other.

Put it this way. EVERY person on the wait list is in the national pool; but not EVERY person in the national pool is on the SAME wait list. And I emphasize SAME wait list, because there are MORE THAN ONE!!! This is the part I think you might be misunderstanding.

For easier understanding, lets just say that there are 5 SLATES from which an appointment can come from.
1. Senator #1
2. Senator #2
3. Representative
4. President
5. Academy

We all know that you can be on MORE THAN ONE slate of nominations. You can have both senators, the representative, and a presidential nomination. That's 4 slates you are on. Now; assume the senator got his one appointment. (NOT YOU). Same with the other senator and representative. (STILL NOT YOU). Presidential gave out their 100 appointments. (NOPE, STILL NOT YOU). You are now relegated to the "ACADEMY'S SLATE". (Better known as the NATIONAL POOL). It's where all the nominees who didn't get an appointment go to.

Now, this doesn't mean that you are no longer on the other 4 slates. In the national pool, each person is STILL associated with their initial slates. Some just their senator. Some on both senators and/or their representative. Some and/or/possible the presidential slate. And you are ranked on each of these slates. If ANY of those slates have someone turn down an appointment, and the academy still wants to fill THAT SLOT, they will look at the others on that slate, who are also in the National Pool. Those individuals, SPECIFIC to that SLATE, are on a WAIT LIST. Basically 9 leftover for each senator and representative; close to 400+ for the presidential, etc....

Now; again to make it simpler; lets assume that ALL the senators/reps/presidential/ROTC/etc... slates got their slots filled. Everyone either accepted it, or if it was turned down, someone on that slate (Wait list) was offered and accepted it. So, for the sake of argument, ALL SLOTS ARE FILLED.

There will still be approximately 300-500 appointments that the academy needs to give out to get the class to the 1050-1300 number they want. This is the academy's slate. Just like the senator's or rep's, but instead of a slate with 9 remaining names, it's a slate with about 1300 names on it. This is from the national pool. Where everyone is ranked. So, the academy gives out the 325 that they want to fill the class. BUT because they know that approximately 80 of them are going to turn it down, because they received an offer from another school or whatever, they will create their own "Smaller List" (AKA Wait list), with approximately 80 names. But remember; if instead, 150 turn down the appointments, the academy will add more names to this list. That's why some can be notified in June of an appointment, even though they were NEVER informed of being on a "Wait List".

That's the best; albeit long winded; way I can explain it. If we still misunderstand each other, we'll just have to move on with life. In a nutshell; there are NUMEROUS Wait Lists. But those wait lists are made up of individuals who are ALSO in the national pool. Again: ALL members on the wait list(s) are in the national pool; but NOT ALL members in the national pool are on the SAME wait list.
 
This entire thread prsents a good example of why the overly political congressional nomination process should be scrapped.

In my opinion of course.
 
This entire thread prsents a good example of why the overly political congressional nomination process should be scrapped.

In my opinion of course.

The nomination process is not perfect, it works in my opinion. An important point not being discussed is the fact regardless of the nomination, you still have to be determined to be "full qualified" to get an appointment. So if a MOC picks Johnny, whose dad happens to be a big contributor, as his Principal nominee. If Johnny is not determined to be "fully qualified" he is not getting an appointment.

I know this was discussed before but I will be interested in the demographic of the Coast Guard academy in comparion to other SAs. I am not too concerned about having X percentage of cadets/midshipman from a specific part of the country.
 
This entire thread prsents a good example of why the overly political congressional nomination process should be scrapped.

In my opinion of course.

Well, from a coast guard position, where you're only bringing in 250 cadets/plebes, that definitely is understandable. You couldn't give an equal distribution among all states and districts. No matter how hard you tried to be fair to all the states, it's just not possible.

But when you're bringing in 1000-1300 cadets/plebes, this is a good way to distribute slots equally throughout all the states/districts. It also allows for a good diversity of students. But yes, when you are dealing with 12,000+ applicants for 1000-1300 slots, it can be very challenging.
 
AJM. The academies DO fill all the MOC slots. Or I should say do their best to fill all slots.

Are you arguing with yourself or am I missing something? My entire focus has been on the fallacy of the following statement which your above statement now seems to contradict:

Here is the CATCH-22: If the person the academy offers the appointment to on the slate TURNS IT DOWN; the academy isn't FORCED to go back to that slate and take the next person in line. They can simply say that the MOC will have an extra slot available next year. This is very common. It happened to me this year. We had an appointee who turned down an appointment. The academy didn't take another candidate from the slate; and they were all qualified. They decided to take someone from the "National Pool".

Just for clarification, "tak(ing) someone from the "National Pool"" does not constitute "fill(ing) all the MOC slots".

Second point:

And as far as the pool goes, you still don't understand. I know you keep saying you do understand, but you don't. You keep mentioning the national pool by RANKED order, which is true, and then the wait list; as if they are totally 2 different and unrelated items. They aren't. They are very much related to each other.

Put it this way. EVERY person on the wait list is in the national pool; but not EVERY person in the national pool is on the SAME wait list. And I emphasize SAME wait list, because there are MORE THAN ONE!!! This is the part I think you might be misunderstanding.
One more time. I am only referring to a single wait list. A wait list promulgated by the Naval Academy on or about the last couple of weeks in April each year. A specific wait list referred to by USNA Admissions as "The Wait List". A wait list that serves two purposes. It contains the most qualified of the national pool candidates to fill in for some candidates who decline their offer. It also contains the second most qualified candidate on some MOC lists in order to provide a backup for primary/principal candidates who have not yet accepted their offers.
 
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So if a MOC picks Johnny, whose dad happens to be a big contributor, as his Principal nominee.
I wonder how often that happens. Hopefully not ever - but possible with that kind of slate. A good reason for MOCs to use Boards to select their slates and P-noms.
 
Just for clarification, "tak(ing) someone from the "National Pool"" does not constitute "fill(ing) all the MOC slots".
you will ALWAYS have a national pool. There aren't enough MOC slots to fill a class of 1000-1300 cadets/plebes. It's just not possible. And the rare times that the academy chooses to not back fill a MOC slot where an individual turned down an appointment; it's usually because the academy is looking at the balance of the class. One example would be that filling the slot might mean the MOC won't have any slots the following year. Again; just one example. But there has to be a national pool. You can't get enough appointees otherwise. Well, you could; but you'd have to change the law to allow more than 5 per MOC at the academy. Because 5 x 535 is 2675 cadets. That still leave 1325-1725 remaining slots.

Second point:

One more time. I am only referring to a single wait list. A wait list promulgated by the Naval Academy on or about the last couple of weeks in April each year. A specific wait list referred to by USNA Admissions as "The Wait List". A wait list that serves two purposes. It contains the most qualified of the national pool candidates to fill in for some candidates who decline their offer. It also contains the second most qualified candidate on some MOC lists in order to provide a backup for primary/principal candidates who have not yet accepted their offers.

And I will say One More Time. It is NOT a SINGLE WAIT LIST. It is NOT a Specific Wait list. In "Theory", there could be more than 535 wait lists. (All of the Various Nomination Slates/slots). The person who only has a presidential nomination, and happens to be the 101st nominee; is in fact on a wait list should someone with a presidential nomination/appointment turn it down; AND the academy chooses to fill that 100th slot. But that person is not on the MOC slate/wait list in Georgia. S/he is also on the National Pool Wait List for the roughly 40% of appointments that ARE NOT CHARGED to a slot such as a MOC, Presidential, etc... And again; I believe THIS is the "Wait List" you keep referring to.
See above
 
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I feel for the posters just starting the process reading this forum. I think their mind is spinning in pain trying to grasp everything that has been posted since they are so new to the process.

There really should be a smilie of an aspirin bottle on this site. :biggrin:
 
Actually, I have found the thread quite interesting. One thing's for sure: A candidate needs to focus on submitting the best package possible, and trust the system. What happens then is out of the candidate's control.
 
Actually, I have found the thread quite interesting. One thing's for sure: A candidate needs to focus on submitting the best package possible, and trust the system. What happens then is out of the candidate's control.

Very well said.:thumb:
 
I feel for the posters just starting the process reading this forum. I think their mind is spinning in pain trying to grasp everything that has been posted since they are so new to the process.

Agreed. A lot of it was confusing and not necessarily pertinent. So, to summarize the originial question:

Assuming that a MOC has at least one 3Q'd nominee, is a service academy required to offer an appointment to that nominee? Or is it possible for a slate of nominees to be submitted and an offer not be extended to a single one on that slate?

It was answered in the very next post:


If a MOC has an opening at an SA, and nominates either a slate of 10 for a "competitive appointment" or designates a "Principal Nominee" with alternates...then one of those nominees WILL be appointed to fill that slot.

The only way that won't happen is if there are 10 for a "competitive appointment" and NONE of the nominee's meet the federally mandated minimum requirements for admission.

This is EXCEEDINGLY rare but has happened.

Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83

If A MOC has an opening, submits a slate, and there are sufficient qualified candidates, it will be filled.
 
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An additional slight twist. The actual slot used for an appointee isn't firmed up until after bct is over and the appointees become cadets. The academy can and does move filled slots around. E.g. an appointee came in with a presidential and another from the state had a MOC. If the one from the MOC quits during bct, and the one with presidential makes it through but also had a nomination from the same MOC, the academy may move that person to take the mocs slot instead of the moc having 2 slots the following year. Just a little info to show that it a complex system with a lot of balancing being done.
 
An additional slight twist. The actual slot used for an appointee isn't firmed up until after bct is over and the appointees become cadets. The academy can and does move filled slots around. E.g. an appointee came in with a presidential and another from the state had a MOC. If the one from the MOC quits during bct, and the one with presidential makes it through but also had a nomination from the same MOC, the academy may move that person to take the mocs slot instead of the moc having 2 slots the following year. Just a little info to show that it a complex system with a lot of balancing being done.
A competent MOC staff would not allow underhanded shenanigans such as this to exist. They would get a rendering from the SA immediately after I-Day and I'm positive that most do just as a matter of closing out the year. From US Code:
(h)The Superintendent shall furnish to any Member of Congress, upon the written request of such Member, the name of the Congressman or other nominating authority responsible for the nomination of any named or identified person for appointment to the Academy.
 
If a MOC doesn't not nominate someone (for whatever reason) does that space get filled from someone on the 'wait-list'?
 
Once attending an SA, is there a way to find out to whom your appointment was charged?
 
Once attending an SA, is there a way to find out to whom your appointment was charged?

yes, your ALO can find out. Usually their LOD (ALO's Boss) has the list. Right after BCT is over with, the nominations are finalized. In case some drop out during bct for whatever reason, the MOC's will then know how many they have for the upcoming year which the board starts convening not too long after the academic year starts. Sometimes the end of september, sometimes in october. Anyway; if you check with your ALO, you can find out.
 
If a MOC doesn't not nominate someone (for whatever reason) does that space get filled from someone on the 'wait-list'?

No, a MOC's slot can't be used by another MOC or another state. The way it works is:
1. MOC's get their slots. (However many that is for that year)
2. The military gets their slots. (e.g. presidential, VP, ROTC, MOH, etc...)
3. After all of these slots are filled, the academy is allowed to give appointments to however many more they need to "Fill the class".

Mind you, the appointments the academy gives to fill the class must still be candidates who HAVE a nomination. The difference however is; even though they have a nomination from a MOC, presidential, etc... those nomination authorities AREN'T charged for those slots. I.e. A MOC can have up to 5 cadets against their slots at the academy at any one time. If the academy, in their act of "Filling the class", happens to grab 8 more candidates who had nominations from the same MOC, that MOC isn't being charged for 9 slots at the academy. Just the 1 that MUST come off his/her slate. The other 8 were the academy's choice to help "Fill the class'.
 
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