I have a question about West Point (and other service academies) admit applicants. There are several people in my class at my high school looking to apply to USMA in a few years (myself included) and I was wondering how they handle to equally qualified candidates from the same school.
My friend and I are both two sport atheles (I swim and play water polo; he plays football and wrestles). We both have 4.0+ GPA's, are both taking similarly rigourous course loads (I am slightly ahead in math), have identical ACT scores, are both in a prestigious leadership program at school, and are both in NHS.
I have a ton of respect for him because he is a very honest, hardworking kid, and I would consider us very similar applicants.
So my first question:
Does USMA (or any SA) take in to account the number of people they admit from a certain school. Do they say "Oh, we already accepted some one from school X, we'll pick the next candidate from school Y even though there is another qualified candidate from school X solely to "mix it up"?"
And then the catch:
My friend and I are almost identical in our qualifications except for the fact that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on and so forth all went to West Point, going back to the early 1800's
I cannot overstate the fact that I believe my buddy would make an excellent army officer and is in fact a great person and am in no way trying to disrespect him or his family but I was wondering how much of a role legacy plays in admission, and if so should I not get too excited about the Academy accepting another applicant after accepting an equally qualified "legacy"? I know I can prepare myself an incredible amount but there is no way that I can change where my parents went to school.
My friend and I are both two sport atheles (I swim and play water polo; he plays football and wrestles). We both have 4.0+ GPA's, are both taking similarly rigourous course loads (I am slightly ahead in math), have identical ACT scores, are both in a prestigious leadership program at school, and are both in NHS.
I have a ton of respect for him because he is a very honest, hardworking kid, and I would consider us very similar applicants.
So my first question:
Does USMA (or any SA) take in to account the number of people they admit from a certain school. Do they say "Oh, we already accepted some one from school X, we'll pick the next candidate from school Y even though there is another qualified candidate from school X solely to "mix it up"?"
And then the catch:
My friend and I are almost identical in our qualifications except for the fact that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on and so forth all went to West Point, going back to the early 1800's
I cannot overstate the fact that I believe my buddy would make an excellent army officer and is in fact a great person and am in no way trying to disrespect him or his family but I was wondering how much of a role legacy plays in admission, and if so should I not get too excited about the Academy accepting another applicant after accepting an equally qualified "legacy"? I know I can prepare myself an incredible amount but there is no way that I can change where my parents went to school.