Armor Officer?

[Marist College ROTC]

To attack this question from another angle, if you are an SMP Cadet in an armor unit, your chances of being branched armor are pretty close to 100%.

[Jcleppe]

Originally Posted by Marist College ROTC

To attack this question from another angle, if you are an SMP Cadet in an armor unit, your chances of being branched armor are pretty close to 100%.

Now you've gone and done it.....you've added another spoke to the wheel of speculation.

Cadets would drive themselves crazy trying to work out all the senarios in the branching system. I would imagine most of them just don't have the time to even begin. I still feel the best advice is to work hard, do your best, and take advantage of the opportunities your given.

[khergan]

To further clarify a very confusing bunch of numbers, I got the data on exactly how numbers are crunched for LDAC itself.

What really matters is your dimensional scores, of which there are 17. Each of these dimensional categories helps determine whether or not you get an overall N, S, or E at camp. However, the overall rating itself does not give raw points, it's the number of dimensional Es that does. All the overall rating does is give campus cadre a good idea of how well you did at camp.

Now, in terms of dimensional points, you get 100% of available points for an E, 85% for an S and 70% for an N. What that effectively means is that the more dimensional Es you get, the more points you can earn total out of LDAC. I haven't looked at the slides recently, but I believe there is an 11.5 or 11.25 point for PLT TAC evaluation. That is comprised, again, of points determined by the 17 dimensional scores.

As Jcleppe referenced, each dimensional E does indeed count for points. At camp, they finally specified the point numbers, and each dimensional E you get boosts you .21 points on the total OMS. To make that number significant, you can look at RECONDO which gives you .5. So, in other words, getting 3 more dimensional Es on your overall eval will net you more points than getting RECONDO.

From the example above, a person with a 3.2 GPA and 12 dimensional Es would get 32 + ~6.6 points = 38.6 points from those two categories. A person who had a 3.6 but only 2 dimensional E would get 36 + .42 = 36.42 points.

Obviously there are a lot more factors (PT, extracurriculars, PMS eval, CULP, etc), but the bottom line is that dimensional Es at LDAC do matter, and they do translate into points which can directly affect your accession score and therefore your career.

[dunninla]

thanks for explaining how the LDAC 17 Dimension scoring is done.

So, on that 11.25 point component of the OMS of 100 total, all E is 11.25, Half E Half S is 10.41, and All S is 9.56

Like this:

11.25 All E
9.56 All S
10.41 Half E Half S
7.88 All N
8.72 Half S Half N

So the difference between all E and all S is 1.7 points, or the same as a cumulative GPA difference between 3.0 and 3.17.

The bottom line is that when a cadet is finishing up MSIII year in school, the cumulative GPA is basically done, set, finished as far as OMS scoring is concerned. The only place a cadet can move up the OML, or down the OML, at that point is to nail or fail Land Nav, score highly or not in the 17 dimensional scores, etc. There is a multiplier though, that makes the LDAC even more heavily weighted: when the PMS sees the LDAC scores, this will affect the PMS' subjective opinion of the cadet. This will cause the PMS to upgrade, or downgrade, the PMS score portion of the OMS. So in reality, LDAC performance counts even more than the 11.25 Dimensional scoring, the 4.5 Land Nav score, and the other LDAC score which I think is 4.5 points. It will also cause the PMS to add or subtract up to 2 PMS points.

So the true effect of LDAC performance is:

1.7 points difference b/w all E and all S
2 points PMS reaction to LDAC scores
3.7 total points.