Exchange program
afapadad,
Congrats on soon having two cadets! Wow, two separate roller coasters to ride. Better hang on!
While I can’t speak for the original poster, I can shed a little light on the exchange program. As to being hard to set up, a cadet/mid who wishes to exchange must be *very* high up in their class and begins the application process during third class year (soph), typically to exchange during fall of second class year (junior). They are typically looking for someone who has stellar grades and no demerits or infractions. Someone they can trust will represent the academy well and not get into any shenanigans. As to how this affects a career, I would say slightly enhancing to the cadet/mid career. Real military career, no one will really care. Many cadets/mids do the exchange to be closer to home (or a significant other - don’t scoff, I’ve seen it happen), as well as for the obvious reason of being interested to see how the other services ‘do’ the academy thing. No offense to anyone here, but the WP cadets I know who have exchanged were usually amazed at how lax the other academies were, not in terms of academics certainly, but discipline. They could not believe what people would get away with! I know of a WP cadet from WA state who exchanged to AFA. He was ranked about 10th in his class academically, had heard from others who had gone before that his semester at AFA would be a breeze compared to WP, and figured, hey, I’ll be much closer to home too, so why not?
There has been a big push at WP in recent years to get cadets to exchange to the military academies of other nations as well, both for spring break/summer and full semesters. Again, one must be top of their class and a generally, all-around stellar cadet to take advantage of these opportunities.