A few years back, the air force get hammered for having their prep school be a farm club for athletes. They went through a lot to clean it up. I do know that it is still primarily minorities and women; and I'm sure some athletes. But the athletes portion I don't believe is anything like how it use to be. And nothing near what the navy article demonstrates. I don't know the numbers, so I won't try to guess. But I can say that for air force footbal; academy class of 2012 (This year's juniors); when my son entered the academy (He had already received an appointment prior to being recruited); that a very small percentage of the 55-60 kids who were recruited football players that year, only a handful or so came from the prep-school.
So while I believe that the air force has cleaned up most of their "Athletic Farm Club" issues with the prep-school. I do know that more minorities/including women, do go through the prep school. I don't know if most of them are there based on the accepted policy of: "Overall, they are a quality candidate, but they are weak academically only in a particular area". That's the way it's suppose to be. And I know one individual, who is a junior now, who is doing quite well at the academy. GPA in the mid 3's. Minority who went to the prep school. For him, even as a minority, he seems to have been exactly what the prep school was in fact designed for.
So I'm very concerned with articles like this one stated. I believe that while air force may not use it as an athletic farm club as much, it is still being used to get minorities and such in that normally could never get in. Like I said; some I know are doing real well, and seemed to be exactly what the prep-school was designed for. But I don't have actual stats. Just isolated examples. And I'm sure that if there's an athlete they want, and s/he happens to be a minority, then it would be real simply to get them into the prep-school and then the academy.
It is sad, when there are so many qualified individuals from the initial pool of 10,000+ applicants. However; I also understand the need and importance for diversity. Yes, it is important. And with whites still the vast majority of applicants (Doesn't matter about the population, just that whites are the majority of applicants); then mathematically, whites will receive a lot more appointments than blacks, hispanics, asians, etc... And if the incoming class isn't somewhere close to the national demographic culture, that could be cause for concern. I personally would have a problem if the true top-1300 candidates were given appointments, and all but say 100 were white men. It might seem fair, based on the applicants, but it wouldn't make for the best class of cadets and future officers.
So, there really needs to be a balance between diversity and quality. I've never had a problem with some form of diversity, as long as the standards were somewhat maintained. Diversity does go beyond skin color. "I know it does for the air force academy". They use economic, social, single parent, 1st/2nd generation citizen, etc... I think this important. We need urban, suburban, farm/ranch, midwest, coast, rich, poor, etc... for an officer corp. That's what the enlisted corp will be; it makes sense that the officer corp is similar. However; I don't believe in reducing substantially or eliminating standards to reach these goals. E.g. a 450 SAT score is simply unacceptable. I don't care if you're athlete or minority, or both.