Started thinking about this whole branching process while finishing a second cup of coffee, dangerous I know.
When my first son went through this it was fairly simple, every cadet received an OMS score, they were placed on the National OML according to their score. The Army decided how many AD 2LTs they needed for that year and CC drew the cutoff line at the bottom number for AD. During the process they included those cadets from SMC's that went AD. That was it.
I imagine it's not that simple now considering the addition of the Special Branching Program. This is what got me thinking, again dangerous.
My thought is that CC will need to go through all the Special Branching requests first, assign the branches to the cadets that meet the requirements and are selected. All of these cadets will receive AD even if they would have fallen below the AD Cutoff. It seems logical that they would now have a total number for these cadets, they would then look at the number of AD slots approved by the Army, subtract the number of Special Branching cadets and SMC cadets from the AD allotment. They would then end up with the number of remaining slots that can be given to the rest of the cadets. Makes sense but I could be completely off base as well.
Going with the above process if they only release the AD/Reserve numbers first, then I would assume they already know the branches for those cadets in the Special Branching Program, they would then assign branches to the remaining cadets.
For cadets that are not in the Special Branching program it seems that the available AD slots are going to be fewer then in the past since many slots will already be taken before branching even begins. How much fewer will depend on how many cadets have used the Special Branching Program.
For last year and this year I imagine the numbers for Special Branching will be similar since these cadets were Juniors and Seniors when the program started and had already locked in their majors. I can see in the future this becoming a much larger factor in branching since many cadets will choose majors that will allow them to take advantage of the Special Branching Program. Unlike the other services the GPA and testing will not be as important for AROTC cadets in this program since the requirement is only a 2.75 GPA and an ADSO to get active duty if they have the right major. Granted most of the participating branches hold only 50% for this program, I think I read 70% for Engineer.
Well done with my coffee and thinking for the day, sorry for the ramble.