Number of VA senatorial nom applications - class of 2019

In case anyone's curious - I was told by the senators' nominations liaisons that Sen. Kaine received about 400 applications for SA nominations this year, and Sen. Warner received about 500 applications. (Why would 100 more apply to Sen. Warner than Sen. Kaine? Beats me.) Both use competitive nomination process (no principal nomination designated).

Could be a difference in their deadlines. One would think (hope) once both deadlines pass, the number should be very close.

Bingo - Sen. Kaine's deadline was September 15, while Sen. Warner's was about two weeks later.

I would also think one reason why is not every candidate understands the nomination system. If you look here many candidates ask can I apply to my Sen. if I already applied to my Congressmen? I do agree I think the biggest reason is that Sept 15th is early for MOCs. Many schools in NoVA don't return until Weds. After Labor Day, and if they didn't spend the summer working on it, they would be hard pressed to get it completed by that early date.

If nothing has changed from years past the Sens talk to each other and do not duplicate lists.

It is a little frightening if you are a candidate to read those numbers because in essence the odds are 1 in 17 (10 on the slate for the big 3} or @6% that gets the nomination. Than expand that to only 1 of them gets charged, the other 9 may or may not be sent to the national pool. So if my math is correct it is 10% of 6% or less than 1%

Before I freak anyone out. VA is known to send a lot to the SAs because of two reasons.
1. It has many military bases and that means many candidates also have a Presidential nomination to come in on before hitting the national list
2. No VA has an exceptional school system. Fairfax county budget is larger than the lowest 8 states. They always have several of their HS on national list ranks from magazines like USNWR, Money, Newsweek, etc. The majority of their HS students avg 1350 on the SAT. That is the avg. which also is on par with the median scores for the SAs

A couple of years ago I read here that one USAFA class had @20 VA cadets....just don't know how the breakdown was...see above regarding Presidential. It would be more common of a cadet coming in that way in VA than in WV. So don't read too much into that number....just trying to give hope!

I seem to remember someone recently posting a list (or link to list) of how many mids from each state make up the student body - but I can't find it in searching the boards or Googling it. Does anyone else remember seeing this?

Update: Final number for Sen. Warner (VA) was "more than 700 applicants." (They got 200 in on the last day!)

I am not shocked by that number. In years passed it has always been @750.

Thanks, Pima. DS was invited to interview, and the email said that the format will be three 15-minute individual interviews with members of the nominations committee. Don't know how many they are interviewing, but given the format, you could have more than one person in each of the 20 interview slots if two or three candidates are meeting with different members of the committee simultaneously.

Hopefully this info will help someone in future years.

That is interesting. I have never heard of a round robin style interview format.

They may have more than one day of interviews.

Pima said:

That is interesting. I have never heard of a round robin style interview format.

They may have more than one day of interviews.

Click to expand...

This was the way it was done last year. And "round robin style" is the perfect description, Pima.

If I remember correctly from DS's experience last year, he was offered 3 days with multiple time slots on each day from which to choose. Move 'em, move 'em out.

Pima said:

That is interesting. I have never heard of a round robin style interview format.

They may have more than one day of interviews.

Click to expand...

This is how it was done last year with our junior senator. It was a day-long event, interviews started ~8 am, lunch with the senator, and ended mid-afternoon. Interviews were split among committees based on the candidate's ordered preference of SA (my DS met with 3 groups of individuals, mostly navy and army backgrounds). I believe there were ~250 candidates being interviewed.

USNA02, that's exactly the same as this year - 1 short day in Richmond, 2 longer days in NoVa.

I can understand the three if the candidate submitted three SAs. However,the way I was reading Mammas post was that they are not separating them out I to SAs, but instead of having large interview groups they broke it down to smaller ones and a round robin type.

Our DS did interviews, and the group was about 6-9 people. He only requested USAFA, thus the members that had military background were all AF. The kids wanting all three would have done 3 interviews if selected for all 3. IOWs the kid that wanted WP went into a different room than those asking forUSNAor USAFA.

Our Senators did not talk,and basically if you were asked to interview you had @50%chance of getting the nomination. They had 18-20 kids that interviewed, and they only had 1 day of interviews. They whittled it down from ©400 to 20.

It would not shock me at all if the VA Senators if they only interview 45 candidates for each SA slate.or in the 5-7% range of the original pool.

Pima said:

I can understand the three if the candidate submitted three SAs. However,the way I was reading Mammas post was that they are not separating them out I to SAs, but instead of having large interview groups they broke it down to smaller ones and a round robin type.

Our DS did interviews, and the group was about 6-9 people. He only requested USAFA, thus the members that had military background were all AF. The kids wanting all three would have done 3 interviews if selected for all 3. IOWs the kid that wanted WP went into a different room than those asking forUSNAor USAFA.

Our Senators did not talk,and basically if you were asked to interview you had @50%chance of getting the nomination. They had 18-20 kids that interviewed, and they only had 1 day of interviews. They whittled it down from ©400 to 20.

It would not shock me at all if the VA Senators if they only interview 45 candidates for each SA slate.or in the 5-7% range of the original pool.

Click to expand...

From what I remember, my DS had 3 interviews with 3 different committees, but he only listed 2 SAs on his MOC application. Interviews were one candidate per 3-5 interviewers at a time -- I think they were ~10 min each interview. He had a classmate who only applied to USMMA, but still had 3 10-min interviews. All nom interviews for this MOC were on this one day (unless you had a conflict and scheduled a phone interview), and for us was a 2.5-3 hr drive the night before.

His other two MOC interviews were much different -- one group of interviewers, and scheduled over several days.

I haven't received any information or emails about when the interviews will take place. Is there a reason why?

Updating this with new info re Sen. Kaine's process - they are still reviewing applications, they haven't decided if they will do interviews, and all decisions will be announced in December. Could be notified straight up or down that an applicant got a nom, or could be called earlier for an interview.

Hope this helps VA applicants.


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