So, when my son applied to USMMA, he had missed the deadline to apply to his two senators. Upon the advice of the academy (since USMMA allows any state rep from that state) he applied to 4 state representatives. Every one of them called to ask why he had applied to a rep not from his district... so he explained the academy policy. Two reps said flat out, 'respectfully, we will nominate students from our district.' One rep said, 'we called your rep and you look like a strong candidate, so we are going to let you work through him.' Our local rep gave our son a nomination. One thing to remember about nominations... each rep gets 10 nominations - so collectively the US House of Reps has 4,350 nominations and the Senate has 1,000. USMMA class of 2019 only had 1600 applications. As a side note, to my son's knowledge, he was the only applicant in his interview group that put USMMA as his #1 choice. All the other kids in the interviews had USNA or some other academy as #1. I think that your chances of getting a nomination sky rocket under that scenario.