Odd not to interview for a congressional nomination?

flying8764

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We do have completed applications to 4-2 senators, VP and the congressman for our district.My DS contacted both senators for Iowa and they informed him they would be reviewing all the applicants without interviews and letting all know by Feb. I was quite surprised they do not conduct interviews.

Has anyone else ran into this?
 
In our region only one interviews (my DD is scheduled for Monday). Both of the senators do not interview. She received letters from both of them, saying her application for nomination was complete and they'd let her know by the end of January. We're in Missouri.
 
In our region only one interviews (my DD is scheduled for Monday). Both of the senators do not interview. She received letters from both of them, saying her application for nomination was complete and they'd let her know by the end of January. We're in Missouri.
Thanks! We did receive letters from all saying his were complete, just odd after reading everyone's updates and questions that it seems many are being interviewed. That is why he reached out by telephone to make sure everything was okay and then they both told him they don't interview.
 
Agreed that it's odd! The waiting and not knowing are hard. At least with an interview my DD will get *some* feedback/vibe. I think the weird thing about no interviews is that there is just that letter :confused:
 
I had to go through this process two times literally decades ago. The first time I had an interview with only my rep, I did not interview with either Senator. The next year I had exactly zero interviews. It is left up to the reps and senators how they select noms. A classmate of mine is now a representative and he personally conducts the interviews. Most reps and senators never even see the nomination applicants and only meet them after they are selected to an academy.
 
Each MOC can determine their specific process on how they issue NOM's. In places where interviews are held, it consists of a committee of the people the MOC has delegated that responsibility to. You don't actually meet/interview with the MOC if that is what you are asking. Also, in places where there are a very small number of applicants, they may issue NOM's without doing any interviews.
 
Believe it or not, and this will kill some of you in highly competitive areas....In some areas the applications for Nominations are so few that they have plenty to go around and do not need to interview to choose between applicants. Don't know if that is the case where you live, but I would take it as a good sign.
 
Iowa may not be as competitive but it was a pretty good number of candidates. Feel pretty blessed that he got 3 nominations, we were hoping for just one and that was to the USNA. He received 2 to USAF and 1 to USNA. Now we wait. Read others situations and incredibly lucky to have moved from a more competitive area Chicago to Iowa 10 years ago. Funny how God works especially when you are going through a divorce and you hope it wont throw your kids off their dreams and goals. I wish everyone could get their dreams and attend but God has a plan and we have to believe in that from our end in Iowa. My Ds's plan B is he secured a 4yr NROTC scholarship to Purdue his dream college since he was 9 yrs old. I am super proud of him as he has wanted to serve and be an officer since he was a lil kid. Plan B is just as exciting as plan A and will get him to his goals either way......and I exhale................ :)
 
We do have completed applications to 4-2 senators, VP and the congressman for our district.My DS contacted both senators for Iowa and they informed him they would be reviewing all the applicants without interviews and letting all know by Feb. I was quite surprised they do not conduct interviews.

Has anyone else ran into this?
I've been told that most senators do NOT interview. In my state (OK), the senior senator only has the applications reviewed by a committee and the junior senator, who is new, had interviews. Our congressman always interviews.
 
Iowa may not be as competitive but it was a pretty good number of candidates. Feel pretty blessed that he got 3 nominations, we were hoping for just one and that was to the USNA. He received 2 to USAF and 1 to USNA. Now we wait. Read others situations and incredibly lucky to have moved from a more competitive area Chicago to Iowa 10 years ago. Funny how God works especially when you are going through a divorce and you hope it wont throw your kids off their dreams and goals. I wish everyone could get their dreams and attend but God has a plan and we have to believe in that from our end in Iowa. My Ds's plan B is he secured a 4yr NROTC scholarship to Purdue his dream college since he was 9 yrs old. I am super proud of him as he has wanted to serve and be an officer since he was a lil kid. Plan B is just as exciting as plan A and will get him to his goals either way......and I exhale................ :)


We moved from the Huntsville AL area intense military, Intense brains, more engineering phd's than anywhere in the country. The year our 1st competed there were 65 applicants for 10 congressional nominations. We had moved to a rural county in TN a number of years earlier. He was in They had enough Nominations for all applicants w/o interviews.

We believe in staying positive, but please remember a Nomination is not the Holy Grail, 1st got got 2 Nominations 2 appointments (Chose Naval).... Next son had 3 nominations and secured no appointments (Thought he looked better on paper) . So many factors.

By the way 4 year ROTC's are getting hard to come by, have to look really good, the ROTC program is getting stiffed so often that they are shifting to 3 years after you prove yourself in the first year. Course that was army, not sure about Navy.

Best Wishes!
 
The year our 1st competed there were 65 applicants for 10 congressional nominations.
Unless you meant 65 people applied to 1 service academy in the same district in the same year, it was not 65 people competing for 10 nominations. There are 4 service academies, each MOC can nominate 10 people per vacancy, and each MOC gets 5 vacancies per service academy. That means most years there will be 40 total nominations for an MOC to give out.

AL-05 only had about 40 people apply this year, so it looks like the level competition has fallen off a little bit from prior years.
 
Unless you meant 65 people applied to 1 service academy in the same district in the same year, it was not 65 people competing for 10 nominations. There are 4 service academies, each MOC can nominate 10 people per vacancy, and each MOC gets 5 vacancies per service academy. That means most years there will be 40 total nominations for an MOC to give out.

AL-05 only had about 40 people apply this year, so it looks like the level competition has fallen off a little bit from prior years.

Thanks for the layout. always great to throw out info like an expert that is totally wrong. SORRY FOLKS.
So what was probably more likely was that there were 65 ish Candidates for all the nominations?

When we first started trying to understand this Nomination thing we thought it was all a big secret. I am awful with numbers, but even my Husband who is good with numbers had a hard time understanding the Nomination distribution. Of course we did not know about this wonderful resource at that time. We were just repeating what a friend who works with candidates in the area said. now we know, if you want the facts, just have to ASK HERE.

We are working with our 3rd candidate by the way (my Daughter-in-Law's Brother) getting a little more savvy but still feel like we are reinventing the wheel every time.

Please everyone before you jump in and say "Why are you helping, the kids are supposed to be doing it themselves" I will state, from my point of view, none of the candidates in question would have made it through the process alone. My Son who is a 2nd this year at USNA has been rock solid since the day he got there! At second class parents weekend this year his CO Commander paid my husband a huge compliment and asked him how he got our son so prepared to be at the Academy. So save the lectures.

Sorry I got more than a bit off topic.

I am in Awe of those young people who do the application process alone, I truly am. I simply don't agree that you should not help, the key word being help I guess. So save the lectures.

Frenzymando , Will keep your name handy in case we have future questions. Just curious, is there a place to get those numbers, or are you plugged into the system?
 
Thanks for the layout. always great to throw out info like an expert that is totally wrong. SORRY FOLKS.
So what was probably more likely was that there were 65 ish Candidates for all the nominations?

When we first started trying to understand this Nomination thing we thought it was all a big secret. I am awful with numbers, but even my Husband who is good with numbers had a hard time understanding the Nomination distribution. Of course we did not know about this wonderful resource at that time. We were just repeating what a friend who works with candidates in the area said. now we know, if you want the facts, just have to ASK HERE.

We are working with our 3rd candidate by the way (my Daughter-in-Law's Brother) getting a little more savvy but still feel like we are reinventing the wheel every time.

Please everyone before you jump in and say "Why are you helping, the kids are supposed to be doing it themselves" I will state, from my point of view, none of the candidates in question would have made it through the process alone. My Son who is a 2nd this year at USNA has been rock solid since the day he got there! At second class parents weekend this year his CO Commander paid my husband a huge compliment and asked him how he got our son so prepared to be at the Academy. So save the lectures.

Sorry I got more than a bit off topic.

I am in Awe of those young people who do the application process alone, I truly am. I simply don't agree that you should not help, the key word being help I guess. So save the lectures.

Frenzymando , Will keep your name handy in case we have future questions. Just curious, is there a place to get those numbers, or are you plugged into the system?
I would guess that it is more likely that it was 65 for all of the service academies, but really it's just a guess. I'm from AL-05 and they told us this year that 30 something(I want to say 38 or 39) people applied for nominations total, as in for all of the service academies combined. If there were 65 applying to just one service academy, USMA, from AL-05 just several years ago that would mean there has been a gigantic drop in applications in the last few years, which I don't think has happened.

I'm not plugged into the system, I'm just a candidate that happens to be from AL-05 and they gave us this information.
 
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