FlyingWings
Member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2017
- Messages
- 47
According to the USNA website: “... While the majority of midshipmen will choose their majors freely, the needs of the Naval Service take precedence.” How often do changes like this happen?
they need a certain percentage of mids in STEM majors.
My understanding is that it's a CNO mandate for 70% of grads going into the USN (not USMC) to be STEM majors. To make sure this is met, USNA tries to ensue they start with well over 70% of all mids as STEM majors at the outset because they don't know who'll end up going USMC. As noted, they try to admit folks who have a strong interest in STEM so this typically isn't an issue.
They've also recently changed the economics major (which was a humanities major) to a "quantitative economics" major, which is now a STEM major -- I assume b/c it has more math. That should pull those who were previously were econ (humanities) majors into STEM and help with the numbers.
If they were short on STEM majors, they would probably first strongly encourage those who have the aptitude to choose STEM over a "humanities" major. If they really needed to, I suppose they could "force" someone into a STEM major -- have never heard of it happening.
As a reminder, even the humanities majors take a majority of courses in STEM/leadership/nav, so everyone gets a large dose.
Would you say that if you’re going into a STEM major then there is a very little chance USNA would change it?
All through high school, my DS said he was going to major in some form of engineering (I'm an engineer, both of his older brothers are engineers). He recently announced he intends to major in history at USNA. I'm okay with that - it's his life and he should do what he has a passion for. Can't say I'm not a little concerned that 10 years down the road he won't wish he had majored in an engineering discipline but that's not going to be my problem. But I'm wondering if there will likely be some "pressure" to declare a STEM major when the time comes in semester two - particularly because he will probably validate out of the first year of Calc. I've read they have presentations from each department before Plebes chose there major but do they do a bit more in terms of "encouragement"?
Similar to what NavyHoops stated, I was an International Security Affairs (Poly Sci) Major at USNA and my post Navy employment included being an Engineer, Senior Engineer and then Principal Engineer at GE and a Principal Engineer at Lockheed. One of my roommates was a Latin American Studies (Spanish) Major and his post Navy jobs included a job as a Rocket Scientist (head of a major site/lab for a key contractor).All through high school, my DS said he was going to major in some form of engineering (I'm an engineer, both of his older brothers are engineers). He recently announced he intends to major in history at USNA. I'm okay with that - it's his life and he should do what he has a passion for. Can't say I'm not a little concerned that 10 years down the road he won't wish he had majored in an engineering discipline but that's not going to be my problem. But I'm wondering if there will likely be some "pressure" to declare a STEM major when the time comes in semester two - particularly because he will probably validate out of the first year of Calc. I've read they have presentations from each department before Plebes chose there major but do they do a bit more in terms of "encouragement"?
Congress mandates that 2/3 of Midshipmen graduate with a STEM major