- Joined
- Apr 9, 2009
- Messages
- 219
I just got home from Mt Pleasant where I had my interview with my congressman's academy panel.
There was a retired USAF, two Board of Education members, and the academy coordinator.
The first part of the interview went quite routinely, but interestingly, the retired USAF asked me if I would take a nomination to Annapolis or West Point (I intend on going to USAFA). I said I probably would not take a nom to anywhere else but USAFA since Air Force has been my dream for 5 years.
He kind of grilled me on that.
He said I should complete the apps for USNA and USMA by Monday, and call the coordinator (who was in the room) to let him know.
At the end of the interview when he walked me out of the room, we talked about the engineering at USAFA. He said Army and Navy beat out Air Force (at 7th place). Then he went back into the room and retrieved a paper and gave it to me, thanked me, and I left.
The paper is a response to the Daily Report on US News and World Report's 2010 rankings of best colleges. The article was written by the USAFA chief scientist. The article pretty much explained why USAFA was ranked below Navy/Army. There is a section of the article which says "Comparison to West Point/Annapolis and impact on the US Air Force Academy engineering programs:"
A notable line: "...cadet learning is our most important metric of our success...we do not typically base either our pedagogy or curriculum on those numbers...we focus on the knowledge of the needs of our constituency and current state-of-the-art engineering education pedagogy."
I don't understand his reasoning for giving me this paper while suggesting that I apply to USMA/USNA.
I'm not trying to beat-down the other service academies, but honestly, I don't want to go to USNA/USMA. They're not my dream academy. He said it's a $200,000 education. I don't care about the value of the education in dollars. I only care about going to a service academy that I want to go to.
Although he suggested I apply to the others, I do not intend to. Is this a bad choice?
There was a retired USAF, two Board of Education members, and the academy coordinator.
The first part of the interview went quite routinely, but interestingly, the retired USAF asked me if I would take a nomination to Annapolis or West Point (I intend on going to USAFA). I said I probably would not take a nom to anywhere else but USAFA since Air Force has been my dream for 5 years.
He kind of grilled me on that.
He said I should complete the apps for USNA and USMA by Monday, and call the coordinator (who was in the room) to let him know.
At the end of the interview when he walked me out of the room, we talked about the engineering at USAFA. He said Army and Navy beat out Air Force (at 7th place). Then he went back into the room and retrieved a paper and gave it to me, thanked me, and I left.
The paper is a response to the Daily Report on US News and World Report's 2010 rankings of best colleges. The article was written by the USAFA chief scientist. The article pretty much explained why USAFA was ranked below Navy/Army. There is a section of the article which says "Comparison to West Point/Annapolis and impact on the US Air Force Academy engineering programs:"
A notable line: "...cadet learning is our most important metric of our success...we do not typically base either our pedagogy or curriculum on those numbers...we focus on the knowledge of the needs of our constituency and current state-of-the-art engineering education pedagogy."
I don't understand his reasoning for giving me this paper while suggesting that I apply to USMA/USNA.
I'm not trying to beat-down the other service academies, but honestly, I don't want to go to USNA/USMA. They're not my dream academy. He said it's a $200,000 education. I don't care about the value of the education in dollars. I only care about going to a service academy that I want to go to.
Although he suggested I apply to the others, I do not intend to. Is this a bad choice?