Am I Competitive to Receive Marine-Option NROTC Scholarship

Intended Major: Electrical Engineering

Stats:
SAT- 1510
GPA- 5.4 weighted (3.9 unweighted)
10 APs (the rest were Honors Classes)
Gifted Program in School all 4 years
Rank-4/448

PFT: 246
-Pull-ups: 10 (advice on improving pull-ups)
-Sit-ups: 95
-3-Mile Run: 18:00

Extra-curricular:
-Started a nonprofit (10-12; Founder & President) on focusing on assisting those in need (made face-shields for hospitals during COVID when there was a face-shield shortage, donated hand sanitizer to orphanage during COVID)
-President and former Board-Member of Cultural Organization (10-12)
-Track and Field (11,12); made regionals my first year in 2 events (1 mile and 2 mile) and cut mile time by 1 minute to 4:58 and became fastest long distance runner on track team
-Electrical Engineering (11-12): I taught myself electrical engineering concepts, such as its fundamentals, network theorems, and electrical machine. I also built circuits on my own.
-Programming (10-12): I taught myself and am proficient in Python. One of my favorite projects was making a program that calculated investment growth.
-Mu Alpha Theta (9-12): I was a Math Tutor. One of my best experiences I had as a tutor was helping a student get from a B to A- in Algebra 2.
-Science National Honor Society (10-12): I was a Science Tutor. My experience taught me to stay on top of my studying because I would learn the material ahead of time and learn how to effectively teach it, which I would then teach it to my friends and classmates, helping all of us succeed on Bio tests.
-Volunteering at Hospital/Nursing Home (9,10,12) This was my first exposure to the healthcare system. Assisted recreational therapists and nurses in taking care of dementia patients. I helped feed, transport, and assisted in programs for the patients. I also had a lot of patient interaction, which helped improve my Spanish because the majority of the patients only spoke Spanish.
-Altar Serving (9-12): Altar Served at my school and parish (since I was 9 years old) all throughout high school. Helped bring the community of faith together and made my faith stronger.

-Cross-Country: 12th grade; I don’t know how it will turn out. Looking good so far.


Awards (So Far):
-Faith and Revelation Student of the Year Award (9th)
-AP World History Student of the Year Award (10th)
-Honors Dual Enrollment Spanish III Honors Student of the Year Award (10th)
-PSAT Commended Scholar (11th)
-2nd place in 1600m Districts Track and Field (11th)
-2nd place in 3200m Districts Track and Field (11th)
-Honors Dual Enrollment American History Student of the Year (11th)
-Instrument Ensemble Student of the Year (11th)
-AP Scholar (11th)

LOR:
-History Teacher (10/10): Taught me in 10th and 11th and awarded me Student of the Year for both years. I show a keen interest in class for history and learning. Has complimented me saying that I perform very well in class and facilitate a learning environment with my desire to learn and ask questions.

-Math Teacher (8/10): Calculus teacher for 11th and 12th. Originally doing bad in the class and barely finished the first semester with a B+. I improved my grades and participated more in the second semester, finishing off with A for the semester. Teacher said that I would get a 5 and I think I got a 5 on the AB Exam.

-Volunteer Supervisor (9/10): Personally commended for my volunteer work, saying that I come in early and stay late. I was able to adapt to the system very quickly and worked well with the other medical professionals and patients. I did her filing, research, and other admin work that made her job easier.
-Track coach (9/10): I went from one of the worst runners on my team to becoming the best mile and two-mile runner on a decently-competitive distance team by the end of my first year. Went to regionals and districts in my first year doing track. Personally knows me and recognizes that I’m a hard worker.

Essays:
-Improving my calculus grade in a semester and/or improving mile time within one season -> how I can break down barriers and difficulties relatively quickly, which will make me an effective Marine Officer.

-My experience as tutor, explaining difficult concepts effectively and efficiently, which helped me and my classmates succeed -> me being able to break down steps and processes and effectively explain them to ncos and younger enlisted personnel will make me an effective communicator and succeed in missions and thus a better Marine Officer.

-Studying Electrical Engineering: It’s a technical degree, thus giving me a technical way of thinking. Many of the world’s richest CEOs are engineers and it is largely because they focus on the product/project as opposed to the traditional MBA-method of business meetings and business-development. In a similar way, the technical mindset that an EE degree will provide will make me focus on the mission first and everything else second, making me and the rest of the platoon/command/battalion play a much more efficient role in missions, thus making me a better Marine Officer.

Thanks for reading this far. Please give me back honest feedback.

Your academic, leadership, service accomplishments, ratings, contributions are impressive. Your 3 mile is outstanding. You come across as reflective, thoughtful, goal and more importantly purpose driven, and sincere in wanting to serve - great.
Great that you can articulate service and continue to articulate the IMPACT of that service.
Try to continue to distinguish where you made an impact in these roles. you provided a good foundation to build on.
Please do your own searching of this board to see recent salient guidance on pull-ups. It's all there for you to see with a little initiative. You can improve using those techniques.
Noting this many positive things someone has said to you over the years comes across at-least to me as annoying so try not to do that in the application or interview. My third grade saxophone teacher told me once I did a pretty good job playing "Greensleeves". My kindergarten teacher told me I looked handsome in my blue shirt one day. I also got 7th place in a 5-6 year old individual medley swimming race at my town pool, but I haven't mentioned these things except now in the over 40 years since. Not even when I got home on those days to my family. They are not in a plaque in my office.
My worry for you is just to make sure you do some mock interviewing and structure your answers in the Situation-Task-Action-Result STAR model or something similar - if you name-drop everyone who said something nice, you'll come across as immature and lacking self awareness.
And, be succinct/ organized - your note above is a little verbose.
On your essays, big red flag on what you wrote - avoid taking credit for what you will be excellent at while serving before you've served for 1 minute - I will make X/Y/Z better as an officer or I will be outstanding at 1,2,3 as a platoon leader - don't take a victory lap when you haven't even started the race. reword to discuss how you believe these traits would be strengths and how.
The technical major is often an advantage through not necessarily for marines or Army IMO.

I think you have a more than excellent chance as long as you stay out of your own way with avoiding braggadocio in your application and interview. Prepare for the interviews and avoid putting 4th place in the playground kickball tourney on your application.

Lastly Marine scholarships are rare - consider applying to all branches if your goal is to serve.

Good luck and thanks for your willingness to serve.

Herman_Snerd said:

Your academic, leadership, service accomplishments, ratings, contributions are impressive. Your 3 mile is outstanding. You come across as reflective, thoughtful, goal and more importantly purpose driven, and sincere in wanting to serve - great.
Great that you can articulate service and continue to articulate the IMPACT of that service.
Try to continue to distinguish where you made an impact in these roles. you provided a good foundation to build on.
Please do your own searching of this board to see recent salient guidance on pull-ups. It's all there for you to see with a little initiative. You can improve using those techniques.
Noting this many positive things someone has said to you over the years comes across at-least to me as annoying so try not to do that in the application or interview. My third grade saxophone teacher told me once I did a pretty good job playing "Greensleeves". My kindergarten teacher told me I looked handsome in my blue shirt one day. I also got 7th place in a 5-6 year old individual medley swimming race at my town pool, but I haven't mentioned these things except now in the over 40 years since. Not even when I got home on those days to my family. They are not in a plaque in my office.
My worry for you is just to make sure you do some mock interviewing and structure your answers in the Situation-Task-Action-Result STAR model or something similar - if you name-drop everyone who said something nice, you'll come across as immature and lacking self awareness.
And, be succinct/ organized - your note above is a little verbose.
On your essays, big red flag on what you wrote - avoid taking credit for what you will be excellent at while serving before you've served for 1 minute - I will make X/Y/Z better as an officer or I will be outstanding at 1,2,3 as a platoon leader - don't take a victory lap when you haven't even started the race. reword to discuss how you believe these traits would be strengths and how.
The technical major is often an advantage through not necessarily for marines or Army IMO.

I think you have a more than excellent chance as long as you stay out of your own way with avoiding braggadocio in your application and interview. Prepare for the interviews and avoid putting 4th place in the playground kickball tourney on your application.

Lastly Marine scholarships are rare - consider applying to all branches if your goal is to serve.

Good luck and thanks for your willingness to serve.

Click to expand...

Thank you, can you specifically point out which things I should avoid in my application

unchartedengineer said:

Thank you, can you specifically point out which things I should avoid in my application

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I'll leave the lion's share of this discussion to others...like @Herman_Snerd

All I will suggest is this:

There's a fine, but easily identifiable, line between confidence and cockiness. Be sure to err on the side of the former, when conducting interviews.

There's no question that your stats/successes/involvement is stellar. Very, very impressive. On those data points alone, I'd take a stab and say that your "chances" are great.

That said...interviews are KEY to continued success. When you find yourself deep in the interview experience, do your best to avoid coming across as cocky. Take your successes, and find a way to translate them into a discussion on how you can apply your work ethic, focus, and successes to better your unit/service/nation. Your application (inclusive of awards, grades, varsity letters, LORs, etc) will speak for itself. Your interview time is an opportunity to explain how you can make your future unit better than you found it.

SOG-SA said:

I'll leave the lion's share of this discussion to others...like @Herman_Snerd

All I will suggest is this:

There's a fine, but easily identifiable, line between confidence and cockiness. Be sure to err on the side of the former, when conducting interviews.

There's no question that your stats/successes/involvement is stellar. Very, very impressive. On those data points alone, I'd take a stab and say that your "chances" are great.

That said...interviews are KEY to continued success. When you find yourself deep in the interview experience, do your best to avoid coming across as cocky. Take your successes, and find a way to translate them into a discussion on how you can apply your work ethic, focus, and successes to better your unit/service/nation. Your application (inclusive of awards, grades, varsity letters, LORs, etc) will speak for itself. Your interview time is an opportunity to explain how you can make your future unit better than you found it.

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Thank you, this advice was very helpful

All good point above. Your PFT is low and would not be competitive based on the past few years. The PFT is one of
the more important parts of the MO application process. For 2021-2022 USMC is adopting the plank as a replacement for the sit-ups. (see below)


Your run time is outstanding. Pull -ups is where you have the biggest opportunity for improvement - it is also the biggest "point getter" in terms of improvement. Review the attached and begin a program to max out the pull-ups. (See below)

https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/PullupTrainingGuide.pdf


Overall - great job in preparing yourself for the next step. Get your PFT score up into the 275+ range and you will be a solid candidate. Good luck!

EEBTTF said:

All good point above. Your PFT is low and would not be competitive based on the past few years. The PFT is one of
the more important parts of the MO application process. For 2021-2022 USMC is adopting the plank as a replacement for the sit-ups. (see below)

Marine Corps to require planks on physical fitness test

Bye-bye crunches.

www.marinecorpstimes.com

Your run time is outstanding. Pull -ups is where you have the biggest opportunity for improvement - it is also the biggest "point getter" in terms of improvement. Review the attached and begin a program to max out the pull-ups. (See below)

https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/PullupTrainingGuide.pdf


Overall - great job in preparing yourself for the next step. Get your PFT score up into the 275+ range and you will be a solid candidate. Good luck!

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Thank you so much for the Pull-up Guide. I didn’t know that they switched from sit-ups to plank. The article says that it will only go into effect in 2023, so?

unchartedengineer said:

Thank you so much for the Pull-up Guide. I didn’t know that they switched from sit-ups to plank. The article says that it will only go into effect in 2023, so?

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It will be officially changed in 2023, but due to COVID - they will use the plank this year just like last year.

Active duty Marines will have the choice of crunches or the plank this year.

unchartedengineer said:

it is largely because they focus on the product/project as opposed to the traditional MBA-method of business meetings and business-development.

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Careful here - you are stereotyping and could alienate some readers/evaluators. I'm an Engineer with an MBA and there was not one iota of MBA curriculum that pushed some "traditional MBA-method" of business meetings and business development". I know lots of former military officers with engineering degrees who have MBAs and I'd say that the MBA gave us some tools of measurement and management that Engineering did not give us but has hardly pushed meetings of any kind.

unchartedengineer said:

Many of the world’s richest CEOs are engineers and it is largely because they focus on the product/project as opposed to the traditional MBA-method of business meetings and business-development

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What is your source of this very broad conclusion? Can you cite a reference?

As @SOG-SA stated above, it is this kind of statement that meanders over the fine line of cockiness versus confidence. If you said this to an interviewer with an MBA and an engineering degree (such as BGO @OldRetSWO) you might not make a positive impression.

AROTC-dad said:

What is your source of this very broad conclusion? Can you cite a reference?

As @SOG-SA stated above, it is this kind of statement that meanders over the fine line of cockiness versus confidence. If you said this to an interviewer with an MBA and an engineering degree (such as BGO @OldRetSWO) you might not make a positive impression.

Click to expand...

OldRetSWO said:

Careful here - you are stereotyping and could alienate some readers/evaluators. I'm an Engineer with an MBA and there was not one iota of MBA curriculum that pushed some "traditional MBA-method" of business meetings and business development". I know lots of former military officers with engineering degrees who have MBAs and I'd say that the MBA gave us some tools of measurement and management that Engineering did not give us but has hardly pushed meetings of any kind.

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Thanks for letting me know. I didn’t recognize it at first and it was a mistake on my part.

Yes, I agree that there are some amazingly talented engineers that are wildly successful CEO's but your citations are not scholarly journals.

I'm not disagreeing with you on your opinion, I am pointing out that you need to be mindful of HOW you present them, lest you shoot yourself in the foot during an interview.

Herman_Snerd said:

I think you have a more than excellent chance as long as you stay out of your own way with avoiding braggadocio in your application and interview. Prepare for the interviews and avoid putting 4th place in the playground kickball tourney on your application.

Click to expand...

+1

unchartedengineer said:

-Studying Electrical Engineering: It’s a technical degree, thus giving me a technical way of thinking. Many of the world’s richest CEOs are engineers and it is largely because they focus on the product/project as opposed to the traditional MBA-method of business meetings and business-development. In a similar way, the technical mindset that an EE degree will provide will make me focus on the mission first and everything else second, making me and the rest of the platoon/command/battalion play a much more efficient role in missions, thus making me a better Marine Officer.

Click to expand...

I would get rid of that whole paragraph and start over. How about just saying "I think EE is fun and challenging." My DS#2 wrote in his NROTC essay, "I love big machines and the Navy has the biggest ones." He said something like, "I'd like to be in charge of the catapult on a carrier." He meant it and had the academic chops to go along with it, just like you. He also got the scholarship.

cb7893 said:

I would get rid of that whole paragraph and start over. How about just saying "I think EE is fun and challenging." My DS#2 wrote in his NROTC essay, "I love big machines and the Navy has the biggest ones." He said something like, "I'd like to be in charge of the catapult on a carrier." He meant it and had the academic chops to go along with it, just like you. He also got the scholarship.

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Yes. This is what I really needed. Thank you so much. Will definitely use this. Again, thank you so much.

Pull ups. You're leaving PFT points on the table. Work to max it.

EEBTTF said:

It will be officially changed in 2023, but due to COVID - they will use the plank this year just like last year.

Click to expand...

Hello - thank you very much for the information you provided and shared. You mention the Plank as an alternative to the crunches and the link provided mentions it for the Marine PFT - just to clarify - does this also apply to the test for the scholarship applicants or just once already in the ROTC/Marines?

Also, is there a chart of times/scores for the plank as a reference? The article mentions 3 mins 45 seconds as the max - is that accurate?

Thank you for the clarification and guidance.