You would have to know more about our district to understand the perspective. We don’t have any “Academy grads” in our family. My son’s goals don’t involve checking boxes. Never have and never will. He can stand on his own merits and will put in the necessary work to do more than just ”pass” the CFA and amy other requirement. Success is a result of his natural work ethic. He is motivated by family members like his grandfather who never had the opportunity to go to college, but joined the army at 17 and rose to the rank of Sergeant Major. His grandfather is one of many relatives who had very little support or examples, but picked themselves up and became successful due to an innate drive and love of their country. He also has a father who came out of poverty to become a highly successful attorney. His mother’s a pretty tough little cookie, as well.
My son comes from the best this country has to offer and I have no doubt he will be successful, no matter what he chooses. Candidly, if I were an interviewer, first on my list would be looking for a candidate who demonstrates integrity and a healthy dose of humility over athletics. Respectfully, a trained seal can be taught to throw a ball. The ability to gain the trust of that seal and get it to follow you even when you don’t have a herring in your pocket? That’s a leader and that’s my son. Thank you
Stealth_81 is about as trustworthy as you can get here. I understand neither of you are trying to butt heads here, and so I'd like to offer some outside perspective.
I'll open up by saying, yes, your son is competitive without a sports resume. That being said,
I was an applicant to the c/o 2024. I had about everything you see in appointees - straight A's, top 3% academically, 1510 SAT, several diverse leadership roles covering hundreds of people, hundreds of hours of community service, multiple AP courses with passed tests, family military legacy, many people mentored and trained, multiple jobs at the same time, recommendations from Navy admirals and nationwide public speakers, started clubs, helped guide workplaces and clubs through leadership transitions, service missions, two nominations, great interviews, considered almost a shoe-in by ALOs, cleared medical, and coming from a school district that sends 5-10 students per high school to service academies every year.
What I was missing what any kind of athletic credit. I never played a sport in high school so that I could focus on leadership opportunities through the theatre department. I didn't put enough effort into my CFA training and scraped by with a barely passing score. I saw my peers with objectively "less impressive" resumes make it into the academy because they had average CFA scores or a semester or two of sports on my resume. Sucks when you work so hard for something but you miss out because you didn't listen to the instructions well enough. I reapplied, added sports to my resume in my first year of college, and vastly improved my CFA scores. These, amongst other reasons, is what propelled me to an appointment to USAFA 2025.
Now I understand your situation of where you live, how COVID has affected you, and how your situation looks apart from mine or from others', don't think I don't. We're all here to help each other and give each other advice and help get each other into the academies, and when you have people like Capt_MJ, flieger83, Insider, and Stealth_81 willing to give you advice, there's not much of a better source to hear from. They know more than most of us likely ever will.
Couple points I'm trying to make here: First, DS needs to knock it out of the park on the CFA. Like Stealth_81 said, the athletic portion of the application does look at the dedication, teamwork, discipline developed through team sports, but it also helps gauge (along with the CFA) if a candidate will be able to handle the athletic and physical stresses of BCT, Doolie year, and the rest of the time up there. If sports aren't really a possibility, and you can show aspects of dedication, teamwork, and discipline through other resume items (which I have no doubt your son can), that just leaves the CFA. Admissions still needs to see good CFA scores, and if sports aren't on the resume, they probably expect to see even better scores than you might expect.
Again, I don't know exactly what your situation looks like, and if sports (of any kind, honestly) legitimately is not a possibility, then ignore this paragraph. It will come out in the interviews that he truly did not have the opportunity to compete, and USAFA will take that into special consideration. Though if they are, keep in mind that DS is competing with other candidates who have incredible resumes like his, but still also found a way to get some team sports on there. USAFA likes to see that little extra bit of effort to diversify a resume. Everyone else is right that just trying to check boxes isn't a great mindset, but when a candidate goes out of their way to lock in every little advantage that they find, that shows a huge lot about commitment, which admissions is looking for. That's why reapplicants tend to do well, is because they get brownie points for showing their commitment to USAFA and to the AD Air Force.
None of us are here to attack you, your son, or your family, believe me. We are all here to see success and every single person here is pulling for DS to get that appointment and kill it as a cadet. I've read what you've put down about him, and he's got the skills to pay the bills. He reminds me of me. But last year, I was in the mindset that what I had was good enough and that I didn't need to change how I did things in order to get in, and it came back to bit me. I write all of this to warn you guys not to fall into the same mindset. USAFA is incredibly competitive and many of us have to step outside the comfort zone to max out our chances of getting in. You're right in that an interviewer is going to look for a candidate who demonstrates integrity and a healthy dose of humility over athletics. But that's not all they look for. Saying that an interviewer looks at character first is not equivalent to saying that they don't then move onto looking at the resume. Appointment to USAFA is a huge puzzle, and a file is going to look better when it has no pieces missing. There are a lot of people on this forum, and when you see people that have been here for 10+ years, I can only suggest reading every word of their responses. They might say something you don't want to hear, but in the end, it's because they know better than we might. They've seen what makes a candidate become an appointee, and some of them are even part of Admissions.
TL;DR: Your son has a competitive resume. You're not setting him up for disappointment. Get your son to max out the CFA. Have him play any sports that he can, but if that is not a legitimate possibility, let USAFA know and they
will take it into account. Remember that there is still a year left for him and that he ought to use that time to give himself the best chance possible - no cutting corners. And in the end, heed the advice of those older and wiser than we. It'll turn out better almost every time.