gdesena - good point on the common courtesy side of this. With the objective being to gain admission to your 1st choice SA it is good to see all possibilities. Many times I see people who are trying to get a nom to all SA's even though it seems apparent, at least to me, that they do in fact have a clear top choice. I have even seen kids holding an appointment to their 1st choice SA continue to strive to achieve an appointment to another SA - not because they will actually attend but rather because they seem to want to get accepted to all of them. I have a philosophical problem with this scenario and it is this issue that your common courtesy guards against. if a candidate is holding a nom to the SA they really want to attend, they serve their own interest best by limiting the other SA's noms and trying to get more noms to that first SA. On the other hand, if they hold a nom to a 2nd choice they are better served by trying to get a nom to the 1st choice. It is very complex and you bring up an important issue that candidates in this situation need to think about.
The fact of the matter is that if you have no intention of attending one of the SA's then to get a nom (possibly appointment) to that SA may be limiting another candidates opportunity for something that the first candidate has no intention of actually doing. If a candidate does not yet have a clear 1st choice, then I don't see a problem with collecting as many noms to as many SAs as possible. The issue only arises when a candidate to be collecting them for the mere purpose of collecting them. Because this is more prevalent than you might think, many MOCs now require a candidate to place rank order on their SA choices.
It is more complex than a forum can ever have room to go through every possible scenario. Suffice it to say that the candidates that have a clear choice have an advantage because they are more apt to get multiple noms to their 1st choice SA (giving the SA options) whereas the candidate that does not have a clear focus may get one nom to each of multiple SA's (limiting the SA options).
As to SA's trying to "steal" appointees - that is tough to gauge. SA's like to have appointees that really want to go to "their" SA not "any" SA. That being said, they also know that "which" SA is a very big decision for a 17/18/19 year old person. They expect candidates to change their priorities as they work through the process, they want candidates to fully evaluate their options so that they don't get to one SA and find mid way through that they wish they had gone to another. While I know of anecdotes where a candidate told one SA about an LOA they received to another - and shortly thereafter they got an LOA/appointment to the other, I would not go so far as to say they are stealing candidates from another SA. It can possibly be argued that by relaying this info to a SA an appointment may have come sooner but I suspect it is not that the actions of one SA altered the decision of the other - though it may have caused an earlier decision. In your example, perhaps the USMA appointment was rcvd and the candidate wants to go to USNA so they tell USNA about the USMA appointment .... USNA may decide to send an appointment out earlier because this way the student has time to carefully consider each SA to determine which is the better fit for them personally and thus chances of the candidate making a well informed decision is increased. I can guarantee you this, no matter what one SA does - another SA is not going to give an appointment to anyone that does not meet their specific admissions criteria.
The nomination process has so many nuances that it is very difficult to explain every scenario and what is best in any one situation. Every state and every MOC office handles things differently, which makes it very difficult to respond accurately in a forum such as this.
Hopefully this is helpful!
