One Nomination down. Do I need others?

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northernerr

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I just received notification that I received my Senator’s nomination for USMA. This was my first interviews and I still have two more scheduled interviews with my other senator and my state representative. However, the offices say that they talk so they do not nominate the same person twice, but USMA says the more nominations the better. Do I still go to the other interviews? Thank you :)
 
Absolutely, yes. Having a senator's nom is great, but you are now competing against 9 others that were selected statewide. You should still seek the other senator's nom, even if they say that they don't issue multiple noms. I know in my state, the senators say that, but I know of candidates who nonetheless obtained noms from both.

The more noms you get, the more slates that you compete on, and the more chances to come out on top
 
A6E Dad said:
Absolutely, yes. Having a senator's nom is great, but you are now competing against 9 others that were selected statewide. You should still seek the other senator's nom, even if they say that they don't issue multiple noms. I know in my state, the senators say that, but I know of candidates who nonetheless obtained noms from both.

The more noms you get, the more slates that you compete on, and the more chances to come out on top
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Agreed...DS got 3 noms to USAFA and 3 to WP. The more the merrier!
 
The more noms you have, the more opportunities you have to get an appointment. Think of a nom as a lottery ticket. The more you have the more chances to win.
 
SA's recommend you apply for all NOM's for which you are eligible. If you have more NOM's it gives the SA more places to slot your appointment.
 
Absolutely. The MOCs in our area will not nominate if you already have a nomination. They say it is not necessary. I could not disagree with them more. If you are allowed, get as many as possible.
 
Unless your member or their staff provides you a letter or email telling you not to interview because they aren't going to pick you, then I'd go to the interview.
 
IMHO what is meant by "getting as many Noms as possible" is getting as many "different" Nominations as possible. 10 USC Section 7442 outlines the different categories of nominations there are. I understand that the each academy has "Boards" that are comprised of different admissions personnel. There is one Board for each category of nomination, so having a MOC nom, a VP nom, a Presidential nom, a Superintendent nom, and a Secretary nom means you get looked at by 5 different sets of eyes that may look differently at the same package. But having three MOC nominations still gets you only one Board's look, hence many State's delegations reluctance to nominate the same candidate multiple times. If I am misunderstanding the Admission Board composition someone here with direct knowledge please advise, but that is what we were led to understand.

The "Golden Ticket" nom is likely the "Principle MOC nom". If someone gets one of those, and they meet all other qualifications (medical, academic, and physical) they are supposed to be offered an appointment.

You can view different nominations, their effect on appointment, and how they work by going to the "Nominations" thread and reading the stickys!
 
@Impulsive. I won't challenge your description of how the boards work as I have no idea. But it seems to me, if you have three MOC nominations, you are competing on three different slates and have three chances to win a slate, regardless of how many boards are looking at the package.
 
kinnem said:
@Impulsive. I won't challenge your description of how the boards work as I have no idea. But it seems to me, if you have three MOC nominations, you are competing on three different slates and have three chances to win a slate, regardless of how many boards are looking at the package.
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@kinnem, Since I have no inside info on the different Board's compositions, I am only going from what one AO told us about different noms. You may very well be correct, but how it was explained to us was if DS could get "different" and he specified VP, Pres, MOC, NROTC he would be looked at by different "sets of eyes". He never mentioned three MOC noms being looked at by different Boards. Maybe someone who has experience with Boards can chime in as I too would like to get the true skinny on how the different types versus sheer number of one type of nom work.
I do believe you are correct in that if you get three MOC noms, you get three chances to win a "slate" which definitely helps, but I am not sure if the three noms are looked at by one Board or three?
 
I chimed in on this yesterday, and still believe that several nominations from different MOCs are beneficial to a candidate for the reasons @kinnem state. However, I re-read the OP's question and realized I did not read it properly (didn't have my 2d cup of coffee).

@northernerr , if your MOCs have specifically mentioned that they will only offer one nomination as a group, then there is not a need to interview with the other MOCs. But verify this with their offices before acting! My son was told in person that if he were to receive a nomination by a MOC, he was to notify the other two MOCs so they would withdraw his applications.
 
To further add to the fun, if a MOC has two slots open they can fill, theoretically they can submit two slates with 10 names each.

Down the road, eventually one name from each slate will have their appointment charged to that MOC, theoretically. The rest of the candidates, assuming fully qualified, will go into the national pool.

At the very root of the process, a candidate competes against the other fully qualified names on his or her slate. They might then enter the national pool, but also still be in the hunt for VP or any other nom type for which they qualified. Each of those nom types is its own competition, for example the 100 candidates who are eventually charged to the Presidential noms, which eliminates the fully qualified others holding that nom off that list.

I always think of it as the 3D Star Trek chessboard. It’s one inter-connected matrix with many sets of eyes on it, overlapping or stand-alone, as they build out the class an offer at a time. It is a massive, dynamic, multi-tiered undertaking with many concurrent actions ongoing. It is not a Step A>B>C process.



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Impulsive said:
IMHO what is meant by "getting as many Noms as possible" is getting as many "different" Nominations as possible. 10 USC Section 7442 outlines the different categories of nominations there are. I understand that the each academy has "Boards" that are comprised of different admissions personnel. There is one Board for each category of nomination, so having a MOC nom, a VP nom, a Presidential nom, a Superintendent nom, and a Secretary nom means you get looked at by 5 different sets of eyes that may look differently at the same package. But having three MOC nominations still gets you only one Board's look, hence many State's delegations reluctance to nominate the same candidate multiple times. If I am misunderstanding the Admission Board composition someone here with direct knowledge please advise, but that is what we were led to understand.
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There is just one Admissions Board. Where there are different board is in the area of nominations. As you know, most MOCs have their own boards and you can consider the other nom sources as boards as well even though they are not formally named as such. They still need to consider a pile of candidates for their nomination and there is an evaluation process to allocate their nominations. Those are the "different sets of eyes" that you've heard of and some of them are actually within the admissions department of the respective academies. Obviously, that is not the case for the MOC boards but is definitely the case with the Vice Presidential and Secretary noms. The Admissions Board includes Admissions personnel but also reps from the Academic and other areas of the Academy so, while it is an Admissions function, the board itself is cross-organizational. This is also how promotion boards work within the services, they are a Personnel Command function and there are definitely representative from the Personnel Command involved but the actual Promotion Board is largely made up of representatives from throughout the service.
 
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