Questions, Chatter, Congrats for the 2026 USAFA Appointment Thread

2025 hopeful said:
Not everyone that receives an appointment will get a LOA (Letter of Assurance). The LOA is usually conditional on meeting all requirements, maybe there is a hold up on medical or waiting on a nomination or something like that. Sometimes they are given to a sports recruit to give them some assurance while going through the recruiting process with other colleges.

It seems like some service academies use LOA a lot, while others not so much. USAFA seems to be one that doesn't use LOA that much and just give appointments.

The goal is to receive an appointment, don't focus on the LOA. At this point, you are waiting for the appointment, not the LOA.
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Well, this makes more sense. Thank you for you help :)
 
Jenb78 said:
I’m by no means an expert (just been here a few months), but it seems the USAFA doesn’t give out many LOAs (letter of assurance). I’ve read a few people have received LOAs with certain stipulations/requirements. My son is an athlete and was recruited this year. He didn’t receive a LOA, but he received/accepted his appointment in March. I hope that’s a bit helpful.
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I guess where I got caught up was is that my son got LOA from USMA way before the end of the process (Sept 2021), and I expected something like it from USAFA. Still waiting for USAFA - fingers crossed and hope he gets the appointment from them.
Thank you everyone for your help and support. I sincerely wish everyone that has gotten one the best of luck and congratulations. For those that we are still waiting - Good Luck and hope you get one too!
 
Capt MJ said:
“The 5 Alaska slots.” 🧐 Let’s pick apart the class seats that might be available.
You may want to refresh on the Sticky Post pinned to the top of the Nominations forum.

Each Senator and your 1 Rep in your beautiful state may have 5 cadets or midshipmen each at the DoD SAs “charged” to their nomination authority at any one time, spread over the 4 years. That could be just 1 appointment per year each to USAFA, or it could be 2, depending how many of their appointees will graduate next month. Each elected official may submit a slate of up to 10 names for each vacanacy.
There could be 3-6 appointments charged among the 3 officials. The “5-6” would be an outlier, because that assumes there would be an unusual alignment of 2 vacancies each for 2-3 of the officials.

Being good politicians, they will take credit for anyone from their constituency who gets an offer of appointment, regardless of how many are actually charged to them. Now that you’re read the Nom Sticky Post, you know that USAFA can go to those slates and choose other fully qualified applicants to offer appointments to, and they will be charged to the nomination authorities they manage. There may be those on the slate, or even not on those slates, who earned other noms, such as JROTC or college ROTC nom, Presidential nom, other service-connected nom, even the VP nom. There is a reason the DoD SAs encourage applicants to apply to as many nom categories as they are eligible for. It gives the SA maximum flexibility as to where to charge an appointment.

Does the math look better to you now?
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FWIW - the academy is definitely charging appointments to nomination sources they manage at this point. That's probably not surprising, and the academy may use those nom sources occasionally early in the process; but my son isn't an athlete and didn't have an LOA. So, I assume that they are working down the NWL at this point. My son's Rep slate was won long ago by the principle nom, who accepted. My son had no other noms, because our Rep and Senators coordinate. So, he was sitting on the NWL early on.

Good luck, everyone! Still spots to be filled.
 
Ragnar2026 said:
FWIW - the academy is definitely charging appointments to nomination sources they manage at this point. That's probably not surprising, and the academy may use those nom sources occasionally early in the process; but my son isn't an athlete and didn't have an LOA. So, I assume that they are working down the NWL at this point. My son's Rep slate was won long ago by the principle nom, who accepted. My son had no other noms, because our Rep and Senators coordinate. So, he was sitting on the NWL early on.

Good luck, everyone! Still spots to be filled.
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Same scenario here i guess. Sen would not double nominate yet sen did double nominate in districts around us..
USAFA spots taken but no TWE so i hope it is a good sign of hope still
 
RRhino said:
I guess where I got caught up was is that my son got LOA from USMA way before the end of the process (Sept 2021), and I expected something like it from USAFA. Still waiting for USAFA - fingers crossed and hope he gets the appointment from them.
Thank you everyone for your help and support. I sincerely wish everyone that has gotten one the best of luck and congratulations. For those that we are still waiting - Good Luck and hope you get one too!
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Thank you and fingers crossed for everyone. So many amazing people here!!
 
Ragnar2026 said:
FWIW - the academy is definitely charging appointments to nomination sources they manage at this point. That's probably not surprising, and the academy may use those nom sources occasionally early in the process; but my son isn't an athlete and didn't have an LOA. So, I assume that they are working down the NWL at this point. My son's Rep slate was won long ago by the principle nom, who accepted. My son had no other noms, because our Rep and Senators coordinate. So, he was sitting on the NWL early on.

Good luck, everyone! Still spots to be filled.
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Same situation here
 
Indiana released their nominations very early, I believe I received my 2 nominations in the middle of November. Does an earlier nomination correlate to an earlier appointment?
 
nw2003 said:
Indiana released their nominations very early, I believe I received my 2 nominations in the middle of November. Does an earlier nomination correlate to an earlier appointment?
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depends on the candidate
 
sgw1964 said:
Our DS didn’t receive his nomination until the end of January. Just by the deadline. I assume that negatively effects the timing of a possible acceptance. Does anyone have experience with a late nomination and an early appointment? Keeping our fingers crossed for an appointment on April 15.
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I did my nomination interview on 15 Jan, and received my nomination a couple days after. I received my appointment on 20 Mar, that being said I finished my candidate kit in early October.
 
cluelesscandidateparents said:
How do they show up?
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So, two of his friends received the TWE via the portal this morning. They show up as "Your decision is ready" and the letter says that USAFA will not consider them for this academic year. One letter has some info on why this applicant was not accepted, I do not want to go into details. The other one just had the rejection.
 
luqui03 said:
So, two of his friends received the TWE via the portal this morning. They show up as "Your decision is ready" and the letter says that USAFA will not consider them for this academic year. One letter has some info on why this applicant was not accepted, I do not want to go into details. The other one just had the rejection.
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🥺 Were they offered any prep school?
 
luqui03 said:
So, two of his friends received the TWE via the portal this morning. They show up as "Your decision is ready" and the letter says that USAFA will not consider them for this academic year. One letter has some info on why this applicant was not accepted, I do not want to go into details. The other one just had the rejection.
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This kind of bothers me. At least on the old portal USAFA would just tell you in the email whether you got in or not. On this portal, whether you got in or didn't has the same formatting. Not cool imo
 
moho said:
This kind of bothers me. At least on the old portal USAFA would just tell you in the email whether you got in or not. On this portal, whether you got in or didn't has the same formatting. Not cool imo
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There is no way to please all, especially in this type of situation.
 
luqui03 said:
There is no way to please all, especially in this type of situation.
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Maybe it's an opinion thing, but I'd rather just be told in the email than think I have a chance until reading the words yknow
 
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