Reapplying to Naval Academy college credit question

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WIMOM

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My DS will be studying engineering at a 4 year university while participating in their NROTC program and running D1 for cross country and track seasons. At this time he has 13 credits, but can't stick an English class in his crazy schedule. He wants to be successful and his engineering advisor told him that not many students do both NROTC and two seasons of sports. Will it be rigorous enough if they see 13 credits? He was waitlisted in May and definitely is completing the reapplication process for the class of 2023. He knows the grades are super important. Thoughts?
 
Look up the USNA plebe class schedule — very easy to find in the Academics tab — and mimic it as much as possible. It’s a larger-than-typical class load (at least 16 or 17 credits per semester). Add to that all the military training, the plebe requirements, and mandatory sports. It’s far more than any Mid can handle in a day, week, month.

The point being, add that English class. USNA wants assurance that you can handle what they’ll throw at you in plebe year. Best way to assure them is to actually do it before you reapply. Best wishes.
 
13 credits is a pretty light load for College.
I'm assuming that he doesn't already have a NROTC scholarship in hand, and will hope to receive one after the first semester is over ?

If you take the total number of credits (let's say 125) required for that Engineering BS degree, then you have about 16 hours per semester.
The NROTC will require him to fill out a degree-plan, to show them how he intends to navigate his way to that degree (in 8 semesters, not 9).

If he takes 13 hours his first semester, then he needs to take 19 for the next one (in which he'll have track).
Better to do 16 every semester, were I to opine.
 
Our DS was a successful re-applicant, who went to a 4 year college, pursued engineering, and also did NROTC. I can tell you what he learned during the process.

I think the most important thing is to mimic the Plebe schedule as closely as possible and do well (ie. >3.5). That means Calc, Chem, History and English along with Naval Science NROTC class. After getting the TWE, DS visited USNA and met in person with his admissions rep. He was strongly advised to take the classes listed above, which he did. He was not a D1 athlete however.

The other thing that was important was to re-take the SAT or ACT. Even though our DS has above 700 on each section, he tried again and raised his scores. That stands out and shows commitment according to the admissions rep. The sticky thread on re-application has a lot of great info, make sure DS understands it all.

If your DS is successful on the 2nd try, at USNA he would need to take 18 credits, along with all the military tasking AND the load of being a D1 athlete, so he needs to prove that he can handle it.

I would strongly suspect that if he does well in Calc, Chem, History and Naval Science but skips English it would be viewed negatively - how much so nobody knows.

There were several re-applicants in our son's NROTC unit who earned appointments, but there was one who did not, even though he was previously waitlisted AND earned a 3.9 gpa at a very good college. Even if he didn't win his slate, he seemed a sure thing for the national waiting list. In trying to understand why, the only thing they could figure was that he didn't take the recommended classes.

I would strongly recommend reaching out to USNA admissions and schedule a meeting or call with the rep. He/she will be happy to go through DS application from last year, explain where he may have come up short, and what should be improved. They will also provide very clear advice about college course load.

Best of Luck!
 
DS retook the ACT test and improved. We are thinking that is why he was waitlisted. I appreciate the advice and will take it.
 
The best advice is to reach out to admissions. Every situation is a little different and there is no one answer. My DD was in ROTC and DIV1 athlete her freshman year and had a schedule that was pretty different from a plebe as she had tested out of some plebe classes and could not fit others. If the 13 hours are challenging, it may be enough; if there are only one or two challenging classes and the rest are pretty easy then he might need to add the English class.
 
I would expect that 13 credits would draw a negative reaction.
Any current Midn or parents know what the current Plebe class load is ?
My recollection is that was 21...including PE, NS, labs, etc. but times have changed.
 
WIMOM said:
My DS will be studying engineering at a 4 year university while participating in their NROTC program and running D1 for cross country and track seasons. At this time he has 13 credits, but can't stick an English class in his crazy schedule. He wants to be successful and his engineering advisor told him that not many students do both NROTC and two seasons of sports. Will it be rigorous enough if they see 13 credits? He was waitlisted in May and definitely is completing the reapplication process for the class of 2023. He knows the grades are super important. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
As has already been said, 13 credits is too light. I teach at an Engineering school and if one of my students asked me this, I'd tell them to add a course.
By the way, I did 2 varsity seasons as a plebe at USNA and 6 more seasons in the following three years while taking 18 or so credits each semester. My son did 6 varsity seasons while majoring in Aero Eng and finished close to the top 100 in his class. Maybe Navyhoops will weigh in here with similar experiences
 
He found an English class to fit into his tight schedule. Thanks for all the great advice everyone.
 
Thank you for closing the loop, WIMOM. Wish more OPs did the same, so folks would know how things turned out.
 
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