@franknd
This is my understanding of how it works. (Simplified)
1- after interviews, branches rank cadets in one of 3 groups - most preferred, preferred, least preferred
2 - cadets submit final order of branch preferences,
3 - cadets are ranked by OML within each of the three groups. This is the tie breaker that was mentioned. The “tie” is with everyone within a group (MP, P, LP) and not one or two individual cadets.
4- starting with the top of the OML, cadets are placed in the highest ranked branch for which they were put in the MP bucket. They go down the line doing the same for each cadet until a branch reaches its number. So it someone is MP and has infantry as their first choice, for example, but when they get to that cadet there are no infantry spots left, they then move to the next highest preferred branch that they were MP for and if that branch also isn’t available they keep moving down the order of preferred branches until they find a branch that still has remaining spots, and same down the line.
If all of the MP within a branch have been assigned somewhere and there are remaining branch spots, the P group will be looked at in OML order.
So, interviews are important because you can be low on the OML and still get put in a MP bucket but you will then be ranked within that bucket based on OML. Many of the branches award many more MPs than they have slots for so a low OML will still hurt you. But some branches, such as cyber, give out about the same number of MPs as they have available slots so if you are low on the OML but get a MP for cyber, you have a very good chance of getting it. There are a certain number of spots saved for BRADSO and once they are done slotting the regular branch slots they will take everyone who volunteered to BRADSO and move them to the top of their bucket, ahead of the remaining cadets who do not want to BRADSO.