ROTC Vs OCS

KeriMarean

KeriMarean

5-Year Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2014
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5
Hi I am torn between ROTC and OCS, I have always wanted to be in the Army and I am currently getting my nursing degree and I will not have my BSN for another two years so I was wondering if I should do the compressed version of ROTC or if I should hold off and try for OCS? I am leaning more towards ROTC but I want to cover all my bases. Any and all information is so greatly appreciated, thanks guys!


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My cousin got her ms in counseling and did ocs, they they sent her to get her doctorate
 
Try to get into ROTC. With cuts everything is bad, but it will be tougher with OCS than ROTC.
 
You can't get branch medical through OCS, only west point and the academy. OCS only does the three basic functional areas, with a majority of slots going to infantry and armor. There is some special program for doing nursing but I'm not sure what it is. I would suggest figuring out if you want to be reserve, national guard, or active army and then go over to http://www.armyocs.com/ and ask these questions, that forum has pretty much everything you want to know about OCS. However if you want to go active, doing ROTC is a much better way of getting the branch you want and its much easier to get into, the application process for OCS is six months to a year at this point.
 
Unless I'm mistaken, the number of OTS and OTC classes being offered have decreased dramatically over the past four years or so, far greater than the downsizing of the Academices or ROTC.

My advice to obtain a commission would be to seek the ROTC option, but I;m certainly no expert.


Regards,
Day-Tripper
 
I'd say do ROTC. I posted this in another thread and it wasn't from Army OCS experience, but it seems relevant to this discussion.

dmliu010 said:
If ROTC is an option, I would really really suggest you do ROTC (even if it means driving 20 miles to get to the detachment).

I know why you're considering OCS instead of ROTC; it looks very enticing, I agree. "Wow I only have to work 3 months to get a commission! I don't want to waste 4 years doing ROTC. I'm going to enjoy college life!" is what you're thinking, right? Sure it might suck to have to do ROTC in addition to college for 4 years, but at least you get to go home at the end of the day; at least you have privacy (you will never realize how important this is to you until you go to OCS); at least you don't have to be afraid of getting beat down by your DI every waking moment; at least you can LEARN the way YOU want to learn; at least you don't have someone looking over your shoulder every single second; at least you can eat whatever you want; at least you can eat the way you want (you like eating by the numbers?); at least you have time to heal if you get sick or injured; at least you have time to improve on anything that you need improving on.

Trust me when I say OCS is going to be the WORST 3 months of your life. Get sick? Tough ****. Suck it up and keep going. Injured? **** you, you aren't pushing it hard enough. Quit making excuses. You don't like 18 hour work days? Tough ****. You can't preform on 4-5 hours of sleep? Too bad. Can't memorize this booklet WORD FOR WORD? Get ready to get beaten the **** down. Not being assertive or loud enough? Get ready to be harassed by EVERYONE.

Stretch the commissioning process out man. You really don't want to cram 4 years worth of RTOC into 3 months of your life. It sucks.

I know this sounds a bit harsh, but this is the reality of OCS--this is the mentality there (not just the DIs, I'm talking about your classmates as well).
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I'm pretty sure that nurses do BOLC (Basic Officer Leadership Course) and not OCS.

One place to get better information is to talk with an Army Officer Recruiter who deals with nursing programs. Don't bother with the local recruiting office unless they have an Officer Recruiting portion which is only in certain offices.

They will be able to let you know your chance of getting a spot through direct accession vs ROTC. I would imagine there is plenty of need for nurses, but I'm not sure how much gap there is between Nursing ROTC and the number needed.
 
If you have your BSN/RN then you can direct commission via an AMEDD recruiter. However, you can complete your BSN concurrently with ROTC. As others have stated, you can't become an Army Nurse through OCS. If you want to enlist, you can try for 68C (LPN) and apply for the nurse enlisted commissioning program to finish your BSN and commission. Many avenues to accomplish your goal, but OCS isn't one of them.

@kp2001: all officers go to BOLC, regardless of commissioning source.
 
If you failed OCS, will you go the enlisted route? Is there a rule or contract stating this?
 
I am sure the paperwork states exactly what will occur if they failed out of OCS. however, it is always at the discretion of the branch.

For example, ROTC cadets on scholarship are told it is either a bill or enlistment, but in all of the years I have been here nobody has been offered the enlistment route. There are two reasons why.

1. The military is downsizing.
2. The forcing of enlistment tends not to make the member a happy camper and that can impact the morale of the unit.

OCS slots can be very competitive because they are basically part of the spigot. If the As and ROTC are commissioning enough people the spigot is slowed down. If they need more they will then increase the amount.
~ Every branch has a manpower unit, and they know how many they need in the pipeline for that year group regarding commissioning.
~~ The AF has canceled two boards out of a bit total of 8 in the last 4 years because they had enough in the pipeline.
 
To go OCS (unless you are already active duty) you have to enlist in the army with a 09S contract. You go through basic training as a specialist and go to OCS the day after you graduate. If at any point you fail OCS you revert back to a specialist and have to serve out the remaining three years of your contact as a specialist. This will all be in your contract.


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