SA vs ROTC - Duty Selection

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brewmeist

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I was having a talk with a friend this weekend about duty selection. His daughter is interested in looking into NROTC. He asked me how duty selection works going the ROTC route vs going to a SA. I had no clue. How does it work? Is there an OOM throughout all the colleges? Is there a separate allotment of available duties offered thru ROTC vs going to a SA?
 
Bear in mind, I'm speaking from my knowledge of the Army and not the Navy, so take everything i say with a grain of salt.

For ROTC, you have the option of the reserves, guard, or active duty after graduation. Based on your grades, extracurriculars etc. you can help influence this decision.

For an SA, you're obligated to at least 5 years of active duty. You have to do it right out of graduation, no questions asked. After your 5 years you have 3 years required in the reserves. After that it's up to you with what you wanna do.

Hope this helps!
 
brewmeist said:
I was having a talk with a friend this weekend about duty selection. His daughter is interested in looking into NROTC. He asked me how duty selection works going the ROTC route vs going to a SA. I had no clue. How does it work? Is there an OOM throughout all the colleges? Is there a separate allotment of available duties offered thru ROTC vs going to a SA?
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I can say that Marine Options, even those from the Academy, make a selection using an arcane process at the tail end of TBS. If you're a Marine then, to borrow a phrase from The Mandalorian, "this is the way."

Aviator wannabes can get aviation contracts while still a midshipmen for both services. They still have to successfully complete flight school but they're guaranteed a shot.

I do not know how SWO vs Subs and duty station/ship selection work for NROTC but I expect it revolves around where one falls on the national OML. I doubt that it's very different from the Academy although it wouldn't surprise me if academy grads get to "pick" earlier, but it's all guesswork for me.
 
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Jarhead713 said:
Bear in mind, I'm speaking from my knowledge of the Army and not the Navy, so take everything i say with a grain of salt.

For ROTC, you have the option of the reserves, guard, or active duty after graduation. Based on your grades, extracurriculars etc. you can help influence this decision.

For an SA, you're obligated to at least 5 years of active duty. You have to do it right out of graduation, no questions asked. After your 5 years you have 3 years required in the reserves. After that it's up to you with what you wanna do.

Hope this helps!
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Understand that any time you talk about the military your options are based upon “needs of the military” and they can rapidly change. My wife had a “guaranteed reserve” ROTC scholarship. The year she graduated the Army was under strength so, based upon her performance, she was “awarded” Regular Army. So much for her graduate school plans.

Flash forward a few years. The Army was over strength. LTs with barely a year out of West Point were being shown the door. In addition to promotion boards there were “retention boards”. Navy flight school graduates were being told there were no slots for them in the fleet and being offered no obligation discharges.

Your mileage may vary.
 
UHBlackhawk said:
Understand that any time you talk about the military your options are based upon “needs of the military” and they can rapidly change. My wife had a “guaranteed reserve” ROTC scholarship. The year she graduated the Army was under strength so, based upon her performance, she was “awarded” Regular Army. So much for her graduate school plans.

Flash forward a few years. The Army was over strength. LTs with barely a year out of West Point were being shown the door. In addition to promotion boards there were “retention boards”. Navy flight school graduates were being told there were no slots for them in the fleet and being offered no obligation discharges.

Your mileage may vary.
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Sorry, I forgot to mention this ^. My vietnam veteran Grandfather reminds me of this almost every time we talk about the military. "You'll go where you're needed"

IMHO, that's the part so many kids don't understand when they sign up. I'm very lucky to go in knowing that information.
 
I was offered a no obligation separation from the USAF back in my day, after they had paid for my college. If I'd have loved my job and duty station, I may have thought about it more than the 10 seconds I did before responding YES!
 
NROTC is actually very similar to the Academy in how service selection works. In NROTC, midshipmen make selections on communities that they prefer towards the end of their junior year and will hear back about their selection around September. Midshipmen at the academy do not hear back until later in November. The most important difference is that in NROTC you can only commission into the unrestricted line communities which includes aviation, surface warfare (SWO), special warfare, submarines, and SWONUC. It is incredibly difficult to commission into a restricted line community in NROTC compared to the Academy.
 
Jarhead713 said:
Sorry, I forgot to mention this ^. My vietnam veteran Grandfather reminds me of this almost every time we talk about the military. "You'll go where you're needed"

IMHO, that's the part so many kids don't understand when they sign up. I'm very lucky to go in knowing that information.
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Did you change your avatar or forum picture, whatever it's called.
 
Jarhead713 said:
Bear in mind, I'm speaking from my knowledge of the Army and not the Navy, so take everything i say with a grain of salt.

For ROTC, you have the option of the reserves, guard, or active duty after graduation. Based on your grades, extracurriculars etc. you can help influence this decision.

For an SA, you're obligated to at least 5 years of active duty. You have to do it right out of graduation, no questions asked. After your 5 years you have 3 years required in the reserves. After that it's up to you with what you wanna do.

Hope this helps!
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@brewmeist if you are in non SA college on an NROTC scholarship you are committing to active duty 5 years (I think 5?). reserve is not an option if you were on a scholarship. at graduation i have observed service selection happening on the same time for all the scholarship grads at the same time in order or something (there is a video on youtube that you can watch). im not sure of the order, it might be based on grades or similar.
 
HB2019 said:
The most important difference is that in NROTC you can only commission into the unrestricted line communities which includes aviation, surface warfare (SWO), special warfare, submarines, and SWONUC. It is incredibly difficult to commission into a restricted line community in NROTC compared to the Academy.
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@HB2019, with respect, I believe you have this backwards. USNA grads are obligated -- with rare exception -- to select unrestricted line. NROTC grads have greater flexibility to select either unrestricted or restricted.
 
MidCakePa said:
@HB2019, with respect, I believe you have this backwards. USNA grads are obligated -- with rare exception -- to select unrestricted line. NROTC grads have greater flexibility to select either unrestricted or restricted.
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Thanks for adding on to this. In our unit we are told that it is very difficult to obtain a commission to a restricted line community and I kind of made an assumption that it was easier at USNA after seeing that there was midshipman who had commissioned into the restricted line.
 
So our 3C in NROTC wants subs. He briefly reconsidered last summer during CORTRAMID bc aviation was really seductive...and there’s always the love of the Corps... but he’s idée fixé on subs. He’s my weirdo.

Interestingly, he was told at the beginning of this, his 3C year, that he was doing well enough and should now consider doing his interview etc. for subs/Nuclear Power school. (I’m also communicating here that you can select all you want but they gotta select you too, despite all the drafts for needs of the Navy.)

We were super surprised he was being advised to do this so early. I get that the planners would love to know how many NUPOC and OCS they need to get, but sheesh! Awfully early.

So selection at NROTC can be earlier than 2C/junior year, but it was not required, just suggested/advised.
 
If you're asking for duty selection as in branching, the pools of available slots for branching between West Point and ROTC are separate. With the new talent management application, it'll be interesting to see how that continues to play out, but historically that's meant that a West Point cadet only competed against other folks within the Academy (with needs of the Army and the process of making sure folks were qualified/good fits for the branch they were selected applying). ROTC competes nationally against each other in a system that's similar but still seems like black magic to me in some ways with the way that they break up the OML to spread around talent to the entire Army so that not all the smart folks end up in the most favored branches. It was a huge factor for why I decided to attend West Point. The number of Aviation slots, particularly when sequestration hit, were proportionally greater that were offered to West Point cadets for branching around the time that I attended versus ROTC.

Like folks have said though, if you're not interested in active duty, an Academy isn't the way to go. You'll be Regular Army with an upfront five year commitment for active duty. The additional three you owe can be spent on IRR. ROTC, it depends on your contract and needs of the Army for the ability to compete for an active duty slot. They did take away the difference a while back between ROTC and West Point's active duty commissions though which is a different topic and history lesson probably not interesting at this time.
 
short answer - academy grads get first crack at all branch assignments then the rest of the slots are allocated to ROTC participants
 
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