Should I run for class president or vice president

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tmello25

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Hi I am currently a junior and was on my student council this year as a Class Representative. Elections for next year are coming up and I am unsure whether to run for President or Vice President. If I ran for VP I would run unopposed because our current VP is running for president against our current President. So if I ran for President I would be competing against two other candidates. I do believe that I would win the presidential election against the other two people running, but its not guaranteed. If I lost I am able to run as a Class Representative and would resume that position. So my main question is does anyone know if being a President vs Vice President makes a big difference in the application process?

Besides this my other leadership includes, DECA and Model UN officer, President of the Outdoor Adventure and Conservation Club, National Honor Society, Boys State, my Congressmen's youth advisory council, and I intern in classes with kids that have special needs. I lifeguard and was a YMCA councilor, but I'm not sure if those count as leadership.
 
If you feel confident in your capability of beating out the other two candidates, then I encourage you to run for president.

I would also encourage you to not shy away from competition. If you have a goal, get after it. Don't be intimidated by the fact that it will be challenging. Running for VP appears to me as settling for the easy path. Go for the harder route, not the easy one. Strive to challenge yourself. This is not just about student council applications but how you should approach your goals in life. Especially at the academy where things are competitive by nature.
 
To be honest..I suspect that neither really matters..Everyone knows that School elections are popularity contests and not a measure of leadership. What really counts is what you do with the position once elected ... if you can tell the story about how you made a difference, that means a lot more than winning a title.

BTW -- run for President. Nobody cares about the VP position (hence its uncontested !)
 
Old Navy BGO said:
To be honest..I suspect that neither really matters..Everyone knows that School elections are popularity contests and not a measure of leadership. What really counts is what you do with the position once elected ... if you can tell the story about how you made a difference, that means a lot more than winning a title.

BTW -- run for President. Nobody cares about the VP position (hence its uncontested !)
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I'll disagree here, to a point. Being a "class officer" (Pres, VP, Sec, Treasurer) is definitely a consideration used to evaluate candiates. For ROTC scholarships, it's probably literally points in a formula. For SAs, I am sure it is counted in some way, shape or form.

That said, I will agree that being President is preferable to the other three positions. However, to simply dismiss the other three positions as meaningless from an admissions/competition standpoint vs. other applicants, that's just not true.

I think the advice to throw caution to the wind and run for President is good. Then again, if you are just going to make a cold calculation about the strength of a resume, I'd say being Class VP is preferable to being a student government representative.
 
I would say elections at Boys State are also popularity contests, but there is a box to check and likely extra points on the application for governor of Boys State. That makes me think that class President and Vice President also carry extra points on the application. Especially considering that class president and VP are listed on the class profiles.
 
tmello25 said:
...So my main question is does anyone know if being a President vs Vice President makes a big difference in the application process?...
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I wasn't going to post, but this sentence stuck out and made me do it.
My answer is that I don't know if it makes a difference, but I would be shocked if it did. My observation here is that if you're planning on running for class President because you think it will help your chances on getting into USNA, don't do it. That's a ridiculous reason.
Just my opinion, of course. It's worth what you paid for it.

Do what you want to do now, because it will make you smile. When you join the military, you do what you're told to do. The difference is that the smile isn't always genuine. ;)
 
Do you really want to be Pres or VP of the Class? Why? What do you want to do in the position? Or are you just looking to check a box?

If the VP currently does nothing, could you make something of that job? Leadership is being able to say: "Before I became the VP, it was a nothing job. I changed that. Here's what I did . . . [or] I turned it into . . ."

Where is there a vacuum? Where is there a job/project that no one wants to do or no one has done well. Run on saying you're going to fix that. Here's an example . . . our 15th USNA reunion didn't go well. Not necessarily anyone's fault, but the class was unhappy. A group of guys got together and said: "If you elect us as a team (president, VP, secretary), we promise our reunions going forward will be fantastic." We were all happy to have someone take on that project. We elected them. Our 20th was incredible. They are still in office and we are still having incredible reunions.

When interviewing as a BGO, I always asked candidates with leadership positions (e.g., class officer, team captain): "Tell me what you do in that role." You'd be amazed the number who told me: "Nothing really. It's just a title."

As above posters have said, that's popularity, not leadership. You can be a leader without a title. You can have a title and not be a leader. Or you can do both. Choose which path you want to take.
 
usna1985 said:
As above posters have said, that's popularity, not leadership. You can be a leader without a title. You can have a title and not be a leader. Or you can do both. Choose which path you want to take.
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This, a thousand times over! Even in the civilian world, this is true. In my corporate days, I used to tell my underlings: "If you want to be a leader here, then start leading now. If you're waiting for the 'right' title to start leading, then you're probably not really a leader."

if you're going for a position because of how it'll look on your resume and/or because it's easy to get and/or because it involves little work...you might not be genuine leader. Take a role or make a role -- big or small, with title or without -- because you want to make an impact while working with others. That's true leadership.
 
usna1985 said:
When interviewing as a BGO, I always asked candidates with leadership positions (e.g., class officer, team captain): "Tell me what you do in that role." You'd be amazed the number who told me: "Nothing really. It's just a title."
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Team Captains. . . many/most of them: I run the warmup exercises before practice
 
shock-n-awe said:
All elections at every level are a popularity contest…..
Or a choice between the lesser of two evils in some cases.
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I've run for and lost. . . and then later won contested elections in both local government and veterans groups.
Some voters do in fact vote based on who they like but others will respond and vote based on ideas provided that
they trust/believe the candidate. A candidate who knows what the electorate might want even if they don't know it
yet and shows them the way to get it can be successful even if not the most popular or well known.
 
I don't know how many clubs my school has. The last number I saw was forty-something. Many of them were started by students who wanted a resume entry. There are legit ones of course. Many are the traditional clubs which have been in existence for a long time. One club is the Misinformation Club. Whenever they announce the meeting room location and time I chuckle. Really? We're supposed to believe that's the real location and time?

I had a student a few years ago who told me about a non-profit he started in middle school. I knew him at that point to be honest and hard working but still raised an eyebrow. So I looked it up on his professional website. I need to find it again. His mission was and probably still is to provide potable water to countries without. Zimbabwe with their cholera problem for example. He started it in middle school and was still providing water when he was a senior in high school. It involved fund raising, logistics, the whole nine. Now that's a resume entry.
 
Devil Doc said:
I don't know how many clubs my school has. The last number I saw was forty-something. Many of them were started by students who wanted a resume entry. There are legit ones of course. Many are the traditional clubs which have been in existence for a long time. One club is the Misinformation Club. Whenever they announce the meeting room location and time I chuckle. Really? We're supposed to believe that's the real location and time?

I had a student a few years ago who told me about a non-profit he started in middle school. I knew him at that point to be honest and hard working but still raised an eyebrow. So I looked it up on his professional website. I need to find it again. His mission was and probably still is to provide potable water to countries without. Zimbabwe with their cholera problem for example. He started it in middle school and was still providing water when he was a senior in high school. It involved fund raising, logistics, the whole nine. Now that's a resume entry.
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Agreed.

But I also believe that when an ROTC or admissions board spends two minutes reviewing your file, that may or may not carry any more weight than being vice president of your class with no official duties.

More than one thing can be true. Resume padding is bad. And there are absolutely people who benefit by padding their resume.
 
pa-outdoorsman said:
Agreed.

But I also believe that when an ROTC or admissions board spends two minutes reviewing your file, that may or may not carry any more weight than being vice president of your class with no official duties.

More than one thing can be true. Resume padding is bad. And there are absolutely people who benefit by padding their resume.
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I agree with this.

My son didn’t join anything because of USNA. He joined everything since 7th grade. And didn’t decide on USNA until 11th grade.

He didn’t need to be the VP.

But he did demonstrate he could maintain a high GPA while doing everything.
 
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I feel like this is a make work type question/situation for something that would normally occur in due course given the right setup.

I’ll lean on the Crystal Orb on the bookshelf in front of me for confounding situations like this. Btw, Orbs don’t respond right away, and when they do, it’s only a subtle hint.
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pa-outdoorsman said:
Agreed.

But I also believe that when an ROTC or admissions board spends two minutes reviewing your file, that may or may not carry any more weight than being vice president of your class with no official duties.

More than one thing can be true. Resume padding is bad. And there are absolutely people who benefit by padding their resume.
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No disagreement from me. College admissions works in mysterious ways. I’m no expert at anything and the more I learn about teenagers the dumber I get.
 
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