A little off topic, but felt two things impact every cadet regardless of schools.
1. At this time, every AFROTC contracted cadet goes AD. The AFROTC system is not like AROTC. You do not have the option of AD, Reserves or Guard.
It doesn't matter where you attend college.
2. AFSC (career billets) are determined from a nationalistic approach. In other words, he will go up against every Cadet at VT, ERAU, UCLA, etc., for the Class of 15 in 2014 (AFSC boards meet when they are jrs).
That being stated...the board looks at the cadet like they do for scholarships...gpa, AFOQT(HS = SAT), PFT, career path, det jobs and involvement, plus LOR. Sound sim to the scholarship situation?
Finally, although my child is not at Oklahoma, the one thing I have noticed is that larger schools tend to have closer relationships with other ROTC cadets than smaller schools.
This may occur for a multiple amount of reasons, but here are my guesstimates:
1. They are probably larger dets, which gives them more people to "click" with, compared to a smaller det.
2. The larger dets usually have military fraternities, such as AAS and Honor Guard to socialize with which means more people to mesh with socially.
3. The larger dets traditionally due alot more community service hours...i.e. cleaning up the FB stadium, Dining In/Outs, charitable things..i.e. at our DS's det they do the Susan G. Kohlman run, and it mandatory.
4. Some colleges have specific dorms for the ROTC cadets...i.e. VT.
VT is also very successful at getting their cadets their top choices because they are 1 of only 7 colleges in the nation that have a Corp of Cadets. If they are a member of CoC this also will be shown on their resume for the AFSC board.
The things to actually ask, is how many cadets have jobs in the det? What was the avg gpa for the cadets to get SFT or AFSC 1st pick?
This goes back to the fact that some dets are so large, that cadets don't get jobs, thus their resume is thin compared to others.
The gpa also will give you a yardstick of how fierce the competition is within the det. AFROTC may allow him to keep his scholarship with a 3.0 (or whatever it is now), but if the cadets getting their 1st picks have 3.4, than they need to keep it at that level.
Finally, there is a real easy way to find out his billet chances, ask the det. for not the number of cadets who got it, but the %. ERAU gets the second most pilot slots after the AFA, however, statistically they are @10% less than VT cadets. The number should not matter, the % should.
And no, our DS is not at VT. I was just illustrating them since you had asked about OK compared to VT.
I would also say, that one thing people forget when they select colleges that distance in the 1st yr has a great impact on a child. Kids tend to say, I won't mind not coming home until Thanksgiving, but come Oct. when everyone has left the college to go home for the 3 day weekend, their opinion quickly changes, and that can create a whole new set of issues.
Good luck.
