USAFA Waiting Thread C/O 2027

Peter2025 said:
Any news on the moho for c27 campaign?
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I'll give y'all a life update:

AFROTC is going very well. I'm currently in Field Training Preparation, which is the most intense semester of the program, and doing best I can. I'm on leadership for multiple affiliated organizations and within the Detachment and living the Air Force life. Astronautical Engineering with two minors is rough but I muscle through it.

My application is all checked off; I got a 3.5 college GPA, had a great CFA, and two nominations- one from my House representative and the other from my Detachment CC. I think I have a good shot this time, but I am also very competitive to be picked up for Field Training (for those of you who are not familiar with AFROTC, you have to be selected in the spring of your Sophomore year to continue in the program, which is when the Air Force picks you up and reserves a commission for you), so either way I have a reliable path to my real goal: commissioning.

USAFA is still very much something I desire to do, and I hope I get to join you all as a Doolie myself next year and greet you on the Tzo. The wait is rough, but since the future is much more solid now on either road, it's a much more comfortable wait.

I'll keep y'all updated and hopefully add my name to the appointment list in a month or so. :)

Free socks!
 
How do you get notified of an appointment? and are you notified one way or the other (accepted or denial)? if you don't get an appointment what month do you find out you did not get appointed if they tell you? My DD has every checkmark done for weeks. Just curious of the process. I know we are in hurry up and wait status and she does have a plan B. it's hard not to know which route to go or what to plan for so we're just trying to plan for everything.
 
ColoRiah said:
How do you get notified of an appointment? and are you notified one way or the other (accepted or denial)? if you don't get an appointment what month do you find out you did not get appointed if they tell you? My DD has every checkmark done for weeks. Just curious of the process. I know we are in hurry up and wait status and she does have a plan B. it's hard not to know which route to go or what to plan for so we're just trying to plan for everything.
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Your daughter's application portal is the #1 place for notifications. However, normally she will receive an email tell her there is an update to her portal. She may even receive a call from one of her nomination sources, or she may not receive any notifications except when she logs into her portal.

The AFA website says: "Most candidates who completed an application will know their admissions status by April. All notifications will be made through a student’s application portal."

I know its painful as my DS is in the same situation. Stay the course, the hard part (as far as the application process) is complete. There are other threads in this forum that talk about back up schools and such that may offer some information for planning.

Good luck!
 
ColoRiah said:
How do you get notified of an appointment? and are you notified one way or the other (accepted or denial)? if you don't get an appointment what month do you find out you did not get appointed if they tell you? My DD has every checkmark done for weeks. Just curious of the process. I know we are in hurry up and wait status and she does have a plan B. it's hard not to know which route to go or what to plan for so we're just trying to plan for everything.
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I understand that you'll get an email which tells you to check your portal (or you can just check your portal every now and then). My guess is we'll all know in a few weeks.
 
ColoRiah said:
How do you get notified of an appointment? and are you notified one way or the other (accepted or denial)? if you don't get an appointment what month do you find out you did not get appointed if they tell you? My DD has every checkmark done for weeks. Just curious of the process. I know we are in hurry up and wait status and she does have a plan B. it's hard not to know which route to go or what to plan for so we're just trying to plan for everything.
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Also read around the USAFA forums for discussion about your questions.
 
MSNavy said:
Looks like from the self reporting list that many falcon scholars reported today. Can someone explain Falcon Scholars?
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Falcon Scholars are students in the USAFA AOG Prep Program. The AOG gives scholarships to candidates they feel need a little more prep (for any number of reasons) to attend a civilian prep school (not USAFAPS) and then they reapply the following year. While it is not a 100%, it is generally thought of as a golden ticket for admission the following year. You cannot apply for these scholarships, similar to USAFAPS, recipients come from the USAFA application pool.
 
Ds was denied from his 6 or 7 th college choice but it should have been an easy one so stress level is high at this moment best of luck to everyone for the next 5 weeks
 
moho said:
View attachment 13600
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It’s always interesting to see data represented this way; I appreciate the workmanlike effort.

The only quibble I have is that the number of appointments that is reported here on SAF - which usually runs 10-15% of the eventual class size, is only known at the tail end of the cycle.

Before that, the number of appointments shown here on SAF cannot be relied on to predict, with any statistical accuracy, what percentage of appointments remain during the cycle. As with an iceberg, you can see what shows above the surface, but none of us have any idea how much bulk remains unseen below the surface. We don’t know how many additional appointments the SA has offered above the class target range size to achieve the desired yield. We don’t know the actual appointments offered, or offered and accepted, as of today or any other date, or the rate at which they are being offered. The SA may publish that in the class profile after the cycle completes. We can only see a tiny slice of the data set of who has happened upon SAF and decided to post their appointment, and any predictive extrapolation is on wafer thin ice chips.

Applicants waiting to hear should apply critical thinking and blank their minds on “what might remain,” tend your alternate plans, go PT and soak up family and friend time. If this works out the way you want, you have about 4 months left at home before the pattern of your life abruptly shifts, and for the next 9 years, you only visit a few times a year.
 
Capt MJ said:
It’s always interesting to see data represented this way; I appreciate the workmanlike effort.

The only quibble I have is that the number of appointments that is reported here on SAF - which usually runs 10-15% of the eventual class size, is only known at the tail end of the cycle.

Before that, the number of appointments shown here on SAF cannot be relied on to predict, with any statistical accuracy, what percentage of appointments remain during the cycle. As with an iceberg, you can see what shows above the surface, but none of us have any idea how much bulk remains unseen below the surface. We don’t know how many additional appointments the SA has offered above the class target range size to achieve the desired yield. We don’t know the actual appointments offered, or offered and accepted, as of today or any other date, or the rate at which they are being offered. The SA may publish that in the class profile after the cycle completes. We can only see a tiny slice of the data set of who has happened upon SAF and decided to post their appointment, and any predictive extrapolation is on wafer thin ice chips.

Applicants waiting to hear should apply critical thinking and blank their minds on “what might remain,” tend your alternate plans, go PT and soak up family and friend time. If this works out the way you want, you have about 4 months left at home before the pattern of your life abruptly shifts, and for the next 9 years, you only visit a few times a year.
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I frontloaded all the work for this a while ago, all I do now is punch in numbers. :D

Once in a while the actual number of appointments offered is mentioned somewhere and my chart usually works it out +/- 50. I think this is because the sample size of those who post here remains for the most part consistent throughout the cycle. There's always a pretty reasonable chance that at any given point this is off by a lot more. As you said, I too am very confident about the final result. The percentage of appointments reported the past few years has been surprisingly consistent.

I do definitely agree with your last point. I post this as a tool to help either warm or cool expectations. The service academy admissions process is rough, with no firm dates- and even the dates given often carry their own exceptions.
 
moho said:
I frontloaded all the work for this a while ago, all I do now is punch in numbers. :D

Once in a while the actual number of appointments offered is mentioned somewhere and my chart usually works it out +/- 50. I think this is because the sample size of those who post here remains for the most part consistent throughout the cycle. There's always a pretty reasonable chance that at any given point this is off by a lot more. As you said, I too am very confident about the final result. The percentage of appointments reported the past few years has been surprisingly consistent.

I do definitely agree with your last point. I post this as a tool to help either warm or cool expectations. The service academy admissions process is rough, with no firm dates- and even the dates given often carry their own exceptions.
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To throw some ice water on the iceberg, you have to figure the SAs reserve X amount of appointments for NAPS, MAPS, USAFAPS, etc., at some rate tied to expected graduation rate, along with sponsored prepsters, depending on what historical yield they get from those candidates.
 
Capt MJ said:
Applicants waiting to hear should apply critical thinking and blank their minds on “what might remain,” tend your alternate plans, go PT and soak up family and friend time. If this works out the way you want, you have about 4 months left at home before the pattern of your life abruptly shifts, and for the next 9 years, you only visit a few times a year.
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Sage advice. I think it would be wise to write-up a kind of boilerplate statement to accompany any analytics.

I'm wondering if the selection bias that comes with self-reported appointments is truly such a bane. Yes, only a subset of applicants (or their family) visit this forum, but is it not that same subset that would themselves self-report an appointment? My point is that if an applicant is already visiting this forum, then they might reasonably conclude that analyses resulting from self-reported appointment data would also be relevant to themselves. In other words, forum visitors are the "population" and the self-reported appointments are the "sample", in the statistical sense. Conclusions generated from the "sample" should only be generalized to this "population" and no further. It may not be so hard to talk about things like the expected remaining self-reports, self-reports offered and accepted, and the the rate of self-reports.

Of course, there is still some systemic uncertainty inherent to the application process itself, like the class size target range, total appointments planned to be offered, admissions internal operations policy, or unforeseen delays due to IT infrastructure overhaul (*cough* C/O 26). Some unknowns could be reasonably assumed to fall within a certain range based on past data. The impact of others not so much.

A popular aphorism among statisticians, "All [statistical] models are wrong, but some are useful" - George E.P. Box.

My personal opinion about the "models" that drive the graph that I post or @moho 's statistics is that they might be useful in a general qualitative sense as opposed to strict quantitative point predictions. I image a forum visitor seeing the visualization or @moho 's numbers and thinking to themselves something like the following:

**queue internal monologue**
  • "Oh, maybe I shouldn't get so flustered about no appointment this early, it looks like many don't drop until Feb/Apr."
  • "Huh, I guess some people do get appoints right near the end, though it seems to be pretty dang rare!"
  • "Hmmm, I see that many appointments may have already been released, maybe I should focus on my plan B/C/D/.../Z in earnest."
I do hope no one is obsessively checking the appoint list and attempting to meticulously calculate their chances. There is certainly folly in that mind-set. I would unequivocally suggest the advice of @Capt MJ quoted above!
 
The internal monologue I want to avoid is, “Oh, no, I’m toast.” You are not toast until you are told you are toast. Even then, there is a tiny sliver of hope that while you are toast for an SA this cycle, you might get whipsawed with the news you’re a fresh slice headed to the service prep school or funded prep.

Icebergs and toast. What am I thinking tonight. I must need bacon or a cocktail. Or both.
 
AFrpaso said:
Sage advice. I think it would be wise to write-up a kind of boilerplate statement to accompany any analytics.

I'm wondering if the selection bias that comes with self-reported appointments is truly such a bane. Yes, only a subset of applicants (or their family) visit this forum, but is it not that same subset that would themselves self-report an appointment? My point is that if an applicant is already visiting this forum, then they might reasonably conclude that analyses resulting from self-reported appointment data would also be relevant to themselves. In other words, forum visitors are the "population" and the self-reported appointments are the "sample", in the statistical sense. Conclusions generated from the "sample" should only be generalized to this "population" and no further. It may not be so hard to talk about things like the expected remaining self-reports, self-reports offered and accepted, and the the rate of self-reports.

Of course, there is still some systemic uncertainty inherent to the application process itself, like the class size target range, total appointments planned to be offered, admissions internal operations policy, or unforeseen delays due to IT infrastructure overhaul (*cough* C/O 26). Some unknowns could be reasonably assumed to fall within a certain range based on past data. The impact of others not so much.

A popular aphorism among statisticians, "All [statistical] models are wrong, but some are useful" - George E.P. Box.
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Very well said. My guess is never to guess how many appointments are out and left - although it interesting to see how accurate they are because modeling is fun - but rather to vaguely give a broad sense of where USAFA/RRS is.

AFrpaso said:
My personal opinion about the "models" that drive the graph that I post or @moho 's statistics is that they might be useful in a general qualitative sense as opposed to strict quantitative point predictions. I image a forum visitor seeing the visualization or @moho 's numbers and thinking to themselves something like the following:

**queue internal monologue**
  • "Oh, maybe I shouldn't get so flustered about no appointment this early, it looks like many don't drop until Feb/Apr."
  • "Huh, I guess some people do get appoints right near the end, though it seems to be pretty dang rare!"
  • "Hmmm, I see that many appointments may have already been released, maybe I should focus on my plan B/C/D/.../Z in earnest."
I do hope no one is obsessively checking the appoint list and attempting to meticulously calculate their chances. There is certainly folly in that mind-set. I would unequivocally suggest the advice of @Capt MJ quoted above!
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When I said "I post this as a tool to help either warm or cool expectations", this is exactly what I meant. It's meant as a temperature check for people on the forum on where the admissions cycle generally is using the data from past years.

Now ideally, no one thinks about these things because it's out of our control - but people - especially those who are very passionate about their future as many of us here are - can't necessarily do that easily. It can be nice to know when to start realistically thinking that an appointment may or may not be coming.

Having realistic expectations can be a useful tool to make the days/months before/after a TWE as productive as possible. At the end of my first cycle, I was pretty hurt because I wasn't sure what to expect and it hit me like a freight train. By the second, I had already made plans for the summer, lined up an internship at Edwards, because I knew then it was by far the most likely outcome. There was always the possibility that I was going to be the small number who get an appointment after 21 Apr, but having that realistic expectation made keeping my ratio of uptime to downtime as productive as possible. The amount of time I spent putting this algorithm together was much less than the time I saved knowing what was going to happen before it happened.

That being my personal experience, I put together this algo and update this thread so anyone else going through this their first time knows generally what to expect and can maximize the amount of time they spent cherishing the few months they have where they'll spent most of their time with their parents, preparing plan B,C...n, and at peace with their future instead of hoping for an unlikely appointment. :)
 
In the forum for one of the other SAs, the observation was made that for that SA, applicants who were in the running for Prep School or subsidized prep year were usually informed of that before getting a TWE from the SA. Is that also the case with the AFA? Or does a TWE have no meaning at all regarding Prep School or Falcon Foundation?
 
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