Im
An active duty USAF Colonel and my son just got his TWE. 2 nominations from congressmen in two states, a senator, and presidential nomination (4 total) Every interview he got lead to a nomination. Straight As since kindergarten, top 2% of his class and varsity baseball and wind ensemble (was in Macys parade in 2020). Being a fighter pilot was his dream. He was denied any ROTC scholarship and now no Academy.
I plan to put in my retirement paperwork tomorrow. I didn’t go to the academy and have probably had 20 of those folks working for me… you gotta know somebody just like most thing in life I guess. The USA is forgiving student loans for kids who drop out of school, yet kids who dream to serve their country are denied scholarships. I’ve enjoyed flying F16s T-38s and traveling across the world, I appreciated the ROTC and medical school scholarship and being a pilot physician but so wish they had given my son the same chance. I’ve never seen a kid so crushed and never hurt so bad myself….
Let me start this reply with I am not wearing my tin hat (currently). Also, my DS received his TWE yesterday. I want to be honest and allow anyone reading beyond this point to understand my motivation in this response. My DS is exceptionally qualified, and he checked every box that we are aware of. However, there are many similarly amazing DSs and DDs being mentioned in this thread, and I can identify areas where he could have improved his application. Still, realistically he did not lack in any area. He had MOC and Senator nomination for USAFA, 8 AP classes, 2 years of Calculus, great SAT, GPA, Class rank, 7 Varsity letters, Team captain for two different sports, crushed the CFA ....you get the picture. Many sons and daughters meet, and some exceed his achievements, and yet here we are, trying to understand why they received a TWE. For the last 2 hours, I have been combing the USAFA Academy forum, looking through all of the posts back to 2006 (yes, I am obsessed). I can't find a single year when so many amazingly qualified candidates were rejected (I didn't see many posts where people even mentioned their stats). I didn't find a single post in the last 3 years where anyone with your son's qualifications, or my son's, were reporting a TWE. Yet I have counted over 10 posts in this thread where a parent/applicant posts amazing achievements followed by a TWE.
At this point, I don't know what the SAs are looking for. I do know that outside of the SAs, there is a push to promote DEI at our local universities. The Supreme Court will release a ruling in June addressing Asian students v. Harvard admissions which is being watched closely by the admissions offices across the country. I saw a regression analysis of a University of California data set that showed acceptance positively correlated with certain zip codes and negatively correlated with others. There was also an analysis showing a positive correlation between lower California standardized test scores for English with acceptance to California universities (above a certain score, the applicant had a decreased probability of acceptance). My DS has friends who were AP students and weren't accepted into a single California University. We are living in strange times. I am leaving my tin hat on the table and will assume that nothing nefarious is happening and that the SAs will continue to be merit-based, but for this to be true, this year has to be a serious anomaly. On to PLan 1B!
Thank you for your service and enjoy your retirement!
