Here is
@golfindad 's great explanation from that thread:
"With regards nominations, the more you get the more paper you have to put on your wall. But, while they do each have slates for the DOD schools, they do not have their individual slates for usmma. One or four, same thing, nomination is checked and the admissions committee moves on to the next question. They do not look at your candidacy separate times for each nominating authority.
State allotments: Yes, there are state allotments. No, they do not all get filled. No they do not limit the numbers of appointments to the number of allotments. They are used to try to get the state diversity though. So, there is a state "competition". all of the nominated applicants from the state are put in a big barrel, the barrel is tossed over and over and the top (insert state allotment number here) are offered appointments. If all of the state's allotment is used up in this round of offers, and there exists other qualified applicants, those other qualified applicants go into a bigger barrel; the national pool. If there are less appointments given than the allotment for that state calls for, those spaces are offered to top applicants pulled from the bigger barrel of the national pool. What happens if applicants who were offered appointments during the round when state allotments were given decline the appointment? does admissions go back to the state barrel, or the national barrel. They do not return to the state barrel. They come out of the national pool.
Do you have to wait to get an appointment until after the first offers are declined? No. usmma, as do all of the academies, have it down to a science. They know how many offers will be declined, how many will fail dodmerb, etc. So, by the time April comes around, usmma will probably have 350 or so offers out there. Some will require an April (or maybe even earlier) response, and others will require a May response. If, however, usmma has its full class set, and then, one or two drops occur, a late appointment is possible. What is a late appointment--there have been appointments made a day or two before indoc begins. There was at least one in the class of 2021. Great guy, but he encountered some medical issues which set him back during indoc."