Not to sound flip, but I think they basically come when they come. It's my understanding that there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. I assume that the highly competitive states may happen more on the later side to give MOCs a chance to talk about sharing their open slots.
I could be very wrong though (I am new here, haha).
No
The Congressmen/Senators do any talking before they submit their NOMINATIONS (10 per slot) Once USNA has those slates of up to 10 per slot, they either react to a Principal Nominee or "rack and stack" the slate to see which they will take. The difficulty/complexity is that many candidates have more than one nom and for a candidate that they want, this allows USNA to decide which slate to take this candidate from so that they can get as many of their desired candidates as possible. To be more descriptive, imagine an MOC slate where the Top three candidates are truly superior but there are clearly different levels of "goodness"
Slate .................. Score
Candidate 1 99
Candidate 2 97
Candidat3 3 96
You might assume that USNA would "take" Candidate 1 for this slot but now look at it this way.
Slate ................. Score .. Noms
Candidate 1 99 MOC1, JROTC, Senator2
Candidate 2 97 MOC1, Presidential, Senator2
Candidate 3 96 MOC1
What USNA could do is assign Candidate 1 to the JROTC (or Senator2) slot, Candidate 2 to the Presidential (or Senator2) slot
and then award MOC1's slot to Candidate 3.
This can take time to figure out though which is why you need to be patient.
