Hello, I'm Jim Squire referenced by my former student above; found this post by pure accident. My view having graduated from USMA (what you are calling West Point) but having taught several decades at VMI:
* If you know you want to be an officer in the US Army, go to USMA. That is its primary purpose, and has phenomenal funding to do so. VMI does a truly excellent job of it also; many of my best friends as an officer were VMI alumni because our cadet experiences were largely similar. But VMI has a multi-purpose mission to educate citizen-soldiers, so it does not have the singular focus of USMA, which is the country's only federally-funded program whose sole purpose is to produce Army officers, has close to a 100% Army commissioning rate, and whose vast majority of faculty (perhaps upwards of 80%) are active duty Army officers themselves.
* The above statements are exactly why you should choose VMI if you are not positive about pursuing an Army career. USMA does not do a great job of educating people in my major (engineering), for instance. The vast majority of my professors were cadets themselves 7 years before; they spent about 5 years commanding infantry/armor/ADA/field artillery platoons/companies, took 18 months to earn their masters degree, then taught at USMA for a 3 year tour of utilization before returning to line units. I loved my P's (professors), especially some of my juice (electrical engineering) P's, but if I was LUCKY I had one who had taught the course 2 times before. 1/3 of my profs were in their first year of teaching. If I was lucky, they were teaching a course they had taken in their masters program, but some were teaching courses they had not taken since they were a cadet. I had to relearn a lot of my undergraduate coursework when I was studying for my doctoral qualifying exams. A lot. And that was OK - even while not subject matter experts, my P's taught me how to manage a large group of students needing instruction in an intense academic environment in which they didn't have all the answers - excellent training for my subsequent deployment to Desert Storm.
* You'll find the average student ability at USMA higher than the average student ability at VMI because everyone at USMA is on full scholarship, so the entrance competition is higher. You will find that the top students in both places are equally impressive - just that the standard deviation is higher at VMI. You understand that the converse is not true; going to USMA does not make you a higher quality student.
* For a snapshot look at typical professors: the USMA P is a hard-charging active duty Army officer, hoping to earn O6, and taking a break after earning a masters to teach for 3 years. They score well on the PFT, have lots of medals, likely combat or at least command experience, and is are just impressive all-around human beings. However, the average USMA P was never an engineer in the civilian non-combat engineer sense; they have not designed products for clients, they have not published dozens of peer reviewed journals, they have not earned patents, they have not defended a doctoral thesis, they do not have decades of experience teaching. On the other hand, the average VMI professor does not come from a military background (less than 1/3 do), so no medals, no combat experience, no military command. But they spent that time in higher academic training earning doctorates, they have a PE license, most have worked as commercial engineers, the average has well over a decade of teaching experience, any many dozens of peer-reviewed papers. It's a different focus for a different primary mission.
So in summary, I agree with my former student who said that VMI military training is similar to an academy (but not as good), and I'd say the academic training you get at VMI is, on average, better. My company and year group at USMA has 8% general officers. I have mentored 6% of my undergraduates to earn patents while still cadets. I suspect that the general officer rate among VMI grads is less, and I suspect that the percentage of patent-earning USMA cadets is less. Different missions.