My son is also leaning Marine Corps option--he's a Plebe at USNA. He's a white male, non-recruited athlete, direct from high school with no big overcoming adversity story to tell in essays and interviews. He focused on what he's learned from Marine officers he has known....digging beneath the clichés and recruiting posters. These ranged from great-uncles to family friends and a recently separated MARSOC operator who taught him to shoot.
The other thing that helped him stand out was spending time at the SAs and ROTC environments every chance he got and really looking and listening for interesting stories to tell. Get to the SAs for candidate visits before your MOC interviews if you can. Interviewers are real people with FT jobs doing MOC interviews on a Saturday or Sunday and they get BORED after hundreds of interviews. They like to ask you how the SA's differ. Find intriguing, true and insightful stories from what you saw, heard, read that show what you learned and how you think. Sometimes, a candid answer can create a moment you can't plan. One question caught him completely off guard at the close of a very intense interview: "What don't you like about the service academies?" His answer, "frankly, sir, the toilet paper at all three, sucks." The panel cracked up, the SA grads on the panel assured the non-grads that it was true, and he got nominations to USMA and USNA.
