"Each year, Kiplinger ranks the U.S. colleges and universities that provide the best value. Even though the military service academies—West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy—offer a tuition-free education and are first-rate academically, we don’t include them in the rankings. That’s because grading specialized schools alongside traditional colleges is too much of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Nevertheless, there are thousands of high school students out there dreaming about the day they’ll toss their hat in the air and graduate from one of the nation’s service academies. If you’re one of them, I hope your dream comes true. But you need to understand that it takes a lot of hard work and patience just to get through the application. My own son is a service academy grad, so I’ve seen for myself how difficult it is to get an appointment. But you can do it if you have the right stuff and know how the admissions process works." …