<p>Hello guys. I'm aiming to go to Annapolis and then become a marine. What can you tell me about that, because I find very little information online linking Annapolis and the Marine Corps. Yes I know I should talk to a representative and I'm going to attend a college fair at my school on the 29th of April to get information, but I want to hear from different people too.</p>
<p>Hi Allen,</p>
<p>USNA is the service academy of choice if your plan is to become a Marine officer by way of a service academy. Currently, up to 20% of the graduates from each USNA graduating class can be commissioned as Marine 2nd Lts, versus as Navy Ensigns. The allowed percentage of Marines can change from year to year; until the past couple of years, the limit was 16-17% of a graduating class.</p>
<p>If you are interested in the Corps once you gain an appointment to USNA, you will have lots of opportunities to learn more before requesting Marines as your service selection. There are quite a few Navy and Marine Corps officers and senior enlisted who are stationed at USNA. These officers and enlisted personnel teach classes and act as company officers/senior enlisted leaders. They would be able to answer questions about serving in the Corps (or Navy), and what their careers have been like.</p>
<p>Also, USNA has various Marine Corps and SEAL “screener” weekends each year, which allow Mids who are interested to spend a weekend of intense Marine/SEAL style training. In addition, several Marine Corps and SEAL related summer training sessions are available. Not everyone gets their first choice of trainings, but there’s a good chance that you will be able to get at least one three week training in that area while at USNA.</p>
<p>Actual service selection occurs during senior, or “Firstie” year. Each Mid lists three choices of service. For instance, one could choose Marine aviation, Marine Corps ground, Navy aviation, SEAL, Surface Warfare, submarines, nuclear power (surface or subs), and so forth. My Mid hasn’t gone through it yet, so I’ll leave it to others to fill in more details.</p>
<p>I know prospective SEALs compete in a series of training exercises for officer billets, or at least thats what my military liason told me. Are Marine commissions the same way?</p>
<p>The summer before your first class year you will attend Leatherneck in Quantico. During this three to four week period you will be put in tactical situations, have your physical fitness tested and get a basic feeling of what it will be like at TBS and in the fleet as a Marine Corps Officer. During this time you will be evaluated, and the results of your evaluation will be presented to the board during service selection. The determination of the board will decide whether or not you will be offered a commission as a 2ndLt in the Marine Corps. If you have any more detailed questions feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Also, they need more Marines right now. The word on the street is that 2011 will have enough Marine Corps slots for 1/3 of my class.</p>
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<p>If thats true, are you sure that 1/3 of 2011 will want a Marine Corps slot? Unless things have changed in the last few years, the Marine Corps rarely takes any mids who do not have a desire to become Marines.</p>
<p>Good point stallion. Marines only want wannabe Marines. For good reason. </p>
<p>And 1/3 sounds high, especially knowing the figure just 2 years past was about 16%. Is it likely it’ll double? Like you, I’m prone to treat that specific word on the street as just that. No more.</p>
<p>Yeah i agree with that. What I was told a few days ago was that there will be a lot more billets open, just as there recently have been, but they still are having problems filling them.</p>
<p>So just because the academy may offer more billets, that doesn’t mean they will all be filled because they may not have enough qualified people who want to job.</p>
<p>…because the Marine Corps wants 270-300 out of the mighty class of 2010. Sadly, only 215 of us are doing Leatherneck, so I do not think we will fill the quota.</p>
<p>2010,</p>
<p>Those stats might be correct, but remember, you (the rising 1/C) will get this summer as a last opportunity to decide what service selection you would like to enter into. Some might decide USMC isn’t for them and some others might decide USMC might be better than SWO, Pilot, etc. Hopefully, it won’t come down to a situation where people are volun-told.</p>
<p>I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE all rising 1/C to ask questions. Ask what it is like to be a 2ndLt or ENS in the respective community; ask what their job is on a daily basis; what makes the job hard; what makes the job easy; what working hours are like; how they “take care” of their people. Remember, this is your last opportunity to reconcile your experiences to decide what you will be doing for the next 5+ years. As I mentioned in a previous posting, HAVE A QUESTIONING ATTITUDE!!!</p>
<p>Enjoy your summer and take some opportunity to reflect prior to returning to Bancroft for the academic year.</p>
<p>Leatherneck does not guarantee a MC slot. My 09 mid (soon to be ensign) was ranked 3 of 35 in his leatherneck group (don’t know the correct term) and was service selected to Nuclear Submarines. (also had perfect score 9-9-9 on the flight assessment). I don’t want anyone to go in assuming anything anymore. Along the same line, there will be fewer pilot slots next year… remember these four things make up your service selection:
- Needs of the Navy
- Needs of the Navy
- What I want to do
- Needs of the Navy…</p>
<p>Midsmom09- I did not know they could force you to go nuclear submarines, since it is considered a volunteer program. However, I know they can make Nuclear Surface a must do.</p>
<p>They can’t force you to do it. Because it is a community that requires a top secret level of security clearance, they cant force any guy into it. Also because of the difficulty level of nuke school, the same applies.</p>
<p>People often say “I got drafted into the sub community” but that’s a load of crap. To get there you have to accept a sub interview, then perform well at the sub interview. </p>
<p>So to ease all of your tensions, if you do not want subs, they can’t force you to do so. But they can “strongly” encourage you to do so by saying “well since subs was your third choice, we won’t allow you your first or second choice service selection, so you can either have subs, or _________”</p>
<p>I know this occurs fairly commonly.</p>
<p>They can’t make you go subs, but they can pull 70 1/C into a room, all who had subs in there top 4 service selection preferences and either good grades or are engineers, and say 15 of you are going to service select subs. It happened to two of the firsties in my company. Fortunately, neither were one of the 15.</p>
<p>That being said, this year we had 120 2/C interview for early nuke interviews.</p>
<p>Just goes to show that every class is different and you can’t always use the past to predict the future.</p>
<p>hi i saw your post could you tell me more about leatherneck in quantico?</p>
<p>Here is one from 2007:
and the discription from 2007:
<a href=“http://www.usna.com/Document.Doc?id=581[/url]”>http://www.usna.com/Document.Doc?id=581</a></p>
<p>My wife still calls it “Leatherhead”</p>