Federal Service Academies such as:
West Point (Army)
Annapolis(Navy/Marines)
USAFA(Air Force)
USCGA(Coast Guard)
King’s Point USMMA(Merchant Marine/USNR)*
I get where you are coming from. My son is planning on Officer Training School (for the Navy) after an IR degree in college and a year of working for NGO’s that are working for peace in the world.
I have a good friend whose kid joined the Marines straight out of college. Bright kid, but restless. He definitely wanted to do something completely different. The Marines have now sent him to college to learn what he needs to know because they think he’s college material. He listens to them more than he listens to Mom!
I think ROTC can be a big enough time suck that you may miss other aspects of the college experience, but it should certainly be on the table.
I’d suggest he accept at one of the colleges and take a gap year. If he still wants to join the marines after he’s had a bit of a break, no harm has been done. Most college won’t just accept a gap year they actually like students who do them. They find they come back refreshed and more focused.
Good luck!
Do not go to USMA expecting to commission Marines. That is a recipe for disappointment.
And as noted, USNA has an annual quota for Marine Officers. The surest route to Marine Officer is through a Marine contract with ROTC. USNA is a great option but a very different experience from ROTC. There are positives and negatives to the differences, not better/worse routes. Both commission fine officers. He would need to do a gap year for service academies at this point but he could still affiliate with ROTC in the fall without a scholarship and then apply for a three year scholarship.
For students who want to serve and be part of something larger than themselves, but not necessarily the military commitment, there’s CityYear.
And if he would be set on enlisting, Columbia College of General Studies is friendly to vets and is specifically for nontraditional students. College of G.S. also participates in Yellow Ribbon Program.
One of you kindly told me that FSA refers to the service academies. But this sentence still puzzles me. I thought graduates of the service academies were considered college graduates. Am I wrong?
The degree of time-suck is YMMV depending on the ROTC detachment and the individual ROTC cadet’s time management skills.
Some of the ROTC cadets I knew while working in Boston post-college through friends certainly seemed to have time to party on weekends…including a few who attended MIT.
Even got to see a small contingent of uniformed NROTC and possibly some Naval Academy cadets up in the Boston area singing Anchors Aweigh and cheering on the iceberg during a screening of Titanic while it was still playing in the theaters. Most of the males in the theater found it to be amusing while our respective female dates were quite annoyed.
Even the USNA cadets have occasions where they are allowed some liberty from Annapolis or during their summer cruise tours. One summer while taking a summer class in the Cambridge area, a few Annapolis cadets came up to me to ask for recommendations for good nearby restaurants/bars. Gave a few recommendations while giving them a general warning about the stricter carding endemic to Boston area drinking establishments compared to their NYC counterparts back then.
I think the general consensus would be—Do NOT let your son make this decision lightly.
Someone who signs on for military duty doesn’t just “try the job out.” You don’t get to quit the job if you decide it’s not for you as in other avenues of life. Two weeks notice is not in the contract. It’s a commitment of years,
Military life (from what I know) is a way of life with expectations and duties. All good if it suits your personality or if you are able to work within the system.
They are college graduates.
However, the FSA are a special breed of colleges which are regarded by many…including civilian employers as on par or more impressively than our most respectable/elite colleges.
ROTC on a nearby campus is a bit more of a hassle – not impossible, but adds time & logistics. He may want to visit his colleges where it is on campus.
According to Payscale, three of the top 15 schools ranked by mid career earnings are military academies.
I have no advice to offer, but I’m pretty amazed that OP knows no one in the military. I guess living in a large military city has clouded my view. It seems like the majority of the people I know, from neighborhood to church to homeschool families to co-workers and so on-is somehow connected to the military. And lots of professionals, engineers. etc. that I know served in the military.
One of my son’s best friend’s is in the military (after college BTW). Really nice kid. He’s the only one from their cohort, though as I said above, my son will be another soon. I can’t think of anyone from my generation. I went to a girls school and the Vietnam war ended the year I graduated. One girl I knew slightly joined up when she had a falling out with her parents while in college. (African-American boyfriend was the issue - she was white.) I can’t think of anyone else. Our neighborhood has a lot of doctors and research scientists, because it’s an easy commute to hospitals in the Bronx.
OP, I haven’t read all the posts, but is it possible there is something going on here that you are unaware of or in denial of? If you are going to have a serious talk with the S, be prepared for absolutely anything and let him know he can tell you anything. You can’t help him to make wise decisions unless you know the whole picture.
So both me and husband went out jogging with DS, and talked about where we’re going next. DS has a LONG list of reasons for wanting to join, some of them being that he’s tired of the rat race of high school and believes he will meet the same type of people in college - grade and status-obsessed. He also hates the current political climate on most colleges, with the “safe spaces” trend and the pushback against free speech and expression opinions that may not be agreeable to some people. Son is much more conservative than most young people in our town.
He said he wants to do something “real”, something that really means something and is totally different than what kids here do. He is also worried that by not enlisting first he will be “missing out” on something.
He’s agreed not to make any decisions before we get a chance to sit down and talk to people from the ROTC units at the colleges he’s been accepted to, as well as an officer recruiter.
My nephew did ROTC at one of top 10 schools. My sister tried to convince him not to do it, but he believed serving his country was not just for certain SES. He didn’t take the ROTC scholarship until he absolutely had to. My sister was supportive, but she tried to delay it as much as she could. He has since graduated with close to 4.0 GPA, doing very well in the military (promoted multiple times). He is in his last year of mandatory service after ROTC. In speaking with him, he said he has learned a lot and would do it all over again, but he is ready to move on. He observed a lot of inefficiency and were frustrated at times (he didn’t go into great detail). As others have posted, he feels there are other ways he could give back to his country. He is getting soon (someone he met in school) and going back to school for IR.
Can you list the colleges where he’s been admitted? Adults here could tell you the ones that are least “rat-race”.
The “safe space” controversy is great media fodder but in the day-to-day life of college students and campuses, it doesn’t affect the experience to the point it should prevent anyone from attending a college. Frankly, it’s been blown out of proportion because it helps TV ratings (and may require zero research work from those doing the “expose” since it’s easy to go with outrage over multiple, carefully researched perspectives, plus outrage gets ratings.)
CityYear is very real and psychologically tough. And certainly it mustn’t be what most other students in your town do.
He won’t “miss out” on anything by being an officer - but a recruiter should be able to explain this well.
I agree with @MYOS1634 about the “safe space” issue. Both my kids go/went to “those” schools, and the controversies matter to a tiny minority of students. Most kids more or less roll their eyes as they walk by the “protest” on their way to lab or study sessions.
You guys can jog …and talk? ^:)^
Sounds like a great plan. He is 18, going through his own existential crisis and trying to figure out how to save the world. Young adults this age have passion, conviction and energy. They can, however, only see the world through their short history on earth though and are apt to miss the nuances that come with more time on earth.
As parents you realize this is a much more complicated decision than he understands it to be with long reaching consequences. It is not easy to try and share this insight with a young man who is striving for independence from his parents at this stage in his life.
Hang in there. Sounds like a great kid.
I’m glad OP can talk to her son.
“They can, however, only see the world through their short history on earth though and are apt to miss the nuances that come with more time on earth.”
So true. I think a lot of us try to avoid telling our kids we’re more experienced and automatically know what’s better. But kids do have more choices than college versus the military, lots of ways to work hard for the good of others. Maybe OP needs to help him see other options. City Year is one; there are other opportunities that are challenging, less about self absorption and the rat race.
I think a lot of kids glorify the idea of the military, partly because of the promoted image and how people speak of the service and selflessness. There’s also the idea a young person is self-testing, somehow becoming a stronger individual. But the military is massively hierarchical (as my military-spouse friends said, “You do what they tell you to, go where they say and when they say so,”) plus the personal risks. It’s not just surviving boot camp and “Yes, Sir!” and the image of a Greatest Generation. And, I’d hope he understands the difference between what it’s actually like to live and work as a non-officer. Eyes open.
Best wishes as you navigate this.