<p>Hey everybody.</p>
<p>Well the moment of truth came in the mail today in WI.</p>
<p>I received a letter from my senator saying that I got a nomination, but I dont know if I got the principal spot or an alternate spot. Unfortunately, the Senator's aides were not in today, so I couldn't get any help on this. </p>
<p>The letter actually came from the Senator not nominating me. </p>
<p>It reads:</p>
<p>Congratulations on receiving a nomination to West Point from Senator Herb Kohl.</p>
<p>...In order to nominate as many qualified applicants from Wisconsin as possible, MOCs coordinate to minimize the number of duplicate nominations to the same academies. For that reson, you will not be receiving a nomination from my office.</p>
<p>Even though you received a nomination from Senator Herb Kohl and only need one nomination to receive an offer of appointment, you should still exhaust all nominating authorities...</p>
<p>Best of luck to you in your efforts to secure an appointment to the US Military Academy.</p>
<p>Russell D. Feingold</p>
<p>From the letter I received, can somebody let me know if I am a principal or alternate? Does anybody have any experience with a letter like this?</p>
<p>If you could please let me know, I would most appreciate it.</p>
<p>Good luck to all candidates!</p>
<p>SLS3P4S</p>
<p>Do you know for sure that your senator ranks his nominees and identifies a principal nominee?</p>
<p>Momoftwins,</p>
<p>I'm almost positive he selects a principal and ten alternates. If worse comes to worse, I will just wait for Senator Kohl's letter. The jitters are starting to come.</p>
<p>Sorry, nevermind, I just called and they said that Senator Kohl does it competitive style, where 10 candidates are given nominations and the academy picks the ones they want.</p>
<p>Could someone please explain this whole nomintation style to me?</p>
<p>Competitive: The MOC gives WP ten names. West Point rank orders the candidates and picks the best one for admission. If that person isn't qualified, West Points continues to go down the list until a qualified candidate is found.</p>
<p>I got that quote from the following link. It has a good explanation of the different types of nominations. <a href="http://www.west-point.org/academy/malo-wa/educators/noms.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.west-point.org/academy/malo-wa/educators/noms.html</a></p>
<p>SLS3P4S - We live in Washington. Last year my son got the same type of letter from both our state senators because he got his nomination from our representative. Our senators find out who each of the representatives are nominating so they dont nominate the same people. That way the academies receive more candidates to choose from.</p>
<p>SLS3P4S,</p>
<p>My son recieved a letter on Tuesday from Feingold saying that he had received a nomination to the Air Force Academy from Feingold. Feingold's letter told him to continue to pursue all other nomination sources, also.
Two days later (yesterday) he got a phone call from Feingold's Academy aide to let him know that he had received an appointment to the Air Force Academy from Feingold's nomination.
We have yet to hear from Kohl, even though he interviewed with Kohl's staff before Feingold's. Our son hasn't even scheduled an interview with our Representative Petri, yet. I'm not sure if they do appointments to West Point the same as USAFA, but that's how ours worked. It will be interesting to see what the other two say, now that I have read what you are going through. Keep us posted.</p>
<p>Thank you for the quick responses, they help me out a lot.</p>
<p>Congratulations, Stealth, to your son! He must be extremely happy about that accomplishment, and you must be very proud. I'm surprised that the academies gave such a quick turnaround after the nomination.</p>
<p>WAMom, thank you too for your help. Your description made things very helpful.</p>
<p>Good luck to all candidates out there!</p>
<p>SLS3P4S</p>