<p>Something interesting happened that we did not expect. My son got a nomination from Specter in December, then about a month later a letter came in from Casey stating: “You are a worthy candidate with great credentials, but since you already have a nomination, you don’t get one from Casey”. However, the AF admissions counselor led us to believe all of the nominations were up for grabs.</p>
<p>Sometimes Senators communicate and make sure they don't give out a nomination to the same person so that they can maximize the number of people who get nominations.</p>
<p>Indeed......</p>
<p>it makes sense. it doesn't give you a leg up if you have more than one nomination, so they might as well collaborate and make sure they're not nominating the same folks :)</p>
<p>don't worry about it-as I stated, it makes no difference if you have more than 1 nomination.</p>
<p>This is very common.</p>
<p>This helps to confuse the matter. I assumed more than 1 nomination meant more than 1 open slot to compete for. Therefore, if he does not get appointed to the Senate opening, he has no chance to get appointed to the 3rd district opening? Doesn't each spot have a distinct list of nominees?</p>
<p>I am not quite sure what you mean, but the way I see it you were under the impression that having another nomination would give another "chance"? Sort of like if there were 50 raffle tickets and you had two or three instead of just one? If that is your thinking, the answer is no, that is not how it works. I would also like to add that I too got this letter from both my senators after being nominated by a representative</p>
<p>A raffle is not a good analogy because each ticket is for the same prize. I'm thinking of this as each MOC has a vacancy to fill. So each nomination is a ticket in a separate contest. I'm just trying to understand what's really going on, but that is my understanding.</p>
<p>It makes sense that the Senators would want to control the nominee list since they access the same pool of candidates. But the district level would have a different list of candidates compared to the Senate level. In the 3rd district there were 27 candidates competing for all for service academies. On the other hand, Specter and Casey both looked at almost 300 candidates.</p>
<p>While each member of congress can have 5 charged appointees/cadets at an academy at any time, there are several other ways. The national pool is the best example. I'm a little fuzzy on the current details, but several members can fill you in on alternate routes than being the top nominee from an MOC.</p>
<p>While it is true that you only need one nomination to get an appointment, it is also true that if you have more than one nomination the SA (in this case USAFA) has more ways in which to bring you in if they want to. Basically getting more than one nomination gives the SA more options for ways to bring in the highest qualified class possible. </p>
<p>That being said, the MOCs are also well within their rights to coordinate in an effort to make the most possible nom slots available, kind of spread the wealth kind of thing. Typically, if the Senators are coordinating amongst themselves, they are also trying to coordinate with each Rep as well, though that can be more difficult because each MOC is trying to get the highest # of cadets for their constituency base (Senators from their state and reps from their local district). Because of that, sometimes a Rep office will avoid coordinating with the Senator office while the senators typically are easy to coordinate with. Some MOCs coordinate and some don't. It is not something that the candidate has any control over. It can become very complicated but since the candidate doesn't have any control over it, there is no reason to fret about it.</p>
<p>I sent ya a PM...</p>
<p>Interesting being I received identical letters last year from these identical Senators and did some of the same digging myself... ;)</p>