Military Service Academies

Now the time comes when all students have to decide where they want to go (and how to get there). I suppose it helps to begin with some stipulations, like how much you can pay, where, what degrees are offered. My first stipulation is that it get me into either the Air Force or Navy, and so the obvious choices are the military service academies (next is ROTC). Their admissions processes are torturous.

It's open to US citizens, ages 17 to 23, non-pregnant, in good physical shape, good moral character and leadership skills (I was declared Evil Empress of my class, that's leadership, right?). Children of Heads of State of other countries can also apply.

They're a lot pickier than other schools, and across a wider range of merit, the admissions process includes:

• The requirements listed above
• SAT or ACT scores
• Pre-Candidate Questionnaire
• Medical Examination
• Candidate Fitness Assesment
• Congressional Nomination

A word on those nominations. Applicants are encouraged to collect them like stamps. You can get them from Members of Congress, Senators, Officers (if you're already in the military or ROTC), the Vice-President or the President. Not bad, right? You're probably thinking you can get at least one from a Senator or Member of Congress (which is what most people do), from the President if one of your parents served. Of course, try for the Vice-President, who can nominate around 2 or 3 people per year per academy from anywhere in the world, right?

Yeah, not so easy for me. I haven't lived in the States for 5 years. My parent's weren't in the Service. I'm not in the Service. I'm now competing with pretty much every other apllicant for a nominationf from the Vice-President, who can only give out 2 or 3 a year. Whose requests are first screened by the Academies themselves. Who needs letters of reccomendations, wants to know my hobbies, and a 3500 character essay on why I want to serve (that's about one typed page).

On the other chance, I live abroad, speak a foreign language, good GPA, no health problems (that I know of), decent physical condition... I hope it's not too much of a

Longshot
(yes, the guy from X-Men)

Pre-Candidate Questionnaire

This is the very first part of the Air Force Academy admissions (the Naval Academy does something similar), and is pretty straightforward. Based on this, it's decided whether you may continue with the process, or are better off looking at some other college. It's divided into a few different sections (whose names I made up myself):

ID: This is mainly name, age, address, sort of thing. Pretty simple, although one question about race threw me off. As a half Caucasian, half Hispanic mutt, I thought it should be easy, but it wouldn't let me mark both Hispanic and Caucasian. I look more Caucasian, don't have a Spanish accent, so that will have to do. Make sure you know you're ZIP code (or in my case, my Postal Code), and how to properly write an address (which pretty much no one ever has to do anymore, what with that newfangled invention, the Intertubes...).

Grades: this includes SAT/ACT, class rank and GPA. I worked out my GPA myself because my school doesn't grade in those terms (strictly in percentages here). Either way, later on your school has to send your official grades and your GPA is recalculated.

Hint to those who have to fill this out. Wait until you have you have all your information ready, yeah, you can update it later, but to update this section you actually have to call the academy, you can't just sign in and change stuff. I sent it in before I had my SAT scores, tried to call a couple of times, got no response and sent an e-mail begging forgiveness (because it specifically said call) and asking for help, along with a few unrelated questions about sources of nominations. A few days later, my scores showed up on my profile, but I didn't get an answer to my e-mail, so I think it's probably a result of having sent the Official Score Report through College Board. Moral of the story: have your grades ready.

Miscellaneous: questions about extracurricular activities (scouts, church groups, etc), whether you've applied before, if you're in college, military, or high school, if your eyesight is correctable to 20/20, whether you've held a job, and a whole slew of other stuff. I think they're all yes/no questions.

Once you send this in, you're an applicant. If the powers that be consider you adequate, you're a competitive applicant. Later on, after they get some more information, they decide if you get to be a candidate. You can get to be a candidate without a nomination, but you need one to have a chance of being accepted. You can get a nomination and still not be considered competitive. Right now, I'm a competitive applicant.

Background Check

Just so we're all on the same page. I'm an American citizen born abroad, my mother is not an American citizen, so I'm duo-national. I live in a Spanish speaking country and go to a public school here. Now the school system is just a tad different from the US one...

High school ends in 11^th grade, after that, it's college... unless you're in a trade school, in which case it's 12 years and then a job. I'm not in a trade school.

The school year starts in February and ends in November, with a brief 2 week respite in July, and Easter week completely off. "Summer vacation" is from December to February.

I'm in a specific branch of the public school system, which I'll refer to as Nerd Academy, because it truly is. Basically we get extra science and math classes and get to skip stuff like philosophy and psychology (which everyone falls asleep in anyway).

My high school is on a university campus, which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds because we get pretty much no free time. The only advantage is a huge and accessible library. On which the college students post open invitations to cool sounding parties. Damn their mocking souls.

My schedule: classes start at 7am, and at least two days a week end at 5:30pm. The shortest day ends at 3. University students have been known to see us leaving campus regularly at 9pm and going "Oh, those poor, poor kids" as we pass.

It's too far to travel, so I live in a residency nearby with some other classmates, and often don't get to go home weekends because I have to finish some project or study.

There are practically no extra-curricular clubs at public schools nationwide (chess club, debate team, cheer-leading, forget it). My school literally has none. Most at least have a soccer or volleyball team. Not mine, nope. We are encouraged to participate in the math and science Olympiads. The chemistry teacher literally shanghaied my whole generation.

"Fill these in", she said, "it's just to familiarize everyone with how to inscribe, you can get the real ones later". Next thing I know, my fingers are turning yellow from nitric acid. A very sympathetic lab assistant actually told one of my friends not to worry, his hand would fall off in a few days.

Also, its pretty hard to run for class president when there are only 46 students in the whole school, but since the other candidate decided he had better things to do (his excuse was he had to study for some test) I guess I won by default, even though no one ever actually voted.

On the bright side, we covered integration in the first semester of 11^th grade.

At the end of the year, we have to take a series of standardized tests applied by the Ministry of Education before we get our diploma. these are: Math, a science (physics, chemistry, or biology), Spanish, Socials, Civics, and English. Civics is a problem. The teacher talks about interesting stuff, but pretty much nothing that's on the final test.

So now you know where I stand. The rest of my blog might start to make some sense.

Where the Trouble Begins

Applying to universities is... confusing, annoying, and involves way too many forms. My blog addresses that. Not in a particularly reassuring way, I mean, I'm applying to those schools myself. If you're looking for advice, this won't help you at all, I'm as lost as you are (and recording my mistakes right here for your entertainment!), but it might reassure you to know that other people are fighting the paperwork, the SATs, the essays, and all the rest of it.

In fact, before I started myself, I tried looking for blogs about this and didn't find any. I take that back, I found one that had exactly one entry (and the name I originally wanted to use for my own blog, what a waste). Maybe it's because they don't exist, or aren't successful or interesting, or maybe people that get into colleges know better than to waste their time blogging about it. I don't know, but I am going to try.

So welcome. Follow me through battles with bureaucracy and standardized tests, traversing the fields of forms and interviews into the lands of higher education, beginning a quixotic quest for acceptance letters ans scholarships to universities in the US of marvelous A...

... as an American citizen living abroad, thereby complicating everything about tenfold.

By the way, "lost number in a file", other than describing every applicant's nightmare, is from a Bruce Springsteen song, Radio Nowhere, embedded right here because everyone needs to know who he is (along with the E Street Band, of course):

The video obviously isn't synced with the sound...