1st Lt. Potato
New Member
Any tips on how i would get into West Point it has now become a top priority for me :visor:
The officers coming from West Point, are they substantially better trained or is it only because it´s more prestigious to have been on West point?
Westpoint isn't the only commissioning system in the US Army. Actually, the largest source of commission is through the Reserve Officers Training Corps which is a 4 year military curriculum spread throughout 273 universities in the states. That's actually where I'm at right now, an instructor at one of those universities to create officers. There is also Officers Candidate School which is the smallest source of commission and draws largely from the enlisted ranks but also draws from civilians with college degrees as well. Don't be worried about theorist vs practitioners anyways...at least now anyways since almost everyone in the Army who has been in for more than 3 years is a combat veteran...plus we spend A LOT of time in the field training...For instance, before I came to the university to be an instructor I was a Fire Support Officer assigned to an infantry company...from Jan 2013 to August 2013 I spent 4 months in the field training, the year before that I spent almost 6 months in the field...we do a lot of training to work out those kinks.
It can be a fairly closed system in regards to Westpoint because there is an age limit to graduate which makes it hard for prior service soldiers like me to get into that academy. Still, by the time they are 2nd Lieutenants they will be paired with a very salty Sergeant First Class who has been in the Army for a decade or more to ensure that "theory" transitions into practice...and again...lot's of training.
Furthermore, every single officer will be assigned to a branch where they will have to attend that branches Officer Basic Course. The first part of it is to train and then apply basic military skills and get everyone on the same page. The second part is to train that officer into proficiency within their branch I.E. Infantry, Armor, Field Artillery etc.
For instance, once I commissioned from ROTC (After serving several years as an enlisted soldier and NCO) I went to the Army's Field Artillery Officers Basic Course. There I spent several weeks doing field training in basic infantry type training and then spent 6 months learning how to be a Field Artillery Officer.
Did it work? Well, I can tell you that after I reported to my first unit as a 2nd Lieutenant I found myself in the field 4 days later running a fire direction center that was sending live artillery shells into an impact area for my platoons certification. Six months later I was in combat again, but this time leading a platoon as an "infantry" platoon leader with those same artilleryman I was shooting with as an FDO (artillery soldiers in the US Army have regularly been used as infantry in combat over the course of the war on terror). I had a very successful time as a platoon leader thanks largely to my training...and the help of some very good NCO's.
I've met excellent officers who were never enlisted or NCO's and I've met terrible ones too. Same goes for prior service officers...it seems to me they're either REALLY good...or REALLY terrible...it's not a perfect system but when there are 9-10,000 or more commissioning officers every year that are coming into the Army...well, it works.
I find this aspect a very interesting and very practical sounding element of the training sequence. Having been enlisted I had no knowledge that an enlisted men I.E.: sergeant 1st class was responsible for a segment of the 2nd Louie's training. The nickname used in the day for 2nd Lieutenants.
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