What are service academies?
Based on your interest in this post, you may already be familiar with the term “service academy”. You might even be inclined to prefer one service academy over the others. Either way, I’d like to review all 5 service academies to make sure you’re aware of all of the options.
Remember, attending a service academy is not the same as going to a traditional college on an ROTC scholarship. Yes, there are some similarities. In both cases, you graduate after 4 years as a commissioned military officer in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard. However, the experiences themselves are not the same.
Technically, of the five academies, four of them are called “military service academies” and one is called a “service academy”. The Merchant Marine Academy is the outlier here. It’s called a “service academy” because its mission is not military-related.
Despite this small distinction, you will usually hear all of these schools lumped together as the 5 military service academies or service academies.
- US Naval Academy
- US Military Academy (aka West Point)
- US Air Force Academy
- US Coast Guard Academy
- US Merchant Marine Academy
Today, I want to give you a broad overview of the academies, what their missions are, why it’s so competitive to get in, and what the payoff might look like if you do attend and graduate. Hopefully, this will serve as an early motivator as you begin down this ambitious path.
A military service academy is, in essence, a “military college” whose goal is to train and educate world-class military leaders. Each academy has its own discrete campus and all students live on that campus for all four years.
It’s pretty obvious when you’re on the campus of a service academy, because everyone you see is in uniform. Everyday life is structured around classroom work, mandatory daily physical fitness participation, drills, inspections, and everything is neat and orderly.
If you haven’t been to one of the service campuses yet, you should do your best to visit as many as you can. As we’ll discover together over the next few years, there are all kinds of pros and cons that go along with living in this unique environment.
Each academy has its own mission, culture, reputation, level of selectivity, and they prepare their graduates to work in different (AORs) or Area of Responsibility.
For example, the Navy, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines focus on waterborne operations, Army (West Pointers) focus on land-based operations, and, of course, the Air Force takes control of the skies and space.
As you learn more about each of these academies, the different military branches, and their missions, you will begin to figure out which one (or more than one) you think suits you best. And you’ve got plenty of time to make that decision.
To give you an idea of how big these schools are, here are the approximate number of admitted students to each Academy:
- Naval Academy 1200 students
- West Point 1200 students
- Air Force Academy 1200 students
- Coast Guard Academy 250 students
- Merchant Marine Academy 250 students
Compared to most traditional colleges, they are on the small side.
Other than the relatively small overall class sizes, why else are these programs so competitive to get into? Why do they have single digit acceptance rates (comparable to Ivy League schools), and why do you have to have all your ducks in a row so early to be competitive?
Well, there are a lot of reasons why tens of thousands of the best and brightest students in our country - like you - want to be a part of these communities so badly.
Lots of applications
First off, there are a lot of motivated students who apply to these service academies, which, in turn, bumps up the competitiveness. However, the competitiveness goes beyond just the absolute number of applications. After all, many traditional colleges receive tens of thousands of applicants. Why are service academies different?
Quality of applicant pool
Second, they’re different because of the nature (and I would say, quality) of the applicant pool.
High school students who are inclined to seek out service academy appointments, are typically highly motivated, disciplined, organized, prepared, and self-starters. They are often athletes, academically-driven, and leaders.
When you combine this number of across-the-board, high-quality candidates (call it 20,000 applications for the Naval Academy) with the relatively few number of students who get appointments (call it 1,200), it makes for a very competitive process with low acceptance rates.
Some service academy acceptance rates are in the 6 - 10% range.
Full scholarships for all
Third, at the most basic level, service academies offer a 4-yr, elite, world-class education, with high-prestige, respect, and reputation - for free - because everyone is on full scholarship (that’s tuition, room, board, books, clothing, you name it).
Most would say that the education “alone” is worth $500K - minimum.
In exchange for all of this incredible value, you will serve as a military officer, in your selected branch, for a minimum of 5 years after graduation (or more if you like).
Some people call that a service commitment, I call it a guaranteed job. More on that later...
And, that’s not where the benefits end.
Service academies offer:
- Degrees in highly-transferable majors, oftentimes in the STEM field
- A highly-motivated student body
- world-class leadership training
- International travel
- an engaged alumni community
- The potential to make a career in the military if you so choose
- A guaranteed job for 5 or more years after graduation
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We will talk a lot more about service academies in the coming months and years, I just wanted to give you a brief working knowledge of how it all fits together.
If you’re still reading because service academies sound exciting, challenging, and will provide valuable experiences that will jump start your life - you’d be right.
So, keep reading these posts, follow my advice, and you will turn yourself into a highly-qualified candidate for any of the academies.
If you're enjoying this content, consider enrolling in our online mentoring program, where I teach lessons like this every week (starting in 9th grade) to students who aspire to attend service academies and ROTC programs. There's not better way to prepare for the rigors of the application process.
