[Little_shoe]

As a Navy Alumni I find this very interesting. There will always be people to apply to these schools because they are a great place to be from. However what most people dont know is the navy is turning academy grads loose after only a year of service. I just got my separation papers last week with 5 classmates. Its possible we could loose 3-4% our class before the 5 year point due to the excess number of officers.

[Tax-chick]

Ping ... an advantageous situation for our (er) moderately-motivated offspring, perhaps.

[Graymatter]

This was posted a few days ago. On which thread, the consensus was that the article was misleading and it's as hard as ever, maybe harder, to get accepted.

[clawrence3]

I hadn't heard that - I'm surprised ANY branch of the Armed Forces is turning ANYONE loose these days.

[leadpenny]

Maybe you could get an inter-service transfer to the Army or Marine Corps?

[PeteB570]

For shame on Fox News.

Very scary until you realize that there are still many, many more applications then there are slots. Nowhere do you find and numbers as to how many apply for how many slots.

If they did we would see that there is no problem.

No seat is unfilled at the service academies when the year starts.

[ex-snook]

US Naval Academy Class of 2009 Applicants and Nominees Applicants (includes nominees) 11,259 Number of applicants with an official nomination 4,320 Nominees qualified scholastically, medically and in physical aptitude 1,812 Offers of admission 1,503 Admitted 1,220
==============

About 10+% admitted. Not too shabby.

[BlueNgold]

The main thing that they don't mention is that the acceptance rate at the academies is extremely low. My class at Annapolis took less than 1 of every 16 applicants. A drop in applicants is not going to hurt these schools significantly. Of course, leave it to the media to portray it as some sort of crisis.

[affan76]

As a '76 grad of USAFA and a dad of a 05 USNA grad and a current cadet at USAFA, I can say that the quality of military academy cadets and midshipmen is not declining.

Below are the numbers for the USAFA Class of 2009:
2009 Demographics:
Applications 9601
Offers 1746
Males 1149
Females 241(17%)
Minorities 260(19%)
Athletes 320(23%)
Avg GPA 3.90
Avg SAT 1280

Please note these are AVERAGE numbers for class entry. Also if you haven't lettered in a sport or led either as a High School class officer or been a community leader, don't bother applying.

The Academies are in good shape and maintaining their high standards. This is what drives the liberals nuts and makes the Academies such a rich target.

[stinkerpot65]

Academies are for warriors, anyway. Not women and career bureaucrats. I wonder what percentage of the reduction are women who would have entered as a career plan, but don't want to face a war.

[Wolverine]

You will get 'hip-pocket orders' until you are out five years or until age 55..whichever comes first..

[The Grammarian]

Situation's a little different with the Army. I joined as a college-option OCS enlistment (I attend Basic Training, then OCS, then get commissioned a second lieutenant) precisely because the Army was running short on officers, particularly the staff grades. Something like 1500 LTs and a few hundred Branch-Qualified captains down as of the spring (around April).

[LS]

There is another, more important factor, at work here. For years, Annapolis and West Point were viewed as exceptional schools that gave a free ride to the person selected to attend.

In the last 10 years, almost all universities have become so obsessed with recruiting (and offering "student aid" and various "rebates") that the actual cost of attending many of these universities is nil. Some 60% of my U. of Dayton students (a small private college, usually rated in the top 10 of U.S. News's small private schools list) get student aid.

If it's essentially free to go to ANY school, West Point and Annapolis lose a great deal of their competitive advantage.