[keats5]

"My roomate and best man is a cop. Seems that the factors that would have helped him obtain a job sooner were (a) being a minority and (b) having military service bonus points. The college degree was a necessity as well."

My son's asian. Does that count? He's also spoken of getting into the military. I'm wondering if that would be better to do before or after college?

[MudPuppy]

my sister is a cop.
I will tell you the biggest thing was her bachelors degree and the fact that she was never in any trouble.
She interned in Atlantic City, NJ at the Tropicana as a Security Guard.
She applied to police forces up and down the east coast and was hired in New Castle, DE. As she was going through the DE academy the NJ State Police called but she was already over half-way through the DE academy.
There were extensive application processes and background checks.
She graduated from the police academy with honors.
Takes some persistence but it was the only thing she ever wanted to do.

p.s. Out of 5 kids, most of us ended up in some type of uniform. I went in the Marines, my sister is active duty air force, my other sister is a doctors office manager, my brother was in the air force now building custom cars in his back yard, and little sister is a cop. We're all contributing citizens that voted Republican :)

[Doohickey]

My brother-in-law is a state trooper and also in the AF Reserves. He uses his Montgomery GI Bill to go to college part-time. He gets the best of both worlds - relevant experience trumps college degree up to a point, so by the time he gets to that point he'll have a degree.