The nation’s three major military academies said Wednesday that applications for the incoming Class of 2013 were up significantly from previous years, citing aggressive marketing, declining casualties in Iraq and the economic downturn as factors.
The rise in applications was most notable at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where applications reached their highest level since 1988, 15,342, up 40 percent from the class of 2012. About 1,240 are expected to enroll.
Applications were also up at the Military Academy at West Point, where 11,106 people applied for about 1,320 places in the incoming class, an increase of 9.6 percent. And at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, 9,890 people applied for about 1,350 places, an increase of just under 10 percent.
Let’s hope that the Naval Academy admissions people are not coerced by alumni who are more concerned about the athletic capabilities of applicants who might produce a winning football team than they are by strengths of the personal characters of those athletes.
It doesn’t take much of a Google search to produce evidence of a pattern of terrible decisions that have been made by the Naval Academy in its selection of applicants for entry into the academy who have played on its football teams over the past twenty years or so.
Not just Navy. I personaly knew someone little better than a thug who got into the Air Force Academy due to athletics, despite having decidedly mediocre academic credentials.
And heck, you can make that claim about [i]most[/i] colleges. In much of society facility with leather spheroids is held in vastly higher esteem than the ability to do something useful.
Top athletes are not attracted to the academies due to the military training, rigorous academic requirements, and post-graduation service requirements. Not a great path for anyone who has any possibility of a pro career. There is comparitively little alumni pressure about athletics; the focus is still on good potential leaders of the military combat branches.
Reply to #3.
Bill, I encourage you to Google the anti-social vicisitudes of some Naval Academy athletes over the past ten to twenty years.
If these men had been become commissioned naval officers, just what sort of problems could they have created for our Navy and for our Country?
Google shows two incidents in the last ten years, each involving two mids. Both appeared to have been party situations that got out of control with drunken victims. There were three convictions and one acquittal. Your characterization of this a “pattern of terrible decisions” hardly seems accurate. While there are inevitable and regrettable exceptions, Navy seems a model of decency compared to civilian schools
Reply to #5.
Two incidents come quickly to mind. One involves rape and the other involves a theft ring. Both of those were reported in the Washington, DC area newpapers. Possibly an improved Google search or another web search machine or a newpaper archive search will be of help to you.
By the way, you will probably come across an article on how midshipmen organized themselves to cheat on an electrical engineering exam.