[quote]dollarbill44 wrote:
thehammerlord wrote:
Thanks for the replies. I am planning on going in as an officer. How stiff is the competition after The Basic School for a MOS of your choice, assuming I wanted something like Intelligence or an engineering MOS?
I can’t tell you about the Marines when it comes to competition for MOS, but I can tell you that in the Army ROTC, the competition for MOS begins the moment you get your first college grades. When assessing MOS selection, they look at overall GPA, Military class standing, Advance Camp evaluation, PT scores, SATs, schools graduated (Airborne, Air Assault, Jungle Warfare, etc) and cadet evaluations and even your official military photo. While they try to match up your choice to their needs, only the top 1% are “guaranteed” (there are no 100% guarantees) to get their top choice.
Granted, you are going a different route - one where they might only care about your standing within your Marine class at OCS, but if you are equal to 2 other guys in every way quantifiable, they can go back and look at your academic history to separate you. One way of guaranteeing you get your top choice, however, is to make your #1 choice Infantry. That is always failsafe.
Never believe what a recruiter tells you about MOS selection. You are assigned according to the needs of the service, period, from day 1 to your very last day, no matter what has been promised along the way. That is in the small print of any military contract, but the recruiters don’t tell you that, you have to read it for yourself.
Whatever you do, good luck, serve well and be proud.
DB[/quote]
The Basic School doesn’t work that way. You are ranked based off of your performance at the school, against the rest of your class. The class is divided into thirds. The top guy of each third pretty much gets his choice of MOS, and so on down through the third of the class you are in. The top third gets more choices and gets more of their first pick MOSs. The top guy of the top third gets whatever MOS he or she wants. The last guy of each third gets whatever is left.
This system ensures a quality spread, so that the top performers and the bottom performers are spread evenly among all of the MOSs.
After TBS, you will go to your MOS school. The Marine Corps runs its own schools and also shares space at schools with the other services.
Enjoy.