NROTC or OCS?

[spartan110]

I'm a high school junior starting to look at colleges and who has aspirations of becoming a SEAL. I want to go for NROTC and become an officer but I've heard that you only get one shot at BUD/S and if you fail you're stuck in the fleet until you leave the navy. Is NROTC worth it or would enlisting going through BUD/S and OCS a better route?

[bud/s sucks]

Depends on what you want. You can always get a commission after you've been in the teams for a while, and not only through the OCS program.

[StoicSean]

...Is NROTC worth it or would enlisting going through BUD/S and OCS a better route?

This question is a little hard to answer because it is subjective. Like bud/s sucks said it is based entirely on the individual and their goals.

Going to college and joining the NROTC program gives you the benefit of an education, maybe even at the expense of the Navy and a chance to mature. During your time there you would have to maintain a high GPA, hold some form of leadership positions and excel in the PFT/PST whatever they call it. Not sure specifically how it works but at some point, either in your junior or senior year you choose a career path. Then your choice is reviewed and a decision is reached based on whether or not you meet the requirements. Hopefully someone with some NROTC experience can chime in, mine only lies with the Army and Air Force, but thats the generic form.

Your chances of getting an officer billet are very slim and you have to be a very squared away midshipman. But it isn't impossible. Dont let the 'one shot' at BUD/S deter you from choosing this route.

Now yes you could enlist, either before or after you get a degree and then seek a commission later through one of the Navy's various programs. Doing this is a bit of a safer bet at getting a shot at BUD/S and if for some reason you were to not succeed you could always try again.

The decision is yours to make. Do some searching on this site, there are a few threads about getting an 'officer billet' or 'enlisting'. Then weigh your options. There really isn't a best route, only what works for you and how much are you willing to sacrifcie/risk.

Sorry this was a bit long. Good luck.

[scskowron]

If you don't do NROTC, you have 4 years of college to think about whether you want to do OCS or enlist. Four years is plenty of time to train and decide to go for a commission or enlistment.

On the other hand, if you do NROTC I think there's an obligation after your 2nd year so you don't have a choice to leave anymore, and even if you decide to leave before your 3rd year those first two years are pretty much wasted because they don't count toward your commission. The advantage of NROTC is that you can cut down your tuition costs in some way.

[TavernianDevil]

I can't tell you what you sould do, I can only tell you what I did and why. After college I enlisted. After talking to several people (mostly on this site) that were trying the OCS to BUD/s route I discovered that the average time spent on getting their BUD/s package approved, completing OCS and then finally arriving at BUD/s was over one year. Personaly I didn't want to wait that long. I had to go through an "A" school but was still checked into BUD/s within six months of enlisting and had a guarenteed spot at BUD/s with my enlistment.
Secondly, I enlisted because I thought it was important to just BE a SEAL before I tried to lead any. I still stick by this statement. I've see way too many officers have a disconnect with the enlisted. This doesn't mean that I haven't had any great officers that have come from the Acadamy, OCS or ROTC because I have. On average those officers with an enlisted background just have that added bit of experience that can be crucial at times. Additionally, officers don't get many schools. Don't ask why, they just don't. Consider it an average time as an operator thing.
The biggest problem with this is that by enlisting first you've put yourself a few years behind in your officer career. If your career is the focus then do the officer route. I still haven't gone to OCS (working on it) but I'm extremely happy with my decision to enlist. I realize this is a bit biased on the enlisting route but it's what I know. Hopefully someone that took the officer route can throw in their two cents. Best of luck,
TavernianDevil

[spartan110]

Your chances of getting an officer billet are very slim and you have to be a very squared away midshipman. But it isn't impossible. Dont let the 'one shot' at BUD/S deter you from choosing this route.


speaking of that which is the main reason i brought this up... If for whatever reason i have trouble passing a certain aspect of the training theres still the option of getting rolled back a class and getting another chance to pass right?

[StoicSean]

Not a SEAL and haven't even been to BUD/S so I can only answer that question based on what I have read in books and seen on tv; which I will not do cause I dont want you to be misinformed. Someone in the 'know' please shed some light on this.

[beardch]

If you have good grades, active in serving the community, and play sports...why not try for the Naval Academy?

[mcdb84]

This is definitely a good question. I went through the NROTC program and am currently in the EOD training pipeline. The application to EOD is pretty similar to SEALs, so I think I might be able to help.

IMO, I would say that you have a better shot at getting a slot to BUD/s from NROTC than through OCS. They choose per year around 15 guys around the nation through NROTC vice 2 or 3 slots for SEALs through OCS per year. These numbers are not set since they change from year to year.

I wouldn't say it's "easy" to get a slot through NROTC, as StoicSean put it you have to be squared away and get really really good grades and be a stud when it comes to physical fitness. The guys I knew that went SpecWar through ROTC were beasts, putting up crazy scores that I could only strive to achieve. Depending on your ROTC unit, you might have to put in a lot of effort to applying and getting your application through since most officer instructors at the units are not savy on the SpecWar applicantion process since most are SWO/Sub/Aviator types.

This is a tough question, but you have to ultimately decide what is best for you.

[jkessen2]

I haven't posted here before and planned on lurking for a while more, however I can shed some light in on the NROTC aspect of discussion because I am currently a Freshman (fourth class) midshipman in college.

This is how NROTC works:
Get into the program, and get the scholarship - if you don't get it, then you're a "college programmer," and while this does have benefits, it ultimately sucks. Don't worry about choosing a school, they'll give you the scholarship to one [you have to still apply there and get accepted though]. If you don't get your scholarship by your Junior year of College, then you basically get kicked out of the program - there is wiggle room in there, though. But get the scholarship! The only "issues" with the scholarship is that you are required to do 2 semesters of calculus and 2 semesters of calc based physics [they both suck, trust me]. Reason for this is because the Navy is attempting to "push" Nuke on you.

The NROTC unit staff is as follows:
CO is an O6 - Ours was an aviator
XO is an O5 - Sub
Academic advisors are usually O3s, we have 3 of them for the Navy side of the house. 1 SWO/Nuke, 1 Sub, 1 Helo man.
MOI [USMC] is an O3, Avionics
AMOI [USMC] is an E7, I wanna say he's Recon.
Then we have a [retired] Chief running supplies, and a [retired Army] E9 in charge of paperwork.

You'll notice that none of them are SpecWar, which essentially means that we have had no "recruiting" to go SpecWar [they've tried to get us to go Aviation, SWO, and Sub though]- so if you want SpecWar and go NROTC, have your ducks in a row and know what you want and get in contact with the right people and let your advisor[s] know. It's a great program, and this summer I'm going on a summer cruise [CORTRAMID] for a month.

Sometimes though, certain aspects of the program seem trivial and/or pointless.

The bi-semesterly physical test is the PRT-Physical Readiness Test. It consists of four events - sit and reach, 1.5 mile run in less than 11:30 [I think, I'm usually in the 9:10-9:20 region], max situps in 2 minutes, and max pushups in 2 minutes.

You will PT 2 or 3 times a week in the morning at 0600-0615ish for about an hour. It's usually a joke...very easy.

Thursdays you wear your uniform around campus [usually Khakis, but we switched to SDBs for a few of the winter months], and Thursday afternoon is a 2-hr drill period that involves inspections, COD, and lectures.

Naval science classes are, by and large, easy and entertaining.

Hope that provides you some insight to the ROTC program.

Oh, and you can major in whatever you want.

[prostyle]

I use to be in the same position as you, I'm 17 as well. I was battling between the two for a while, because I wanted somehething to fall back on if I change my mind. Though how I saw was that if you want to be a SEAL you HAVE TO WANT TO BE A SEAL. You have to dedicate your self and be serious about it. When I asked the SEAL I know and a couple guys going to BUD/s and the recruiter they all said do you want to be a SEAL or an officer. They told me that as an officer you might be doing the SEAL thing for like 4 or so years then you quit that and you can become a operations manager or some crappy job sitting behind a desk, and that's just not for me so I'm going enlisted. Though if possible I don't plan on signing up for the SEAL challenge conract until maybe two years into my enlistment just to give my self a little more time to prepare.

[jolks09]

How much harder is it to get into the Naval Academy then NROTC or OCS? and does that route give you a better chance of becoming a seal officer?