Update 8/3/2007: Our social network, formerly known as Get Into Academy N, is now at NewCadet.com!

We just launched our social network geared towards candidates applying to USMA, USNA, USAFA, USCGA or USMMA. Now you can interact with hundreds of other candidates on the same path, ask questions, and share knowledge about the admissions experience.

Even if you already have accounts on MySpace and Facebook, you should join NewCadet.com because it has a very focused theme dedicated to getting you into the service academy of your choice, and every other user on it has the same goal in mind.

Interested in assessing your competition in the applicant pool? Aside from attending a summer seminar at one of the academies, NewCadet.com is the best place to meet and connect with fellow applicants.

Visit and Join NewCadet.com

Ning

We chose to use Ning as our social networking platform instead of other available scripts because of its stability and simplicity. This social network is hosted for free on the Ning servers (for now) at http://www.newcadet.com. Best of all, all the functions of a social network such as personal profiles, private messaging, discussion boards, photo sharing, and blogging just work out the box with Ning.

As our website and the aforementioned social network grow, we will seek out donations and sponsorships. With these funds, we will purchase the source code from Ning, upgrade our web hosting plan to a dedicated server, and then offer a better user experience to our visitors with more services.

Better Than A Forum

When we were considering adding a “Social Web 2.0″ aspect to Get Into Academy, we had the choice to create either a forum or a social network. There are already very good forums on the topic of service academy admissions at Service Academy Forums, College Confidential, and Military.com. So we decided to take a fresh approach and try a MySpace-style social network just for service academy candidates.

Improved Sense Of Community

Pmarca, the founder of Ning, says that a social network is an “online environment where people have profiles and interact via one another via friend links, messages, invitations, discussions, and sharing videos, photos, and music.” Our hope is that you will use NewCadet.com to develop relationships with other candidates and get up to par on the application game, no matter where you live and what your circumstances are.

Express Yourself

Let’s congratulate Angel from the Bronx for being the first member to join our social network. As you can see on Angel’s personal profile page on NewCadet.com, the personal page has all the social networking features that you are probably familiar with from MySpace and Facebook: the wall, photos, friends, and groups. You can even customize the look and feel of your own page. But the coolest feature on this has to be the personal and group blogging: candidates on NewCadet.com blog about their progress in the admissions process, and all this knowledge is shared across the network.

Join NewCadet.com

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