When I was applying to the USMA, one of my bookmarked sites was Cadet Brendan Mosher’s website. Aside from the must-read book Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, there are very few resources that realistically portray the life of a West Point cadet. Then I discovered Cadet Mosher, who had an online journal that carefully detailed his life at West Point.

What better way to glimpse at what is to come if you get into the United States Military Academy than to read the diary of a current cadet? The following are some of my favorite entries that I recommend to USMA candidates. They will help you get a better idea of what to expect at West Point — the fun challenges as well as the grinding difficulties that you must overcome. There are over three year’s worth of writing on his journal, so you can read through it all if you have the time, but in the meantime here are some of the major highlights:

• Cadet Basic Training aka Beast
• Pictures and details of a Saturday Morning Inspection (SAMI)
• Cadet Field Training at Camp Buckner
• A West Point cadet’s Army-Navy Football Game
• Air Assault School
• Christmas Dinner and the Winter Formal

As you can see, Cadet Mosher does not have the best looking website. Apparently, West Point does not place any importance on web design in its military curriculum. But it’s the quality of content that matters, right?

Here are two other interesting webpages of note:

• Cadet Mosher’s photo gallery
• Funny collection of West Point videos

Lastly, I would like to thank Cadet Brendan Mosher for having persistently maintained his website over his years at West Point. I am 100% sure that he has received both criticism and ridicule from his classmates because of his personal website about West Point, but he has stuck with it. Now he has created a collection of invaluable content for aspiring candidates to understand the culture and experience of West Point from the perspective of a West Pont cadet.

Can you depend on affirmative action to drag you out of the gutter and blast you into an open seat in a service academy? The service academies have been actively trying to recruit more minorities as part of their admissions policies. This reason for seeking out minority candidates will be explained below. So being classified as a minority can help you get into a service academy, but we have to clarify what this means. By the way, don’t expect a free ride because, despite your minority status, you still need to show Admissions that you have what it takes to succeed as a leader in the US Armed Forces.

Currently, there is a lack of ethnic diversity in the officer ranks in comparison to the enlisted ranks. For instance, in the Navy, 47 percent of the enlisted ranks are minorities while only 17 percent of the officers are minorities. This lack of representation in the officer ranks is a critical matter of national security, because the members of the US Armed Forces should accurately reflect the diversity of the country that they are defending. Morale among the troops and trust in the leadership are key components in how any military functions, while racial differences can lead to low morale and ultimately the breakdown of the system.

The Naval Academy Dean of Admissions in 2003 said, “Everybody that receives an offer to the academy has to be fully qualified, but beyond that, we want a brigade that reflects our country, geographically diverse, we want it to be diverse in other regards, too.” Hence, the service academies will not lower their standards of admission for the sake of minority candidates. That would be asking for major trouble in the future when incompetent officers manage to slip through into the service.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, being a minority does not guarantee you a spot in the academy in the traditional sense of affirmative action. Instead, each of the service academies seems to pay special attention to qualified minority candidates. This results in an increase in the number of minority applicants because the service academies actively seek them out. And, naturally, the number of minorities who are accepted into the service academies will continue to increase with continued efforts by the respective admissions departments.

If you are a minority candidate, don’t think that you have an unfair advantage over non-minority candidates in the applicant pool. But what you should consider is this. America needs you in the Armed Forces to provide leadership for this diverse nation.

Here are the newly updated 2007-2008 figures for the value of education at the US Military Academy, the US Naval Academy and the US Air Force Academy.

What are the factors that are used to assess these numbers? Some of the major factors that influence the figures are the number of graduates, the number of employees, the size and cost of the facilities, and the equipment and materials used to train and develop officers at the respective service academies.

One thing to keep in mind is that a higher value of education does not make one service academy better than another. The scope of each of the academies differs greatly, and the necessary facilities and equipment needed to reach those goals vary accordingly. You will find that the US Department of Defense generously spends as much as is needed for each of these academies to train and develop the best possible leaders for our Armed Forces.

So here are the updated numbers. They reflect the total cost to get the cadets and the midshipmen through four years at the academies.

USMA: $441,000
USNA: $351,800
USAFA: $400,000

The point of this article is to point out the exorbitantly high cost of education at the service academies in comparison to civilian colleges and universities. The best part about this is that the cadets and midshipmen do not need to pay a penny from their own pockets, as noted by David — Air Force Academy candidate — on Get Into Academy N. This is a small and reasonable price that the citizens of our country must pay to live in the United States of America as we know it now.

In our article that compares the service academies to ROTC programs, I stated that service academy graduates receive regular commissions whereas most ROTC graduates receive reserve commissions. I received an email from a gentleman who corrected me on the significance of this issue. He says that regular and reserve commissions still do not mean anything except on paper. You can read the source that I used to write the aforementioned article, which is a news article published by West Point Public Affairs.

With that said, the following is the email that I received from the said gentleman who knows more about regular and reserve commissions than I do. So here are his words:

From 1997 on everyone received reserve commissions until promotion to Major (USMA, ROTC, OCS; everyone). From that point on the term meant nothing, since everyone had parity and it was no longer used for anything promotion related, or for anything at all for that matter.

Then they arbitrarily decided to call all initial commissions Regular Army upon graduation from the commissioning source, which meant that they had to grandfather the ones who were commissioned Reserve but not yet promoted to Major.

The term still means nothing, and as such there is no point in even mentioning it since you will only confuse people. There is simply a small block on the Officer Record Brief (ORB) that says current component and type of original appointment. It isn’t used for anything now- it’s just a vestige of a system that used to give preferential treatment to USMA grads.

The medical, dental and disibility benefits referenced in the article below are not attained by having an RA commission; this was just a separate provision of the Defense Authorization Act. The way it is written [in the article] is confusing.

Here are some books on the subject of the US Naval Academy. Pick a couple and read up during the admissions process. Reading about the history and culture of the Naval Academy is probably the best thing you can do as a candidate. Over 60% of Naval Academy drop-outs could have been avoided if they had properly educated themselves about the Academy before deciding to apply.

If you have any suggestions for this ongoing list of recommended reading for the US Naval Academy, feel free to email us at info@getintoacademy.com.

• A Day in the Life of a Midshipman (Naval Institute Book for Young Readers)
• A Civil War: Army Vs. Navy a Year Inside College Football’s Purest Rivalry
• Brigade, Seats!: The Naval Academy Cookbook
• First Class: Women Join the Ranks at the Naval Academy (Bluejacket Books)
• Letters from Annapolis: Midshipmen Write Home, 1848-1969
• Navy Football: Gridiron Legends and Fighting Heroes
• Sailing at the U.S. Naval Academy: An Illustrated History
• The Brigade in Review: A Year at the U.S. Naval Academy
• The Naval Academy Candidate Handbook: How to Prepare, How to Get In, How to Survive Second Edition
• The Official United States Naval Academy Workout (Official Five Star Fitness Guides)
• The Story of the U.S. Naval Academy (Naval Institute Book for Young Readers)
• The U.S. Naval Academy, an Illustrated History