I know that there are certain occupations which will allow a person joining the military to gain direct appointment as an officer. Among them are doctor, lawyer and chaplain. I qualify as none of the above.
From my understanding, as a college graduate, I could start out as an E-4, earning $1443.60 per month.
However, I would rather join as an officer. An O-1 starts out at $2097.60 a month. So, how would I go about (without becoming one of the aforementioned three occupations) being assured of entering the military as an officer? Would a graduate degree do the trick? Licking the general’s boots?
N.B. I am not joining the military. I am just curious
Anyone with a certain number of credits (less than a bachelor’s degree worth) can apply straight to OCS. If accepted (and most are, unless you have some disqualifier), you go to Basic Training, then to OCS. Upon graduation from OCS, you have a commission and head off to the wonderful world of officership.
It’s also occasionally done for people who have specific skills that the service is willing to waive OCS for – you mentioned, doctors, lawyers and chaplains, but there are some others.
(Note – Information only from Army perspective, though I had a friend who did the same thing a couple of years ago in the Marine Corps.)
The Coast Guard has plenty of direct commision/ocs officers. I’ll bet it’s the same for all services- you could go straight to OCS if you have a 4 yr degree. These officers (in the CG, anyway) typically get the less than desired assignments from the get go, however. USCG Academy officers all go to cutters as newly minted ensigns, giving them a shot at the “line officer” career path. OCS grads can go to sea, but the chances are much less. They will typically go to some staff/office type job from which there is no escape.
If one wants to join the service, and money is the priority over all else, than officer is the way to go. Me, I’d rather be poor and happy than well off and miserable with my job everyday.
OCS is the only way to go, AFAIK, without the specialized DDS/MD/Legal background. From a Naval perspective, those are not line officers, meaning all they do in the world is their specialty. As a line officer, I can theoretically get qualified to drive ships, subs, planes, desks, etc.
Chandeleur, OCS for the CG may put you in a dead-end job, but that definitely isn’t so for the Navy. From what I understand, OCS is extremely competitive just to get in, and once you’re out you get funneled into the same career pipelines as ROTC and Acad grads. And I highly recommend trying the officer route before enlisting. It’s a world of difference.
zev, I recommend visiting your local recruiter and talking about your opportunities… even if, as you say, you’re not serious about joining. They’re the best qualified to give you answers, although keep in mind they’re gearing them toward getting you to sign up. If you have any questions about Navy stuff, feel free to email me.
I’d also suggest talking to a FORMER recruiter, as well. Find someone who isn’t being pressured to make his/her objective for the month.
Also, check out the different branches. Sometimes the Army gets a special deal to recruit linedoggies that the other branches don’t get. I don’t know if that extends to officers, too…but just be aware that all branches aren’t NECESSARILY alike.
~VOW
Going in as an officer is definitely the way to go, not only for the money, but also the additional benefits, (things like transportation, living accomodations, O club, women, etc).
I’m sure there are others out there, but not many; I was one of the few exceptions to the rule everyone is citing about only medical personnel, ministers, and lawyers being invited in as officers, and why they did it for me is still a mystery.
I was a college-grad photographer. It was during the War in Viet Nam and in fact I had been drafted and was in my second week of enlisted basic training. One day I was called out of formation to meet with a NCO I had never seen before (I just knew that I had done something wrong, but to not do some PT was fine with me). He asked me if I had indeed been a photojournalist in civilian life and I answered in the affirmative, and then he asked if I would like to do the same sort of work in the Army. I hemmed and hawed a bit and he threw in that I would, of course, be made an officer if I said yes. So I said yes.
Two days later I was pulled out of basic training, issued a chit for an officer’s uniform and after a two week leave was shipped to Viet Nam. Why I was made an officer, I will never know. The majority of the combat photographers I was working with were enlisted men and the other officers were not that familiar with photography. I never did get the hang of being an officer (for one thing, I always seemed to be holding something when someone saluted me), but I did enjoy the extra benefits (when I was wounded I got a nice bed and a nice flight back to Japan).
flyboy I have a minor disagreement with what you said here:
OCS and ROTC will never be on the same career ladder as academy grads. The old boy networks of the academies will always dominate. Not that I begruge them that. In theory, at least, they were groomed for the military and compared to them the rest are just playing at it.
Two anecdotes do not necessarily data make, but Colin Powell was a ROTC grad and he had a career ladder most West Pointers only know in their dreams; and the late Armiral Boorda (the guy who allegedly killed himself over a flap about unearned decorations) was an OCS grad, rising all the way from Seaman E1 to Chief of Naval Ops.
Once you’re in, if you’re good, it’ll be noticed. The West Point/Annapolis/Colorado Springs/New London degree will make a great first impression; and yes, as TV Time said, there is an old-boy network, just as in civilian life you’ll have a much easier time if you have a Wharton MBA or Yale Law sheepskin on your wall. But still, it’s not like OCS/ROTC grads get nothing but sh*t work. Also, IIRC these days ALL ensigns/2nd lieutenants are commissioned as Reserves and only become Regulars when they are between O2 and O3 ; used to be Academy grads made Regular while O1.
One thing, ROTC and OCS programs do graduate what the Navy calls “line” (general-purpose, command) officers as well as staff/limited duty; direct-commission is only for the technical specialties (MD, lawyer, chaplain, etc.). Both involve you doing the equivalent of a full Basic Training at some point plus an officer basic course before going on with your specialty. Direct-commissions get an elementary military orientation course sometimes deridingly called “knife-and-fork school”. (BTW, the TV show JAG contrives to have its lead character be at the same time a military lawyer AND a fighter pilot, which is a line officer position, so they can portray him doing a lot of really “warriory” action-sequences) One thing about ROTC/OCS: if you wash out too late in the program you may be required to finish a full term of enlistment.
As mentioned earlier, the USCG has a broader range – but a much, much smaller total number – of direct-commission billets, including civil/electrical/environmental engineering specialties.
"Going in as an officer is definitely the way to go, not only for the money, but also the additional benefits, (things like transportation, living accomodations, O club, women, etc). "
O club? When was the last time you saw an O club? They are nearly extinct and the few still open seem to be open only for a few hours a week and private parties.
There are plenty of O-clubs still around, both in CONUS and abroad. I’ve seen them in the PNW, Okinawa, Misawa, FL, TX, and other places. But sadly, they are a dying breed.
JRDelirious, you’re right about the reserve thing, but in the Navy, getting a regular Navy appointment isn’t automatic. One must request it and accept an obligation for the augment (I think mine was two years).
TV time, I understand what you’re saying, but what I said is true. The pipelines themselves are exactly the same; how an academy guy advances compared to how an OCS/ROTC guy advances may differ (I personally don’t believe this is generally true, though, and I haven’t seen it yet. I know plenty of academy grads who went through training with me, then hit squadrons, and are now finishing their shore tours, just like me. My hunch is that if I mentioned “good ol’ boy network” to them, they’d say “What’s that?”). What are also identical are the gates for promotions, qualifications, Department Head screen, CO screen, etc. My personal experience in the VQ community in the Navy has been that academy grads have much less respect nowadays than they used to.
Actually, Boorda was an alumnus of the Seamn to Admiral program. That’s a bit different than OCS. He’s also the guy who brought the program back into being.
Incredibly stupid question -
what exactly is a “commission”? I’ve read the term, and heard the term, and used the term (but probably in the wrong way).
So, what exactly, does it mean when I read/hear/say it?
I was not a “direct commission” but I might as well have been. I was commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant in the brief period after the Berlin crisis died down and before Vietnam brewed up. The Army let me go to law school. I went on active duty as a captain (temporary), first lieutenant (permanent) in the Army’s Judge Advocate Generals Corps with no military training except a six or eight-week ROTC summer camp. Fully half my class mates at the JAG school at the University of Virginia Law School were direct commissions and fully half of them had never handled a weapon. The Army sent us all to Fort Lee, Va., the quartermaster school, for two or three weeks of general orientation to the service, and then to Charlottesville for eight weeks of substantive instruction and then to our first regular duty station. I was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
The thing worked because, based on my observation, almost all of us were good young lawyers and we were good material. The times were unusual, however, the Army was gearing up for Vietnam and Senator Irvine had forced changes through the Congress that required the armed forces to provide fully qualified lawyers as prosecutors and defense counsel in special courts martial. The services had to double the size of their legal staffs in pretty short order to meet the requirement.
One of my jobs at Fort Leonard Wood was to screen each new draft of recruits for lawyers, go talk to them, size them up and see if they were willing to forego a two-year tour as an enlisted man in the combat engineers (Leonard Wood trained combat engineers, mostly) for a four-year tour as a JAG officer. A surprising number elected to take their chances.
My father had been direct commissioned as a doctor in WWII. His only prior experience was as a trooper and horse shoer in a mounted unit of the Ohio National Guard.
Receiving a direct commission depends on you having a skill that the army really needs and can not get from within its own ranks. Physicians and surgeons are an obvious example, so are dentists. I understand that the Army is starting to produce some of its own lawyers by sending line officers to law school at the government’s expense but in exchange for a fairly extended obligated tour. They may have learned their lesson from all the semi-civilian lawyer types they were saddled with in the late 60s and early 70s.
the Seaman to Admiral program isn’t an OCS program. It’s a “let’s send this Sailor to College with an Immediate Commission (after a short stint quite like the regular ROTC Summer Training)” program. OCS, on the other hand, is shorter and the commission’s granted at the end of it.
I don’t think I can answer this as a legal definition , but hopefully I can shed some practical light on it. My understanding is that the term is a holdover from a couple centuries or so ago, when people used to buy an officer’s rank from the King. Now it’s used to differentiate the obligation or “contract” Officers and Enlisted have with the DoD. Officers serve by means of a commission, at the pleasure of the President. Enlisted members (non-commissioned officers) serve without a commission by enlisting and signing a contract. [sub]Not a great explanation, I know.[/sub]
Very close to it, flyboy. Warrant and Commissioned Officers receive appointments. Regular (as opposed to National Guard and Reserves) Officers have permanent appointments as officers (with, of course, the whole thing between permanent and temporary promotions to muddle the waters). Enlisted Members join for a specified time and their contract ends automatically–this includes Petty Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers also. Commissioned and Warrant Officers have to resign their commissions or have them terminated. Note: US Navy Warrant Officers receive commissions as Warrant Officers. IIRC, the other branches’ Warrants receive Warrants. The difference, again IIRC, is that the President issues commissions and either the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Service concerned issues warrants.
This isn’t the case anymore (again, all my info is Army). The only difference nowadays is that Regular Army officers resign their commission at the end of their required time, while Reserve officers simply request a release from active duty. Permanent and temporary promotions aren’t done anymore.
I don’t think there are any RA officers being commissioned anymore – it’s all Reservists on active duty, until we make Major, at which point we become RA. It’s no big whoop these days.
Army warrant officers are warranted at WO1, but are commissioned to CW2. The legal difference is that W1s can’t do certain things under the UCMJ, but CW2s can. Many of those things are command responsibilities, so they started giving commissions to CW2s a few years back to allow them to command.
Navy warrants are all CW2s to start out with, aren’t they?
So did Seaman to Admiral program people have to do any ROTC or other military-related stuff while in college, or was it just sort of, “Here’s your tuition money, see you in four years”?
Sorry, stan; temporary promotions are done. Maybe the active Army doesn’t use the term, but the commissioning and promotion laws are the same, AFAIK.
The reason why the Navy Warrants start out at CW2 is because of the way that program works. One has to be either a Chief Petty Officer or a Petty Officer First Class selectected for Chief Petty Officer to apply for the Warrant program. Going from those paygrades to Warrant means going to W2.
It’s pretty much a see you in a couple of years for the STA thing, although one’s required to make certain “courtesy appearances,” as I call them, in uniform.
BTW, stan; you just alluded to something that many folks in the Navy can’t seem to figure out: Frocking and what authority goes with it.
An E3 who gets selected for E4 can be frocked to that RATE (Navy term for Enlisted Rank) before they really get advanced to E4. As far as the UCMJ is concerned, the frocked PO3 is still an E3 and consequently has no general military authority above that of any other E3. Now, if they’re placed in charge of a detail, it’s a different story: that’s positional authority.