staff said:
Here's the deal: I got really good grades at my community college and that first semester at Texas A&M wasn't good, I didn't fail anything, but it still wasn't good. I figured out that by the time I send my application in I will be going into my sophmore year and hopefully have a gpa of around 3.3 in engineering at A&M. So do you think that one semester will kill me?
I transfered from a community college in Texas to a state school after my sophomore year. I'm not sure if you realize this, but your CC grades don't have anything to do with your overall GPA at A&M. The only GPA the Navy will see (or care about) is your A&M GPA. It was said that they'll want transcripts from all your schools for BDCP. It may have changed, but when I was applying I'm pretty sure that all I had to send was my UT-Arlington transcript, and that had "T" (for transfer) in the grade section for my two years worth of classes at the CC. I had also only completed one semester at UTA before I got picked up. So even though my grades at the CC weren't stellar, it didn't matter because my GPA started over at the four-year school.
The main advice for all of this is just apply. There are a lot of intangibles that affect your chances of getting picked up besides raw scores. I honestly don't even remember what my ASTB scores were. I had to submit my application on three different occasions before I was picked up.
Another hot topic here seems to be LORs. When I was applying, I was told that the best LOR is one from somebody who knows you well. The LORs are to establish your personal character, not how well connected you are. My LORs were from my buddie's dad (unemployed engineer who had been "downsized" from Motorolla), my ninth-grade Geography teacher (I kept in touch with him over the years. He was a Marine in Vietnam who died of Leukemia shortly after my first application so I had to explain the date on the LOR on my subsequent applications (definitely worth it! That LOR was a thing of beauty!)), and one of my church leaders who'd known me since high school. Nobody's name worth dropping at a cocktail party, but I'll take the fact that everyday I strap myself into an orange and white helicopter with "Navy" painted on the side as proof that I did something right when I applied.
Finally, a big decision for everyone applying for any commissioning program is this: Which is more important to you, being a pilot, or being a Naval Officer? The more options you give them, the better off you'll be. I realize that you put down three choices on the application, and you should definitely put pilot down as number 1. The others are up to you. Just make sure that you can live with your second and third choice. That same idea should stay with you into flight school. I know several people who got into the flight program and decided that it wasn't what they wanted to do with their lives (I don't know why, but it happens). Leave your options open while still keeping an eye on your goals.
