Eas, you are right, to an extent. My package was the same way. Every time I saw my old recruiter I made sure to ask"Is that everything? Do I need to do/sign anything else?" And every time, his answer was, "Nope, we are good." As it turns out, that wasn't the case at all, and if it hadn't been for the double checking by my new recruiter, my package would have already been sent back to me and I'd definitely be waiting until April. As it stands now, I will still probably have to wait until April b/c of oversight's by my old recruiter, but the new one has really went above and beyond to try to get me into November. Not only that, the old OR either had no idea how the waiver process worked, or just didn't care enough to put in the effort to get them completed. And to say that is the applicant's responsibility is a bit of a stretch seeing as how A) most applicants have no idea what they have to do for a waiver so you can't expect someone who has never done that before to be able to get all the details right and B) if an applicant expects to get a hold of a NRD CO, good luck. It took my new recruiter TWO WEEKS of constant phone calls to get the CO to look at my waiver and call me, and he didn't do that until about 30 minutes before packages were due. So a lot of COs probably wouldn't be that concerned with returning an applicant's calls, if it took that much for him to return a master chief's calls.
So Eas, I do believe it is about 95% applicant responsibility, but there are just some things you can't do/don't know how to do without the oversight of a willing recruiter.
Native, I looked into the Marine Corp officer program as well, but unfortunately for me, they have REALLY cracked down on visible tattoos on officers, and even though I have a really good package, the OSO told me it was doubtful I could get a waiver for the tattoo on my elbow that is the size of my open hand. I hope you have much better luck than me getting into their program.
