Leadership opportunities, whether in club/sports/shop/division/department roles...success in programs with an attrition rate (BUDS/Nuke/NACCS), non-trad performance opportunities (large business, state/federal agencies, civil participation)...
Pretty much the same way we always figure out how to sort who is a winner without resorting to a standardized test...
Any other silly questions?
my dude, you spent the first part of your answer talking about things that only apply to prior enlisted folks, hence the question.
doth protest too much, etc
You were a tracom instructor - you know the signals for reduced success rates requiring intervention at syllabus start, and they’re very much tangible.
looking at the larger picture, those same tangible attributes are very much valid in the aggregate. There’ll be folks on the tails, as you point out, but they are outliers.
I count six for civilian, six military specific, opportunities listed...
As for attributes, there were definitely statistics tied to performance in IFS and API, but those were indicative of more than JUST academic performance. If you failed in API it wasn’t because you were stupid (generally) it was because you couldn’t figure out how to work in a team environment.
If you failed in IFS it wasn’t because you were stupid, it was because you were, generally, aeronautically unadapted.
The rest of the pink sheets I saw were for issues with integrity/responsibility...
Back to the original subject matter of the necessity of NAPS, I can’t see how one could, on one hand, argue there is an implicit bias affecting socioeconomically disadvantaged populations while, on the other hand, argue there shouldn’t be a method to correct them and level the playing field. If anything, NAPS should be the ultimate example of how to properly level the opportunity gap by providing remedial instruction to then remove any excuses from a potential candidate when they are subject to the rigors of an Academy experience.
I think the consensus here is the mission is valid for accessing enlisted candidates, there is some issue with the affirmative action mission of NAPS (see above paragraph) and there is a lot of pushback for athletes getting government funded remediation.
My argument for the latter is most Americans will only see a service academy student on TV when they are representing their respective school in sports. That’s an important tool for recruitment, especially if we really hold diversity important, as the audience is much wider than the standard academic pitch one sees in school.
To bring this ramble to a close, if we truly want leadership from all slices of life, we have to be willing to invest in those who may be weak in one area (academics) but excel in others (leadership/sports/etc.)
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