USMA Acceptance Rates: Who Didn’t Make It

Let’s conduct a thought experiment on the West Point acceptance rate. The question West Point is considering admitting two groups of candidates. Both groups contain 178 candidates and have been deemed 100% “qualified”. You get to decide which group is offered admission. Keep in mind, 178 candidates is about 15% of an entering class. Keep … Read more

Army Officer Testing Decline

We’re far from the only ones to note that West Point has lowered its entry standards and that this isn’t good for the Army. A group of authors studying officer accessions standards (Arthur Coumbe, Steven Condly, and William Skimmyhorn, two of whom are at West Point now) from the War College wrote in 2017 in … Read more

More Than Coincidence

In yesterday’s post we saw that 6 cadets were involved in the Florida cocaine/fentanyl event. This got us wondering. How likely was it that the football players “just happened to be involved” in the issue? In other words, how what was the probability that this was an event with randomly selected cadets? Method To this … Read more

Connect The Dots: Florida Coke Case & Standards

On March 11, several cadets were involved in a party where they ingested cocaine laced with fentanyl. Several of the cadets ended up in the hospital. The Superintendent, Darryl Williams, sent this out on March 14th: March 14, 2022 Members of the Long Gray Line, As many of you know, the United States Military Academy … Read more

Army Athletics is Big Business

The Army West Point Athletic Association (AWPAA) is big business. How big? As it turns out, the close to $50M annually. In our last post we pointed out that West Point’s non-profit 501(c)(3) athletic organization creates purpose conflict and interferes with USMA’s ability to execute its core mission. In this post we’ll fill in some … Read more

Army Athletic Quibbling

Army Athletics corrupts West Point. BG Lance Betros, in his thorough & recommended book Carved from Granite, goes into great detail about the history of intercollegiate athletics at USMA and its corrosive effects on the program. LTC Heffington noted that athletes were being admitted with terrible scores, which we confirmed. We have found yet another … Read more

Class Composition Goals

West Point, now and again, publishes annual reports to the Board of Visitors. Those that have been published recently- after they have “been acted upon by the President of the United States” — can be found here. If you’re interested in history, you can find the 1891 report here. In this post, we find confirmation … Read more

A Class Admitted on Merit

In our earlier post “WCS Doesn’t Matter for Athletes & Minorities” we found out that the Whole Candidate Score is bypassed for certain preferred categories of applicant. In this post, we explore its impact. Specifically we try to answer the questions: What would a class built solely on the Whole Candidate Score look like? How … Read more