West Point Admissions & Data Insights
The report “Return On Investment in Graduates of the DOD Service Academies: Assessment and Improvements ” [Link] published in July 2023 by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an excellent piece of research with very interesting information and insights on officer retention. We recommend reading it. Below we offer a brief summary and share … Read more
We’ve been quite busy and other things have taken priority on posting. However, there have been a few events worth noting: New Data Request We filed another FOIA request last year with the West Point office. It included requests for meaningful data for applicants and classes of 2020-2026, including, among some other helpful information, demographic, … Read more
This is a minor observation, but we’d like to help West Point keep its standards high. The admissions website is out of date. The “meet our cadets” section on the site (Link), as shown below, accessed recently, should be retitled “Meet our grads,” or be updated to show actual cadets and cadet video introductions. Ryan … Read more
West Point G5 has made great strides in data transparency. We noted this in the last post, but we have saved the best for last! The G5 Institutional Research site also has a link tantalizingly named “Graduation, Commissioning, and Retention rates.” We visited it hoping to find detailed breakdowns of graduation rates and separation rates … Read more
West Point has launched some new data offerings on their site. These exceed the previous “class profiles” that passed as the best readily-available public information. Now there are newer, better datasets available at the G5 page. We get comprehensive class characteristics on all the application elements — test scores, qualifications, race, athletics, prior service… We … Read more
“This commitment to excellence must permeate everything we do. I will not compromise my decision to advocate winning in accordance with our values of duty, honor and country…. I have great concern being called a liar after more than 42 years of honorable service to our Nation and many years serving here at West Point.” … Read more
Score one for the skeptics. In our previous posts we’ve used aptitude testing as a proxy for performance and the gold standard of what West Point recruiting efforts ought to be focused on. As it turns out, military scores matter more for “succeeding” in today’s Army. But is that a good thing? Our opinion is … Read more
“Wow, it must have been hard to get in there.” We’ve gotten that a lot when acquaintances find out that we attended USMA. Other grads probably get it too. West Point is often described as “highly selective.” But how hard was it? How selective–or perhaps “elite” is a better word — is West Point? Falsely … Read more
The post on Why There Are So Few Women at West Point raised our interest in a topic: What would the composition of West Point look like if candidates were admitted and attended based on rank order of candidate scores? Given our previous findings, they would almost certainly look very different than they do now. … Read more
Yesterday we happened on Colonel (Ret) Ellen Haring‘s article “Why Are There So Few Women at West Point? Ask Congress,” in which Haring makes a number of gender-advocacy claims and proposals regarding the number of women in the military. The full referenced report is here. We summarize Col Haring’s major points as: Women are too … Read more