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

WCS Doesn’t Matter for Athletes & Minorities

**Updated 3/13/22 with more detail and clarity regarding the nomination / attendance authorization relationship and National Waiting list process based on feedback from a reader. Thanks for your help! As always, we want to be accurate and clear and welcome factual corrections. Yesterday an admissions-savvy commenter (h/t) offered some thoughts on our posts. He dropped … Read more

West Point Achieves New Levels of Diversity

Another year, another graduating class, another record level of Diversity. West Point now celebrates an even larger number of Black Female graduates. This year, it’s 38. We look forward to 2021’s achievements. As we previously educed, this ‘achievement’ comes at significant though unacknowledged cost to separated cadets, taxpayers, soldiers, and warfighting capability. If past trends … Read more

25% of USMA Nominations Aren’t Congressional, Change My Mind

**Updated 11/15/20 to 25% and with some additional information on the number of service-related cadetships** In researching for our last couple of posts, we noticed something funny. Perhaps you, the perspicacious reader, can help us explain it or correct us if we’re wrong. You see, we thought the vast majority of nominations to the Academies … Read more