Misplaced Aggie said:
what does he want to do after college? Military or just go into the private sector
Quote:
Found it the Wikipedia article has a table of Corps outfits with a key marking male-only units (marked with
*
). According to that table, the eight all-male units are:
1st Brigade (Army)1st Regiment (Navy/Marines)
- L-1 Lonestar Company
- D-2 Dogs
- B-2 Patriots
- E-1 Jocks
1st Wing (Air Force)
- (C-2) Old Army Cock Company
- Killer K-2
Special unit
- Challenger 17
That's the article's own count the Corps is coeducational, and all but eight of its units are gender-integrated. Wikipedia's outfit table marks seven of them with an asterisk (*) for "male-only unit": L-1 Lonestar, D-2 Dogs, B-2 Patriots, E-1 Jocks, C-2 Old Army Cock Company, K-2, and Challenger 17. The eighth is generally understood to be the Fish Drill Team, the all-freshman precision rifle drill team, which has historically been all-male.
- Fish Drill Team (all-freshman, and explicitly all-male, per Wikipedia)
A couple of caveats worth flagging:
- This is drawn from Wikipedia's current outfit table, not an official Corps roster outfit gender composition does change over time as policies get reviewed, so it's worth confirming directly with Corps Recruiting (corps.tamu.edu) if you need it for something official like an application.
- The Ross Volunteers and the Aggie Band, which were historically all-male, have been gender-integrated since 1985, so they're not on this list anymore.
Misplaced Aggie said:
What branch is he looking at? If Army B2
Quote:
Short answer: Navy is generally considered easier to win than Air Force but it's major-dependent
Here's the general pattern across national ROTC scholarships (this applies at Texas A&M just as it does nationally, since these are national boards, not campus-specific competitions):
Air Force ROTC scholarships are highly test-score and academics driven, and the full-ride Type 1 awards go to a small fraction of selectees, with many winners instead receiving Type 2 or Type 7 awards that pay less depending on your school. Texas A&M's detachment is notably large it's the largest AFROTC detachment in the nation, commissioning more officers than any of the other 144 detachments but that doesn't make the national scholarship board itself less competitive; it just means there are more cadets in the program overall (many of whom are non-scholarship or 3-/4-year in-program winners rather than incoming HSSP winners).
Navy ROTC scholarships are the most major-sensitive of the three: a strong candidate intending to major in history faces much longer odds than the same candidate in mechanical engineering, and calculus readiness matters a lot. Navy also strongly steers scholarship winners toward STEM majors, with roughly 85% of Navy-option scholarships going to technical majors. So if you're going into engineering or a hard science, Navy's odds can be quite good; if you want a humanities/business major, Navy becomes much harder and Air Force may actually be the more realistic path.
What this means practically for A&M specificallyBottom line
- A&M is a Senior Military College, so Air Force cadets there are folded into the Corps of Cadets, and Corps of Cadets scholarships are awarded to most three- and four-year recipients who apply meaning even if you don't win the big national HSSP scholarship, A&M's own Corps scholarship system gives you a solid backup that isn't available at every school.
- Navy's program at A&M is large too it's the largest NROTC program in the country but size of the host unit doesn't change the national scholarship-board odds, since Navy scholarships are awarded nationally, not by campus.
If you're STEM/engineering-bound with strong calc/physics prep, Navy's odds are comparable to or better than Air Force's. If your major is more flexible or non-technical, Air Force (especially combined with A&M's Corps-based backup scholarships) is probably the more forgiving route. Neither is "easy" both are competitive national boards but Navy's difficulty swings hard on your intended major, while Air Force's swings hard on test scores/GPA.
If you want, tell me your intended major and test scores/GPA range and I can give you a more specific read on which is the better bet for you.
rilloaggie said:
I'll be contrarian to the posters above. I was in E-2 back when it was all male. Plenty of buddies, upperclassmen, and underclassmen I know have had great military and civilian careers post graduation.
I'm assuming your son has probably interacted with women at some point in his life prior to college? Even in an all male outfit, he'll be living on a campus that's half full of women, in classes and student organizations with them, and egads, he might even want go on a date with one of them! The notion that sharing a hallway with a woman somehow prepares you for life success more than someone who doesn't has always seemed silly to me.
Hope your son chooses an outfit that works best for him and doesn't look back!
zip04 said:rilloaggie said:
I'll be contrarian to the posters above. I was in E-2 back when it was all male. Plenty of buddies, upperclassmen, and underclassmen I know have had great military and civilian careers post graduation.
I'm assuming your son has probably interacted with women at some point in his life prior to college? Even in an all male outfit, he'll be living on a campus that's half full of women, in classes and student organizations with them, and egads, he might even want go on a date with one of them! The notion that sharing a hallway with a woman somehow prepares you for life success more than someone who doesn't has always seemed silly to me.
Hope your son chooses an outfit that works best for him and doesn't look back!
It isn't a matter of living in a hallway with females. It is a matter of learning to respect them, work with them, lead them, etc.
rilloaggie said:zip04 said:rilloaggie said:
I'll be contrarian to the posters above. I was in E-2 back when it was all male. Plenty of buddies, upperclassmen, and underclassmen I know have had great military and civilian careers post graduation.
I'm assuming your son has probably interacted with women at some point in his life prior to college? Even in an all male outfit, he'll be living on a campus that's half full of women, in classes and student organizations with them, and egads, he might even want go on a date with one of them! The notion that sharing a hallway with a woman somehow prepares you for life success more than someone who doesn't has always seemed silly to me.
Hope your son chooses an outfit that works best for him and doesn't look back!
It isn't a matter of living in a hallway with females. It is a matter of learning to respect them, work with them, lead them, etc.
If you think the only way to do that is to be in an outfit with them I don't know what to tell you. Different strokes for different folks!
rilloaggie said:zip04 said:rilloaggie said:
I'll be contrarian to the posters above. I was in E-2 back when it was all male. Plenty of buddies, upperclassmen, and underclassmen I know have had great military and civilian careers post graduation.
I'm assuming your son has probably interacted with women at some point in his life prior to college? Even in an all male outfit, he'll be living on a campus that's half full of women, in classes and student organizations with them, and egads, he might even want go on a date with one of them! The notion that sharing a hallway with a woman somehow prepares you for life success more than someone who doesn't has always seemed silly to me.
Hope your son chooses an outfit that works best for him and doesn't look back!
It isn't a matter of living in a hallway with females. It is a matter of learning to respect them, work with them, lead them, etc.
If you think the only way to do that is to be in an outfit with them I don't know what to tell you. Different strokes for different folks!
