Ex-USAFA Cadet, Now UC Berkeley Junior

afuller2028
Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:46:39 +0000

I am in a very similar situation, only I didn’t leave the Air Force Academy right away after Basic Training was finished. In fact, I didn’t leave at all during freshman, or sophomore years. I left the first week of classes as a junior.

Let me first say that USAFA is EXTREMELY CHALLENGING. The person up ahead is understating the facts by saying that there aren’t too many restrictions, or that they aren’t very restricting.

Unfortunately for me, information simply doesn’t exist out there on how to transfer out of the Academy and still become an officer. I’ve looked just about everywhere, talked to over a dozen recruiters, ROTC instructors, AETC staff…no one seems to know the answers.

So, let me write here what I have learned from my own discussions and personal experience of trying to become an officer after leaving the Academy:


I left because I couldn’t find the ability to focus on my major, and still succeed in everything else. I was a Foreign Area Studies major with a minor in Chinese (Asia/History track); Class of 2012; academic probation, but no trouble with any review boards or honor incidents.
After leaving the Academy ready to start my junior year, because of my academic probation, most schools turned me down for acceptance, didn’t see the Academy as more than an academic institution, and some even claimed that their curriculum was harder than USAFA’s in the first place. (And we’re not talking about Harvard here, we’re talking about public state schools, like Colorado State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder.)
Some ROTC detachments said that because of a completed Basic Cadet Training, if I transferred to ROTC, field training would be waived; others had never heard of that statement. Some ROTC detachments also said that as long as I left the Academy without an honor violation, transferring to ROTC would be automatic and guaranteed. This was not the case.
I found out that as a junior, I would have to spend a semester in ROTC without a scholarship to compete against everyone else for a scholarship, and that once I received a scholarship, it would be two more years before I would be allowed to graduate, and field training would not be waived. Well, I had already gone to school for two years before USAFA, had enough credits to graduate at any institution, and simply was not going to wait 2.5 (or more) years just to get a commission.
So, I started looking at OTS plans, and even looked at other ROTC possibilities. Navy ROTC won’t accept anyone who has more than 30 credit hours under their belt (exceptions occur, but rarely), and Army ROTC was the same as Air Force. That left one possibility - OTS.
So began my journey of trying to become a commissioned officer through OTS. First, the recruiters didn’t know whether to put me as prior service or not. Then, for a few weeks, they were telling me that because I was prior service, the Air Force was not re-taking prior service applicants at that time. Then, all of a sudden, they changed their statements and said that USAFA didn’t count for that rule. Then there was the matter of whether I would have to go Reserve or not, and the matter of finding all of my old personnel files which included the Defense Language Battery and other scores.
Throughout all of the struggle, I ended up transferring to an online college, the American Military University, where I will be completing a degree in International Relations in the next few months, set to ship out to Active Duty OTS and start a career as an Intelligence Officer with the Air Force.
I decided after all of the trauma while staying at the Academy probably would have been easier than the turmoil I went through, in the end, I will graduate and receive my commission almost 6 months ahead of my USAFA class of 2012. All those that said I would never make it were wrong, and a salute from former classmates will be bitter sweet.


So, while leaving USAFA is a difficult decision to make for sure, if you do go and want to leave, if you completed Basic Cadet Training and especially Recognition, then trust me, your pains while there are all “sunk costs,” and you are not a failure for leaving. I will always be a member of the Class of 2012, and many of my friends will not even realize that I left once I see them in the operational field.