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enlist in the army as an 18x since you're even considering enlisting with a degree if you're going to be a moron, go all the way with it
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Jan 21, 2018 22:04
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Just look at the pay difference between a newly commissioned officer and a brand new recruit and you tell me which you should do. This shouldn't even be a question people ask.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:05
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Godholio posted:I just posted this in the AF thread, but this is a good spot for it too. Its probably this. Talk to an officer recruiter.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:07
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Godholio posted:I just posted this in the AF thread, but this is a good spot for it too. I'm searching now online for specifically air force officer recruiters, and it doesn't seem to be a distinction that's marked out. Looks like I'll have to directly ask the recruiter I've been working with. Mustang posted:Just look at the pay difference between a newly commissioned officer and a brand new recruit and you tell me which you should do. Apparently if I enter enlisted with a degree, I'll get a pay boost anyway? I don't know, it's difficult to keep on top of what is a recruiting scheme, and what is actually the best deal I can get.  The question was more about if the Air Force was so preferable to the Army that it'd be better to be enlisted there than be in the Army at all, but it sounds like being an officer is best, no matter what branch you end up in.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:10
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DO NOT loving ENLIST WITH A DEGREE. I went the AFOTS route, I know how this works. Test #1 is literally to see if you'll figure out the difference, test #2 is usually to see if you're persistent enough to maintain contact. Honestly not making this up. Call a random AF recruiter and ask for the right one. That's the easiest way. If they give you poo poo, ask to talk to the NCOIC and ask him. Edit: What career field are you pursuing? You've got a couple of folks here who've done this.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:12
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you are horribly uninformed and should probably do WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more research. you will get a bump in rank if you enlist with a degree but promotions are based on time in service, but the only difference between you and an e1 is the number. you will still be treated like poo poo. (this is related to the army i don't know how it works elsewhere) the recruiting scheme is simple: if you enlist with a degree the recruiter who puts you in is going to beat his dick raw over how he fleeced you.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:12
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The Unholy Ghost posted:Apparently if I enter enlisted with a degree, I'll get a pay boost anyway? Generally when you enlist with a degree, you start as an E-3 or E-4, depending on the branch of service (couldn't find information for Air Force). Base pay for an E-4 with no prior service is $2,139 a month. That's a bit of a boost over a brand new E-1 making $1,514 a month. Base pay for a new second lieutenant is $3,108 a month.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:13
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The pay between each branch doesn't change. I enlisted with an Officer Candidate School contract so I spent 6 months with an enlisted pay grade. I made $750 every two weeks. As a brand new 2nd LT in GA I made about $1900 every 2 weeks. Now as a 1st LT in WA with a few years in I make $3000 every 2 weeks. I've always had a housing allowance as an officer because I never lived on post. Your housing allowance changes based on where you live. Enlisted pay raises aren't even remotely as drastic as the officer side. And that's not getting into how you're treated and your quality of life.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:16
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Godholio posted:DO NOT loving ENLIST WITH A DEGREE. Well thank god I'm a something awful member, huh? The recruitment office I've been going to is the only one in my area. I wouldn't know about any of this if I didn't have a community I could ask here. Regarding career field I was probably looking at working with public affairs, intelligence, or cryptography. Thing is, I guess officer jobs don't really correspond to enlisted jobs? So I don't have a list of the positions I was interested in anymore. I had the sense I was getting played with all this time, but I wasn't sure if that was just the general feeling I had about life after graduating college, or if I was more specifically getting suckered with the recruiters. The Unholy Ghost fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 22:27
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JESUS CHRIST DONT ENLIST The ooooooonly time enlisting should even remotely be considered over commissioning is if you crush all physical exercise, have no body faults, have great resilience, decent intellect, and you go 18X. Even then you should still just commission, work staff until you are captain, and go SF then. Yours, Enlisted
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Jan 21, 2018 22:32
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enlist in the coast guard then go MST then get kicked out after looking how looong the waiting time for school is.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:33
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The Unholy Ghost posted:If I have a choice between enlisting in the Air Force, or becoming a commissioned officer in the Army (coming in with a bachelor's degree), what's better? Don't loving enlist you nerd.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:42
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ElMaligno posted:enlist in the coast guard Haha-how long is it now?
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Jan 21, 2018 22:42
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DO. NOT. ENLIST. WITH. A. DEGREE. That is all.
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Jan 21, 2018 23:11
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The Unholy Ghost posted:Well thank god I'm a something awful member, huh? The recruitment office I've been going to is the only one in my area. I wouldn't know about any of this if I didn't have a community I could ask here. Ok, step one for you is to figure out what you actually want to do. Don't join because it's a steady paycheck. Forfuckingreal do not do that. I recommend starting with where you want to end up, then working backwards from that. For example, if you want to be a defense contractor making $90-100k/year in Ohio turning imagery into powerpoint slides, intel officer is a good path. Public Affairs could be a path into something media-related. I met a PA Lt Col whose loving job was to rub elbows with Hollywood and negotiate the details of USAF assets appearing in movies. Officer jobs don't correspond exactly to enlisted because they aren't staffed 1-to-1, and they don't do the same work. As an officer you'll be supervising programs and/or people. You probably won't be making many real decisions though, you'll just be the conduit for higher-up guidance to filter down to everyone below (this varies, but is pretty accurate for most career fields, at least for 2Lts). Enlisted, you'll either be the worker bee doing the work that the officer will get credit for, or you'll wonder what the hell you're doing because most of your job is ACTUALLY done by contractors and you find yourself basically being the janitor and/or snack bar operator. You'll also be living in the dorms, dealing with room inspections, being the guy at the bottom of the hill as poo poo rolls down, etc. Officer accessions recruiters are much rarer than the run-of-the-mill strip mall recruiting office. I was living in Utah when I joined; my nearest OA recruiter was in Bountiful, about a half hour away. She retired shortly after submitting my OTS package (thank god she got all the work done), and I was reassigned to a recruiter in Spokane, WA (who was loving worthless). You can do 95% of the work via phone or email. The only other things I can think of would be an interview with an officer, and the medical exams. For the interview, I think they can do that at the nearest military facility. For me, she brought in a local Air National Guard KC-135 pilot. He wasn't affiliated with the recruiting office at all, he worked at the airport. Medical will be done at MEPS along with everyone else. Note: even at this stage you will see that you are treated better than the enlisted recruits. I had my own hotel room (they did not). I had nobody riding my rear end from exam to exam (they did). I did not have to do loving pushups in the waiting room (some of them did, probably Marine recruits). I was left alone to read my book between steps. If you decide to go after a flying position (pilot, nav, ABM) and you need a flight physical, you'll get that at a military hospital/clinic. If you have to travel for any of that, they'll pay for it. Even though I lived 4 miles from Hill AFB, they flew me to Fairchild AFB in Spokane for my flight physical. Air, hotel, per diem all paid (which was really loving stupid, but whatever). Godholio fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 02:11
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Godholio posted:Ok, step one for you is to figure out what you actually want to do. Don't join because it's a steady paycheck. Forfuckingreal do not do that. I recommend starting with where you want to end up, then working backwards from that. For example, if you want to be a defense contractor making $90-100k/year in Ohio turning imagery into powerpoint slides, intel officer is a good path. Public Affairs could be a path into something media-related. I met a PA Lt Col whose loving job was to rub elbows with Hollywood and negotiate the details of USAF assets appearing in movies. It's roughly my understanding that officer accessions is deliberately more difficult than enlistments to weed out people who don't want to put in the effort. Would you say that's fair?
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Jan 22, 2018 02:16
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Yes, but it's not difficult in any way, shape, or form. It's paperwork. Get your letters of recommendation. Take the AFOQT and get a good score. Report to MEPS on time. Show up to the interview on time. Get official transcripts ready. These are not difficult tasks by any stretch, but I just listed like 90% of the process. The biggest difference is you don't have someone riding your rear end to get it done. You're expected to act like a responsible grownup and have your poo poo together. THAT is the deliberate "difficulty." Edit: What they're looking for is someone who doesn't need to be babysat. Granted, once you're in you WILL be babysat to a degree, but responsibility, reliability, and trustworthiness are the keys to success here. Nothing more than that. It's the same line of thinking as with security clearances: nobody cares if you smoked pot once or twice; they WILL care if you lie about it. Godholio fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 02:25
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mlmp08 posted:I don't know who to avoid, but here's something that's down there: I spoke to someone I went to OCS with that went from SC Guard to active duty and this was the first thing she suggested as well, so this kind of firms that up. Cyks posted:All I know about the 263rd is my initial impression of them during a yellow ribbon but getting sent to the capital for six months every other year sounds like a pretty sweet gig. Granted they were all SNCOs and O4+ so good luck getting into that rotation if you aren't in the good old boys club. I'm not terribly interested in being away from my civilian job and family for six months out of the year so if it's super hard to get those deployments that's cool with me. I've got six years and change until I can retire and I'm trying to ride it out and leave, so I'm hoping to be able to devote more time to the civilian job I'll be doing for the next 25-30 years. I know it sounds kind of lovely and like I don't care about the Guard, but I'm actually in a pretty good position where I don't have to worry too much about my own career (make CPT, stay there for a bit, retire) and it means I can focus on helping my troops regardless of what it costs me career-wise. That's what I'm trying my damnedest to do anyway. pkells posted:There's always the Air Guard... I've tried to contact them with no luck yet, unfortunately I'm a 2LT about to pick up 1LT so that makes things a little more difficult (I did spend about 10 years enlisted so hold back the lynch mob). I fully understand how much better the Air Guard is than the Army Guard though. I appreciate the feedback dudes.
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Jan 22, 2018 15:24
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GreglFaggins posted:I spoke to someone I went to OCS with that went from SC Guard to active duty and this was the first thing she suggested as well, so this kind of firms that up. Also, when I traveled down there last, I was impressed by their level of automations, equipment, and facilities. It's good to work directly for DC. Having a computer for every person is pretty nice when trying to burn time at drill, I imagine. The Unholy Ghost posted:If I have a choice between enlisting in the Air Force, or becoming a commissioned officer in the Army (coming in with a bachelor's degree), what's better? If you have to ask, just enlist so that you have someone to tell you when to wake up and how to make your bed and where to poo poo.
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Jan 23, 2018 01:59
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I managed to get in contact with the nearest officer recruiter (a state over) and he told me the waiting list to get into OTS is two years. He recommended I enlist and then apply for OTS through there. Immediately becoming an officer in the Army is still an option, but I was mostly interested in the Air Force. ...I'm just tired of having to avoid tricks every step of this. The Unholy Ghost fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 04:30
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Godholio posted:DO NOT loving ENLIST WITH A DEGREE. Vahakyla posted:JESUS CHRIST DONT ENLIST
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Jan 24, 2018 04:57
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No no, I got that. I won't enlist, no matter what. Hell, I might drop the military and try for the Foreign Service instead.
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Jan 24, 2018 05:00
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If you’re like me and an International Relations major, I took the FSOT, passed and never got called about an interview. From what I understand the State department isn’t in great shape after Trump took office.
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Jan 24, 2018 05:05
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Mustang posted:If you’re like me and an International Relations major, I took the FSOT, passed and never got called about an interview. From what I understand the State department isn’t in great shape after Trump took office. That I am. The State department getting drop-kicked was one of the reasons I started moving towards the military direction. ...Still might as well give the FSOT a shot.
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Jan 24, 2018 05:13
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The Unholy Ghost posted:I managed to get in contact with the nearest officer recruiter (a state over) and he told me the waiting list to get into OTS is two years. He recommended I enlist and then apply for OTS through there. His recommendation is bullshit and honestly makes me question his integrity. You don't just get to apply as an enlisted member, you have to jump through a bunch of stupid hoops and then literally ask your commander to let you apply. I suggest waiting until the current funding fiasco in Congress is relatively stabilized (when a budget or a continuing resolution that lasts through September - aka the rest of FY18) and try again. My first phone call to my recruiter, I was told all slots for the rest of the FY were full. I called back in Oct. The Unholy Ghost posted:No no, I got that. I won't enlist, no matter what. Hell, I might drop the military and try for the Foreign Service instead. There's nothing saying you can only try for one at a time.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:04
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The thing is that officer contracts are loving huge compared to standard enlistments. Whoever your recruiter is will be putting a ton of effort into getting it done. Officer recruits are uncommon enough that many recruiting offices may not have anyone with experience putting one together so that it turns into trial and error as they digitally submit documents and have them kicked back until they’re all accepted. So it shouldn’t be any mystery why a recruiter would prefer you go for a standard enlistment and let some other bastard deal with putting your packet together. To sign an OCS/OTS contract you will have to constantly be in contact with your recruiter to get things done.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:20
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That's exactly why the AF separates them. Nobody does both. They changed it a few years ago, and it only lasted 1 or 2 years before they split it back up.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:58
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Army has never had officer recruiters, same recruiters for everybody. Took me a year to finally sign my contract.
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Jan 24, 2018 07:12
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man they must really be hurting for enlisted bodies to throw at the next forever war
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Jan 24, 2018 14:24
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Just want to point out that an 18 year old fresh out of high school is waiverable to E4 at 18 months and is automatically promoted to E4 at 2 years just for not getting kicked out or demoted. That is all your degree buys you if you enlist with it. We had one guy in basic who came in as an E4 and he about got hosed with harder than anyone just because he distinguished himself as an idiot on day one. He had a big badge saying I enlisted with a degree while the rest of us were still faces in the crowd. He got to be "College boy." I would not look to follow in his footsteps.
Volkerball fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 14:45
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Mustang posted:If you’re like me and an International Relations major, I took the FSOT, passed and never got called about an interview. From what I understand the State department isn’t in great shape after Trump took office. Well, at least you'll most likely have 10 point veteran's preference when you separate. Plus Trump will almost assuredly be on his way out of office by then.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:51
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DoktorLoken posted:Well, at least you'll most likely have 10 point veteran's preference when you separate. Plus Trump will almost assuredly be on his way out of office by then. Trump is gonna be in office for 20 years?
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Jan 24, 2018 23:38
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boop the snoot posted:Trump is gonna be in office for 20 years? 
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Jan 25, 2018 00:00
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GreglFaggins posted:
I’d say keep trying to contact them. I’m not sure what openings we have currently on base (there might be a pilot slot), but it’s worth following up. I would imagine already having a commission might be attractive, because you’d be able to fill the slot ASAP without having to go through the 1-2 year wait for an OTS class date (mine took about 1.5 years from application to commissioning, and that was two years ago. The pipeline is even more backed up now). If you need any help, let me know. I’ll be on base for drill the first weekend of February.
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Jan 26, 2018 15:51
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Coming in way late to the discussion but maybe dick burglar would be interested in CA/PO in the Army Reserve. That or team rubicon. In CA we do a lot of work with the state department overseas and deploy a lot to do aid, but there is a selection process for officers and they want you to do time as an officer in a line unit first. Although he could do something like AG or MI first then switch over. Also we do have flight spots in the reserve and the O slots are highly dependent on where you are. For instance if you were in Near NYC there are a ton of TC or QM spots that are dying to take any officer.
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Jan 28, 2018 01:50
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Just food for thought: my wife has been going through the Air Force commissioning process for almost two years now and has not been selected a second time because the Air Force chose primarily STEM degrees or those applying for Rated slots. If you don't have a STEM degree or you're not applying for a Rated position, fat chance of getting picked up. And even if she did get selected, her recruiter told her that she wouldn't even be going to OTS until the end of 2019 or spring 2020. I'm not saying enlist with a degree, but it may be something to consider. My wife could have completed a full four year enlistment in the timeframe it took to start the commissioning process and graduating OTS.
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Jan 28, 2018 08:15
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White Chocolate posted:Coming in way late to the discussion but maybe dick burglar would be interested in CA/PO in the Army Reserve. That or team rubicon. In CA we do a lot of work with the state department overseas and deploy a lot to do aid, but there is a selection process for officers and they want you to do time as an officer in a line unit first. Although he could do something like AG or MI first then switch over. I appreciate the information, but I'm not sure what any of those abbreviations mean. If you could clarify that, I'll certainly look into it. Also I'm basically on the other end of the country from NYC--I'm in Austin, Texas.
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Jan 28, 2018 10:44
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Enlisting in the Air Force over commissioning in the Army is dumb. Army doesn’t care what your major is. Have decent grades, be in shape and no legal issues and do well at the board and you will get an OCS contract. And not have to wait 2 years to ship out.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:49
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Counterpoint: You'd have to be in the Army.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:57
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If you base your decision on what service or career field to pursue upon how soon you ship, that's immediately a point in the "moron" column. Unless you're really only interested in wearing the uniform and don't care about anything else, in which case it's two.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:02
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