Marine Corps Officer

[ian.gurley]

First of all I would like to thank all of you for your service. Secondly, I would like to request some advice.

I am entering my senior year of high school, and am dead set on becoming a military officer. I know pretty much everything I need to know about the service academies and ROTC, and am well underway in the admissions process for West Point, Annapolis, and the ROTC and NROTC (Marine Option) scholarships. I do not want to sound cocky, but I am confident in my ability to get accepted for all of these programs.

However, I am still unsure about whether to join the Army or Marines ( I do not have much interest in the Navy, AF, or Coast Guard) My question is: what advantages are there to being an officer in the Marines as opposed to the Army? I have gotten advice from many people, but not very many of them are active duty military.

Any opinions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Cpl. Sense, Common]

People are going to tell you that there branch of service is best. The truth is it really depends on what job you want to do while you are in. If you want to try and do something in aviation I would suggest something different then if you wanted to do something in the intel field.
Other than that you need to realize that we are going to be in afgan for at least 5-6 more years which pretty much guarantees your eventual involvement. I’m not trying to scare you away from joining but enlighten you on a few things that other people probably have not told you, such as the fact that Marine normally serve 6 month deployments and the army normally serves over a year with a 2 week furlough. Certain jobs will change the amount of service times and those are general and rough estimations. Feel free to contact me via e-mail if you want more specific answers, and good luck with your acceptance to the academies.

Stichmarine@yahoo.com