OCS Questions

[LoveOfCountry]

I have started the process of going from Enlisted to Officer. I have a few questions that I'm hoping will give me a bit more understanding before I go in to meet with the OCS recruiters.

I am currently in college, but not full-time because I am a reservist with a full-time job, wife, kids, church, community involvement, etc. With that said, I'm still debating on going to school full-time so that I can go through on the PLC program. I currently have about 60 credit hours.

#1) I'm a reservist. Can you go through OCS and stay in the reserves, or do you have to sign a new AD contract?

#2) What is the age limit? I'm 27, and I read a few places that the age limit is 28 and some places that said 30, but I know some guys that went through at 30+. Maybe on waivers?

#3) Will the Marine Corps allow me to stay in my current MOS (which I love) or will they decide where I go after being commissioned?

Any other advice or suggestions that you can give a 27 year old Marine reservist looking to go through OCS would be great.

Thanks in advance.

[iamspartacus]

#1) I'm a reservist. Can you go through OCS and stay in the reserves, or do you have to sign a new AD contract?

#3) Will the Marine Corps allow me to stay in my current MOS (which I love) or will they decide where I go after being commissioned?

I can shed some insight on questions 1 & 3. And this is information I got from my PSR, so I'm not speaking from experience.

Yes, you can go from enlisted reserves to officer reserves. They'll probably make you switch units though. Ya know... might run into a conflict of interest.

I'm sure you know how active duty officers get their MOS. Unless you're guaranteed air or law, it's based on your class ranking at TBS what order you pick, yadda, yadda, yadda. Reserve officers, on the other hand, know what MOS they'll be getting before they even go to OCS. Why? Because you're accepted into a specific unit before you go to OCS. And at that unit they have a specific billet for you. So you do have some control over what your MOS will be.

[LoveOfCountry]

Thank you for the response.

I have heard the same thing about having to switch units. I would be okay with that even though I like my current unit.

Semper Fi!

[TheReservist]

About the switching units after commissioning, I can speak from anecdotal evidence that I've seen at my old unit. Weapons plt. sgt. goes to OCS, TBS, then IOC and comes back to become plt. co. of the same weapons plt.

SO it can happen, it's just if the powers that be decide. Although, I do think that once you get to the level of being able to command a company you'll get shifted even more so. I've heard that my old company commander became CO of a company about a state away from the one he was formerly at. So you could be moving within the BN or even regiment.