Enlisting with a buddy

[Riley67f]

A good friend and myself are enlisting in the Marine Corps sometime in the next year and a half. We both qualify to graduate as PFC's (I was in the Young Marines for several years, and he has a semester worth of college credits) and he mentioned enlisting through the joint enlistment program. We're considering completely different career fields and we both already qualify for PFC; unless we graduate as Lance Corporals (which I'm not too keen on doing) what advantage is there to enlisting with each other? What would you think about someone with no prior service graduating as Lance Corporal? Thanks in advance.

[MarinesFTW]

Well the only way you can LCpl out of boot camp is if you are the company honor grad. Well enlisting with someone you know can be good and bad. If you two manage to end up in the same platoon, you will have a friendly face and someone who you can talk and relate with about home. At the same time, if your DI's find out your on the buddy program, you most likely will get messed with, or if one of you messed up, you both go. Then again they could never find out. Theres really no advantage to it, its just having someone you know at boot, but trust me, you'll make friends and get to know everyone in your platoon, you will all become brothers. You may hate some kids, but you'll still call them your brother with pride at the end of it all. But on the LCpl thing, you may not graduate as one, but you can still get meritorious early on in your career. That means you will rate a composite score earlier on and give you chance at Cpl early in your career. My best friend who I've been with MCT, A school, C school, and was station with got meritorious after A school. He has a shot of picking up Cpl in the next 6 months, thats a year in a half in the Corps for him. Me on the other hand am picking up Lance through time and grade, graduate boot camp as a private, and am most likely going to pick up Cpl in less then 2 years also. Its all about how well you perform at your job, PFT, CTF, and all that good jizz jazz. We are the new guys in our shop, with guys who have been in over 2.5 years and there still Lances and we will be getting Cpl just a few months after them. Just trying to say that no matter where you start, you can always catch up and pass those above you if you put the work in. 2 year Cpl in my MOS is rare, and without a meritorious, even more rare, hard work will pay off.