Advice

[Oatesy]

Hi, I'm looking for a little advice. I am enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve right now and I have a choice to make whether to stay reserve or go back to meps to enlist active. Here is my situation.

I decided in December to join the Marine Corps after a year and a half in college with not much to show for it. I dropped 35 lbs and increased my pull ups from 0-5. In the beginning of March I enlisted in the reserves with the understanding that I would be switching contracts with another poolee who was enlisted active and wanted reserve. (This was done so that I could enlist sooner.) My MOS is currently 0411 Maintenance Management Specialist but my preffered MOS is between Intel (Scored a 98 on the ASVAB), Combat Engineer (Closest thing to infantry which is currently full), and Military Police.

Recently I've been thinking about becoming an officer and I have received a lot of positive encouragement about that. So here are my questions.

1. Would you rather be enlisted or officer and why?

2. What would be the best path to becoming a commisioned officer?
Going active duty and getting selected for Mecep? or staying in the reserves to finish my degree then going to ocs?
(I realize that Mecep is the better deal, but I'm guessing that selection is very competitive and some of my grades in college weren't exactly stellar, so I don't know if I could even get selected.)

Thanks in advance for any advice. It is much appreciated.

[Lisa 23]

Try doing a search on the site as going from enlisted to officer has been covered many times.

[hussaf]

There is a discussion about this currently ongoing in another thread.

If your a heavy guy, and congrats on loosing the weight you did, understand that PT is an important factor in a young officer's life. You run a bunch in your early training. You mention the word "competitive." Much of an officer's careers revolves around this word...including what your MOS is. Not to discourage, but just be aware of that. As for everything else, only you can really determine if you want to finish college or not while being in the reserves. Understand that reservists have been pretty busy for quite a few years...you will almost always be studying for exams/doing papers at night on drill weekends and have your semester interrupted by training and deployments.

If you just want the Marine experience and not make a career out of it, I would do 4 and out on the active duty side then finish my degree and continue on with another career. Many Marines coming off active duty do better in college anyway because they have much better discipline, maturity, and work ethic than the average 18 year old freshman.

The best way to become an officer is probably the Naval Academy...but that is also the hardest. For you, I would recommend going enlisted...the mentality of the stuff you wrote in the parenthesis at the end of your post is the antithesis of a good officer's thinking. It's good to be honest about yourself, but you also need to have the mentality that you can change yourself. Now, this is extremely important in the enlisted world as well. The difference is, as an officer, there is more potential for you to screw up your career at an early stage with that kind of mentality. As enlisted, you will be "coached" to get your mind right and develop that mentality.

Good luck with your decision, I hope everything works out for you.

[smoking gunz]

I would stay in the reserves and finish with college then go active duty officer. It will be very difficult to go to college on active duty. Mecep program is very difficult to get and most will not get into the program.