Academics
The United States Air Force Academy is one of the nation’s most heralded military institutions, designed solely to produce exceptional officers ready to serve in the U.S. Air Force. “You are a part of the best of the best and have ultimate job security,” says a cadet; not to mention, it’s free. Everyone is held to a high standard, and there’s a real sense of a future timeline imbued in all activities: “Teachers care about our improvement since we’ll be working alongside them in the future.” All students take the same track of classes “so the help and assistance is unending,” and class sizes are small at the largest. This is a very pragmatic group, and “you don’t see too many people who want to major in something that isn’t practical in some way.” “Everyone understands what we are striving for,” says one cadet, and this shared motivation means that “one way or another the people that graduate from here go on to do amazing things in the military and are great leaders who influence their airmen’s lives.”
Most of the professors “are excited about their subjects,” “always accessible outside of the classroom,” and if their particular teaching style does not fit well with a student, students “can get help from other professors within the department.” They teach “making sure their cadets know this material might save their life, or the lives of others someday,” and are also open to talk about current events and issues. Extracurricular activities also help direct cadets into a specialty: every cadet here has either “been the pilot of an aircraft, jumped out of a plane, controlled a real USAF satellite, or flown a UAV (drone) by the time they graduate.” These programs “really help you decide what it is you want to do in the Air Force.”
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