This year’s class of 2022 is almost closed out and I wanted to give a recap of what this cohort looked like. It’s always helpful to see what a graduating class from an Army ROTC program looks like to give you some idea what the potential outcomes are for students joining the program.
So to start, we will most likely commission 20 Cadets from this cohort. We commissioned two Clarkson graduates back in December. We added 13 new Lieutenants at our Clarkson ceremony (12 Clarkson and one SUNY Canton graduate). We will commission 3 St Lawrence graduates next Sunday, and we expect to commission two more this summer.
A total of 36 students were enrolled in the cohort at one time or another. That tells us that the attrition rate was about 50 percent. Of those that didn’t complete the program 3 were national scholarship winners and one chose to attend West Point after his first year at Clarkson.
Of the 20 graduating seniors, 4 were female.
12 of the graduating seniors will serve on Active Duty. 5 will serve in the National Guard and 3 will serve in the Army Reserves. To the best of my knowledge all the seniors got the component they wanted.
The branch selection looked like this:
- 1 Aviation branch
- 1 Chemical Corps
- 3 Corps of Engineers
- 3 Field Artillery
- 3 Infantry
- 1 Military Police
- 4 Ordnance Corps (two EOD designees)
- 1 Signal Corps
- 2 Transportation Corps
We had 1 with a branch detail…Military Intelligence branch detailed to Armor.
4 of the graduating seniors were recognized as Distinguished Military Graduates, signifying their high standing on the national order of merit list.
This was one of the last cohorts to be recruited pre-Covid. It was a strong class and we started with a good amount of national scholarship winners. We gained 2 and lost 1 to our Air Force ROTC counterpart unit at Clarkson. We had one in this cohort participating in the Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP), as a member of the New York National Guard.
What are the take aways from this recap? If you are a Cadet in the GKB you have a good chance of going active duty if you want, and the option to chose guard or reserve. We continue to be about 20 percent female and our female Cadets do well. Career options are many, and there is a good chance you will get one of your top choices.
Best of luck to the Class of 2022. From the Front…Golden Knights.
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