How do you best prepare for OCS? I am reporting in two months and would appreciate any advice.

I am an OCS Graduate. I graduated Feb 19th 2015. I branched Adjutant General with a 4-year Branch Detail to Infantry. I start IBOLC in May, then Ranger and Airborne to follow.

I typed a long post. Im going to copy and paste it. If it wont take it all, then email me and I will share with you all I know. Forgive the fact that this will not flow as well as an academically perfect piece. OCS is kind of a blur, but I did my best to just type out the conscious stream of thought. If anything is unclear, message me and ask anything you want.

Some will frown on any advice that doesn’t build up your expectations, and fill you full of Hooah. I dont do that. I will tell you the hard truth.
For me, OCS was a letdown. Admittedly, it was my fault. I had built up my expectations to expect that I would be groomed as an officer; That I would learn “Officership”. I hoped to learn the strategic thinking that I assumed all Officers were taught. Nope. Wrong. OCS is little more than a colander. You will be thrown into a total immersion environment to see if you can survive and grow, or fold and wash out.. Go there with ZERO expectations and you will be much better off. The College-Op candidates had a much easier time since they hadn't already been in the big Army. They only knew TRADOC. For us prior service, the games were the some of the most frustrating parts.

Its better to give you a realistic look of what you will be going through. Keep in mind, the OCS experience is different for every single person, and greatly depends on which company you have and what Cadre you have. Also, your peers willhave a huge influence on your time there.

I was in Crusher Co. It was painful at first since we had a high-speed 1SG who was an RI (ranger instructor) for a couple of years after doing some USASOC time. He was a great 1SG. The kind you love to hate. He definitely put us through the gauntlet. Then, as we grew as candidates and earned his respect, he was a great mentor. We also had a great Senior Trainer, SFC Kolar. The most OUTSTANDING, PROFESSIONAL NCO I have ever worked for or with. Hands DOWN. You will have platoon mentors and trainers for each of the three platoons. Each platoon has one officer to be your mentor, and an NCO to be your trainer. My platoon trainer was excellent, SSG Proft. A hardass, but a great trainer who truly loves to train and teach. All of our Cadre except one were infantry. All of them were ranger, save for 2 or 3. Needless to say, we were known as a very “tactical” company. It paid off in the STX Lanes in our field time. But, moving on…

Before you “class up”, you will do some time at HHC. It’s Purgatory. The place where all of the drama starts, the rumor mill for the entire army seems to have been created in that building. You will be surrounded by negative people who have been recycled, injured, and who are pieces of pure trash that have no place in the army. My point is: stay positive, stay out of trouble, and get your mind right for the next 12 weeks. If you hear rumors, IGNORE THEM. PNN (private news network) is ridiculous. Stay away from anyone who tries to fill your ear with “I heard”. Walk away. No…run away. That kind of crap creates headaches for you down the road. You will learn who to trust, and who talks out of their A**.

Be prepared to pass an APFT and score well. For our class, we had to combine another class with ours. The previous class had a shortage of cadre, and was delayed two weeks. They classed up with us, bringing our total count to 152 candidates. Then, the following class after mine for C Co was only 52. This is why I say don’t listen to rumors about having too many people and them dropping people. IF (big IF) they implement an APFT cutoff, you WILL NOT know what the cutoff score is. They will test you and drop the bottom number of candidates until they get to the magic number they are allotted for that class. (Eg: 180 show up, 152 is the max bed space, 28 of the bottom APFT scores will not class up and wait for the next classes APFT to see if they make it in). The army, for some reason, forgets how to count, and sends too many candidates. Or maybe they take attrition into account. Either way. Score well, and you’ll be fine.

Once you pass the APFT and class up, You remove your gold OCS rank, and put on your black OCS rank. It’s a good feeling. Use that feeling to motivate you. Those little victories are what will keep driving you. This is your first. It separates you from the HHC crowd. Every time to move from phase to phase, it'll be another piece of victory for you.

Day one is much like what you may have experienced at basic. You will probably do a bag drag. Lots of smoking, lots of yelling. Lots of stairs to run. Up and down. Multiple times. Do it without showing emotion or complaining. You will be tired. They will ask who wants to quit. There will be mind games. Play that game. You've been there, it’s nothing new.

Side note: GET A COPY OF YOUR OCSSOP asap. You will carry it everywhere for the duration of the course. It is your “bible”. LEARN IT WORD FOR WORD. This is not an exaggeration. You need to know it by heart. If you have a question, refer to your OCSSOP before going to student CoC or Cadre. This is important, as the Cadre will allow you to hang yourself. We had cadre do the typical cadre thing and not communicate with each other. They gave us conflicting information, and it ended up costing some candidates dearly. The OCSSOP is your rule book. Follow it and your command policy letter, you’ll be fine. Study them both. Bring up discrepancies to your student CoC. The two will likely have conflicting rules (Eg: OCS SOP says you can walk in Intermediate phase, but the policy letter says only senior candidates can walk). You can change the company policies through memorandums to the commander. You must have them perfect and well written and justified or they will get kicked back.

Time Management is the common theme and your most important lesson to be learned. Learn to come together, make a quick decision, and execute AS A TEAM. You will have the typical “I have a better idea” kind of people. They will slow you down at first and create unnecessary pain. Don’t worry though, they will learn or get dropped/recycled. OCS is good about that at least. When you are given 8 minutes to get all of the bags off the truck (completely unorganized since you were given 5 to throw them on there to begin with, which you will mess up and have to redo), you will fail. TRY YOUR HARDEST. But, You will fail because you and your platoon/company have not yet learned to come together. It’s normal. Learn from your mistakes, and drive on. Hopefully, over time you will gel and work together. If not, it will be a long 12 weeks.

The course’s progression is structured like basic as well, with three phases.

Basic Phase (Black Ascot): You are lower than pond scum. You cannot do anything on your own. It sucks. But don’t let it get you down. You will make it through. You will run (airborne shuffle) everywhere. You are not allowed to walk. You haven’t earned that privilege yet. It consists of long days, land nav, the first of two separate 3 mile release runs, CWST (it’s a joke), and tactics. A lot of boring power point.

Intermediate Phase (Blue Ascot): You will spend the majority of your Blue time in the field running lanes. It is your 10-day field problem. You MUST pass your assessments for field leadership. We lost more people in this and Land Nav than any other single event. At the end, you will do the Senior Officer Candidate Review (SOCR). You must pass this to move on to Senior Phase.

Senior Phase (White Ascot): You are basically a 3rd Lieutenant. You are able to leave the barracks after final formation. You can consume alcohol (WAHOO!). There is not much schooling that happens here. Some review, some mentorship. You are entitled to officer courtesies from the candidates in Basic and Intermediate phases (Sir/Ma’am, salutes, etc). The Cadre leave you alone. You are almost officers and are expected to manage your time wisely without direct supervision.

I can tell you that the hardest part for prior enlisted is the transition from being “in charge” to being treated like you are less than a private. We had to stand at parade rest for our supply pfc... It was hard for me. I was a SSG when I attended.
Other than that, OCS has fully implemented PRT and will build you up physically. Show up being able to pass a PT test and in decent running shape. Most of your running will be for the 3-mile release runs and AGR. Other than that you will have only a few company and battalion runs. The PT schedule will posted for you to learn and prepare for. Ask for a copy to keep in your room. It’s good to know what the next days PT will be.

Work on your core. It helps with rucking. Then work on your rucking some more. Build your feet up. The rucks are NOT HARD. However, if you aren't prepared, you can injure yourself and that can be a showstopper. Land Nav is a beast. You’re going in Summer. Good Luck. It was the single biggest killer in terms of dropping candidates for recycle. Its 3 days. You will walk the course ten times at least before you test. Pay Attention. It will help to know the lay of the land. Red Diamond is no joke. Its not “hard”, but it is not easy either. It is not self-correcting. You will test with 2 hours at night and 2 hours in the day. The 5 hour time limit was reduced to 4 hours for us. They also reduced our 3-mile run standards. I think they were trying to dwindle down the class.
Prepare yourself for things to happen that you don't agree with. Some things you may feel are unethical. Choose your battles here. Some were shown the door in these situations. We had many battalion standards that were manipulated to make our standards much more difficult to pass. People who brought it up and asked why were not given an answer. We figured they were trying to just get students out to through attrition to make the graduating class smaller. Either way, the whole "standards, no compromise" mantra you will say a thousand times is just a catch-phrase. OCS makes its own standards, and they can, and will, change on the fly.

The PEERS system is a grading system that pits you against your squad. It is a rating system similar to an OER. 10 people in your squad will mean a 1-10 rating. If you rate as one of the bottom two more than once, and it can lead to a recycle. At the least, it can affect your garrison leadership assessment. Cadre DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. Don't fool yourself into thinking they invest themselves into you like your line unit NCO does. All they are going to do is “Train, assess, select”. We had people getting dismissed for peers and the “whole soldier concept” 6 days prior to graduating. So help yourself and your squad by being a team player. Dont rely on your cadre to "look out" for you. Don’t argue with your squad leaders or other student chain of command. Instead, offer alternatives, but let your student leadership lead. If you take the reins from them, you can screw them up pretty badly. Don’t be that guy. Be discreet. If they are missing something, pull them offline and help them out. Don’t throw them under the bus.This was probably the most common problem with the interaction between student leadership and their candidates. Peers starts out pretty civil, but turns downright brutal and cut-throat in the last few weeks.

Final obstacle worth mentioning. HISTORY.
If you haven’t heard yet, let me tell you about History. First, DO NOT PANIC. It is hard. Really hard. But it is not impossible. It is a comprehensive exam with 5 multiple choice questions, 3 short essay and one long essay. Depending on who you have, Dr. Campbell or COL(R) Suich, you will have a TON of info thrown at you.
You cover 2 textbooks in 8 days. Then you test.

There is NO strategy to prepare. In class, listen. Take a ton of notes. Send examples to the instructor for his review. He WILL HELP YOU. Just stay calm. They know it is stressful. Just focus, and study. You will have to make some choices here. Sleep, or study. I’ll say this. You can sleep when you die.
Our first go round, we had 30-something failures. Here’s why. There is no grading rubric. Its all subjective. That’s why you have to reach out to him and ask for him to proofread some examples from the practice questions he gives out in the study guide. STUDY. STUDY. STUDY. Then study some more.

Some helpful hints for what to bring.

Bring a laptop. Bring things for blisters. Bring extra spandex. DO NOT GO CRAZY with the packing list. It is really tempting to go to commandos (almost every does), and buy lots of extras. Save your money. If you need anything, you will have weekend passes to buy what you need. Nearly everyone was returning stuff after OCS because they never used half of it.
If you have an ipad, bring it. You can use it in class, and ALL of your material will soon be available for download. I used mine every single day.

Things are fluid in OCS, and change constantly. Go there with an open mind, motivated to earn your bar, and ready to learn and you will make it.
You will see some turds make it through. Sadly.
If they can do it, so can you.

Show up ready to pass an APFT, ensure you have the items on your packing list, and be a team player. Like CPT Brown said, you'll encounter a few of the prior Army guys with some time in who don't think their poo don't stink. On the flip side, you'll meet the ones who try to help all the young candidates and ones coming from sister services...ensuring they are squared away.

Finally..like CPT Brown said, pay attention...listen to the cadre. OCS isn't hard if you can do the aforementioned things.

I would put your face in some ADRP 5-0, ADRP 1-02, and a small unit tactics smartbook. That will really put you a step ahead. You are prior enlisted so you should already have an idea of what you need to do for soldiering. But when you are there they are going to make you in student leadership more than not. When I was in IBOLC. I was in student leadership for 5 weeks straight. It usually lasts for a week but being prior service really separates you.