What are junior enlisted doing to improve cutting scores?

As an addition to my other post, learn how the Composite/Cutting Score system works.

Here's a quick rundown.

There are only so many Sergeant & Corporal "Billets" available for your MOS in the Marine Corps. That means that someone has to Get out, Die, or get Promoted for you to advance to the next rank. When you have a "Closed MOS" that means that ALL of those billets are CURRENTLY (for that Month/Quarter) are FILLED. Tracking so far?

Cutting Scores are a numeric (statistical) representation of your "spot in line." It's really that simple. But rather than being #17 (which would be easy to understand) we show what your current point total is.

There's a reason for that. We don't know how many people are going to "Exodus" (Get out, Die, or get Promoted) during ant given month. Because every rank above you (to MGySgt) affects you. When a MGySgt gets out, a MSgt gets promoted the following month (usually), then a Gunny, then a SSgt, a Sgt & Cpl (at the same time).

But let's say in April, they need 5 Corporals for your MOS. What they are going to do is promote the 5 folks with the HIGHEST composite scores. They don't actually care what those scores are. As an example, they can be 1820 (dude's been in FOREVER), 1800, 1740,1735, 1400. The CUTTING SCORE (Lowest Score to get promoted) will be 1400. The guy with 1400 (#5 in the MOS) catches a hell of a break whereas the guys with 1700+ are going WTF?!? because they've been sitting there forever. Now if there are two guys with 1400, they BOTH get promoted, and there is just one less opening the following cycle (month, quarter, etc). Make sense?

So your goal is not really to "raise your score" in as much as it is to get as "high on the list as possible" which is done by raising your score.

I'm assuming your looking specifically at getting to Corporal. For that you need to understand what the Marine Corps considers correct T/O (Task Organization) and progression for your field. In general, Cpl is supposed to take "about" 3-4 years total TIS (depends on whether you graduated boot camp PFC, and what the current force looks like). Sgt gets a little trickier. It's all math, and your School House, and Monitor actually have all this info available but almost no one asks for it.

MCIs/DL. They are your "go to" for added points. Get those in FIRST. Knock them out.

1) They are a HARD requirement for promotion. So just get them done so they don't have an excuse not to promote (As soon as you are eligible to take an DL course, take it).
2) They have an upper limit on points you can get from them (it used to be 75).
3) You can leverage PME on your Proficiency Marks (which is more Composite Score Points). Going from 4.2 to 4.3 (or whatever) is another 10 points.

PFT/CFT takes CONSTANT effort and should be worked on "continuously" and the scoring only happens twice a year (Dec/Jun), so you build it up. This will also add to your Pro marks.

Rifle score is going to get better over time, but since you only go annually.. it's trickier. More gun time is going to end up with better scores in general.

B-Billets are really a "second term" issue (Cpl to Sergeant) issue, as opposed to a first term issue.

I know for the Army, aside from getting the highest PT score you can get, shooting 40/40 at the range and doing something stellar that can get you an AAM or ARCOM, correspondence courses will help you out in the end