What is the most difficult US military school?

I did nuke school for the ET side of things, and it was pretty rigorous, but I think pilot training was harder in terms of studying and quick learning, because you had to be able to apply the new information immediately and correctly, whereas nuke school was a culmination; you don't even start standing watch until you've been at it for roughly 1.5 years.

I think nuke school (particularly the ET/RO side of things for the enlisted folks, because I'm biased, but I always felt the officers had it rougher than we did there) is probably the most academically rigorous school for the enlisted side of the house. For commissioned types, it has some definite competition.

I don't know enough to say a lot about other enlisted ratings, though. Do you have any insights as to others that might rival NNPTC?

I'm three days in to Officer Nuclear Power School and I can already tell it's gonna be a long 6 months.

It won't be as bad as you expect. The trick is just to use the instructors when they offer up some office hours during the evening when everybody is doing homework. I don't know what it's like for officers, since I did it when I was enlisted, but going in around 1700-1900 when other people wanted to be out getting some food, I was able to get a lot of one-on-one time with Chiefs and ET1s who really knew their stuff, and have them give me practice problems to put on the board. A few hours of practice problems every week, done on-the-spot, on the board for everyone to see, nitpick, and correct? You'll be golden after that.

The hardest part is to keep up the motivation. Like you said, it's a long 6 months, and it's easy to get lazy and let your work slide a bit. If you do, it'll show pretty quickly.

Good luck, Forrest.

I also was an ET/RO trainee and for me the most difficult part was the retrograde watch rotations --- not to mention the horrible AEC bus ride with no springs on jackrabbit
highway at Idaho Falls.

The best part was when you were able to internalize all the systems in your head so
that you knew exactly what action to take in case of a fire/outage in a specific electrical
panel or other gear malfunction ---- very similar in some respects the final week of the
WPN-5 Loran course which was all troubleshooting - evaluate the symptoms to
determine the correct course of action or component failure.

Most important was the cross-traing that all nukes went through. I believe that some
form of this type of training (similar to getting one's Dolphins in submarines) should be applied to the surface Navy as well. The only other environment I experienced this in
was my tour at Seal Team One running the Electronics Department as an E-5.

Never made it to the snow hill up north. Not sorry either after watching folks eating charcoal for sick stomach, one rabbit etc. Wasn't eligible for sniper.

I've heard that.