What to study for NCO of the year competition?

PFC Smiths response was dead on. The actual board is the easy part. You must train yourself for the physical aspects associated with the competition.

Most boards compete for a week and will encompass everything from board proceedings, writing examples, ASU preparation for the opposite sex, day/night land nav, variations of the APFT to include with a weapon, road marches, multiple weapon system ranges and combatives to name a few. Additional mystery events not identified in the LOA are also thrown in to test your knowledge (ie change an HMMWV tire, assemble/disassemble MK19/M2, etc).

I'd suggest first acquiring your commands LOA for the NCOY/SOY board and study from there. Your S3 should be able to locate previous years. On top of that begin a regimented workout program to build your cardio and stamina. You will be competing against the best of the best. Find the best Soldiers and NCOs in your unit and have them train you at their strong point. This will give you let you absorb their skills, knowledge and attributes will preparing for the greatest test of your life. Good luck...

Marksmanship (score expert with M4/M9 and know how to zero iron sights and optics), Combatives (MACP/SOCP), Land Navigation, max your PT test, Army History, know the NCO Creed and Army song, know how to treat and move a casualty (TCCC), and memorize the Army Study Guide and know the current events. Those are are base line items that most of the candidates will be able to do. From there it is normally left to the board to evaluate your personality, your background, and your individual accomplishments and how those attributes line up with with their vision of what the perfect NCO is.

So you can study all you want, but what matters the most is how you respond to the questions that are opinion based or scenario based. NCO of the year boards are generally more hands on and have actually events where you compete head to head with your peers. I see that you are a non-combat arms MOS assigned to an engineer unit. You have a slight disadvantage as some of the hands on tasks will most likely be centered around engineer tasks. Your best bet is to find two coaches. One who has done this type of competition before (seek out a prior winner from your unit) and to find a good NCO from within your unit that has a solid tactical background that can help you with some of the more combat oriented tasks that are not normally associated with your MOS.