Would it be okay for me to work full-time for one year in a company and then apply to Army OCS?

Thank you

Appreciate the advice

"OCS federal or State doesn't rank applicants to figure who they are going to except. There are standard requirements to get in and as long as you meet them you will get into OCS"

So you are saying that they are so short off officers that as long as you meet the minimum standard you will be accepted into OCS? That doesn't say much for the junior officer corps. Are you sure that you didn't mean, as long as you meet the standard requirements you can apply. Unless things have drastically changed over the last few years, OCS was competitive so yes they were ranked to get accepted.

To the original poster, working before going to OCS is perfectly acceptable and a good thing. Some of my favorite officers have been those that did something besides school before joining the military.

LCDR Keith Trepanier - I rephrase what I was trying to say, as long as you meet the minimum standards you can apply to get accepted into OCS, but having or not having a full time job should not effect getting accepted into OCS, it would effect you rank starting. However I was in school when I applied to OCS, was accepted, went to BCT, then straight into OCS. Some of my classmates didn't have their degrees finished while in OCS, OCS regulation at least for state OCS as long as you are within so many credit hours of completing your degree (I don't know the number off the top of my head) so you can have it before you reach 1LT you can still go through OCS. When I was at EBOLC I also had classmates that went to Federal OCS that went right after school that weren't working full time jobs. OCS is competitive and Federal they compete to be top of their classes to get the positions and duty stations they want upon graduation. Now I will say that Illinois State OCS program doesn't have a limit on how many candidates can be in one class, but I do not know if Federal OCS has a set number of candidates that can be in a single class.

Yes, I am saying that nation wide they are trying to fill junior officer positions, however OCS programs such as Illinois aren't lowering their standards for acceptance. If you are suggesting that OCS federal and state are making it easier to get in just to fill numbers, that is the individual state's problem with their program that gets addressed when they get reviewed.

Now this was my interpretation of the question Toshi Nara was asking, they were wondering if they didn't have a full time job would they be denied acceptance, and I stick by my answer no. If the DoD used that as a condition then they loose out of millions of potential candidates and then would beg the question "Why are we even trying to recruit graduates right out of college that weren't in ROTC to go to OCS?" It would effect your rank starting in your class, because classmates who do have jobs have more professional experience than you would, but that is where you compete during the course to prove you are better than your classmates.

1LT (Join to see) , interesting! I read it as the poster worries that having a job before applying would damage his chances

Jennifer Lee (Doerflinger) Hill - Well that would be a surprise to me if that was actually the case. I work for Recruiting and Retention Battalion in Illinois and none of our posters mention anything about having or not having a job when you apply to OCS. I haven't seen this OCS recruiting poster that you are both referring to, but goarmy.com lists the requirements and never mentions anything about what you need to do to get a better chance of acceptance. I personally don't know what additional regulations federal OCS has for acceptance, but it just seems counter productive to deny someone before they even get a chance to prove themselves for something as trivial as having or not having a full time job when applying. Cause how many graduates go straight from graduation to a recruiting office and have full time jobs when applying, I personally was applying about a year before I graduated college.