#131 Naval Academy Rankings & Evals

Rankings at the Naval Academy can feel like a a mystery until you learn the language behind it and understand the system. We walk through how midshipmen are constantly evaluated, why class rank matters at graduation and commissioning, and how USNA measures performance in a way most civilian universities simply do not. If you have a midshipman in your life and you’ve heard terms tossed around like Order of Merit or QPR, this is the clear, plain English guide you’ve been looking for. 

We break Order of Merit into its major parts: Academic Order of Merit (driven by a Midshipman's QPR, the USNA equivalent of GPA), Military Order of Merit (built from factors like the PRT, PE, military classes, and conduct grades), and the Overall Order of Merit that blends them. Along the way, we explain why acronyms show up in writing but usually aren’t spoken, and how semester performance versus cumulative performance can change the picture at the end of the year. 

Then we get into the part people are most curious about: peer rankings and aptitude grades. We talk about squad and fire team goal setting, mentorship, and feedback, plus the company wide evaluation process that can feel like “everyone ranks everyone.” We also explain the infamous “murder board,” why advocacy is a learned leadership skill, and how these uncomfortable conversations at USNA mirror what officers must do in the fleet when promotions and careers are on the line. 

We close by laying out the recognition lists and what they mean in practice: the Superintendent’s List, Commandant’s List, and Dean’s List, including how gold, silver, and bronze stars are earned and worn. If this helped you understand the Naval Academy evaluation system, subscribe, share the episode with a USNA family, and leave a review so more people can find it.

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The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

This podcast is independently produced and reflects the views and opinions of its creators. It is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of the United States Naval Academy or its affiliates.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all.  He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.

He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country.  Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Rankings Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Congratulations on making it to the end of the year and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Today's episode is gonna be all about rankings and evaluations. I know this is one of the really kind of interesting, unique, or maybe even taboo aspects of the Service Academy or Naval Academy education. The fact that it is meritocracy, the fact that you were under constant evaluation, the fact that you were being literally ranked against your peers on your overall order of merit. It's a really unique thing. I want to provide a little bit of context, background, perspective, explain some terms. We're not gonna go into the inner workings of the system or talk about anything crazy, but I do want to just help frame the overall idea and make sure that you are able to have good conversation with your midshipmen about this process if anything comes up. So I appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the episode. As always, reach out with any questions. Thank you so much and enjoy the listen. Before we get started, I want to make a quick disclaimer to make sure that everyone knows Academy Insider and myself, Grant Premier, are in no ways official representatives of the United States Naval Academy, the Navy, andor the Department of War. What I'm doing here again is just trying to provide a little bit of context, perspective, and understanding for the Naval Academy journey. But my use of the Naval Academy and conversation about them does not imply endorsement from the institution. If you ever have any questions directly for the Naval Academy, I encourage you to reach out to them directly and the Public Affairs Office. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I hope you have a great listen to the episode. If you're watching on YouTube this week, I apologize because there's not going to be a video portion of this, but I think you're still gonna love this episode. And I encourage you to put this on in the background, much like you would for all my folks who are listening via an audio streaming platform, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever the case is. Um because this is a really fascinating topic. I think this is one of these things that is so different than civilian universities. And yes, can you still graduate, you know, summa cum lade and do all this stuff and be uh ranked high above your peers? Um yes, that there there is always merit-based achievement in a lot of different situations. But in most cases, all across the country, that is gonna be just an academic thing. And while academics are still a critical component of the Naval Academy experience and the Naval Academy evaluation and ranking experience, um it doesn't end there. And so this episode is gonna be all about the fact that we have just wrapped up the second semester. We had sea trials last week, we had the shellback ceremony last week, we had Herndon last week, everyone is preparing for commissioning, and there is gonna be so much going on as the midshipmen who are not graduating are preparing for the summers and reflecting on their recent experience, whether that's the completion of plebeia or youngster year, second class year. There's so much going on. And so in this episode, we're gonna go through a bunch of different terms. We're gonna talk about terms and what they mean. We're gonna talk about that in the grand um context and structure of the overall, like Naval Academy ranking and evaluation system and structure. And I know you heard it when I when I gave the disclaimer, but again, this is me just providing context so you can better understand what's going on. This is not the official word from the Naval Academy, none of this is direct information from the staff. Um, this is my best opportunity to give you a rundown on what is happening in the the life of midshipmen as it relates to this end of year, end of semester uh ranking and evaluation process. We're gonna talk about a couple things. We're gonna talk about academic order of merit, we're gonna talk about military order of merit, we're gonna talk about your overall order of merit, we're gonna talk about your CUPER, we're gonna talk about peer rankings, we're gonna talk about the Soup's list, the DON's list, the Dean's list, um, we're gonna talk about peer reviews. Like there's so many different things that we're gonna cover in this episode that I think are really fascinating. Now, I think we'll start kind of with the overall like ranking and evaluation, because it's the term that people hear most often, which is this idea of order of merit. And at the Naval Academy, your order of merit is quite literally your class rank. If you graduate with overall order of merit number one, like you are the highest ranked midshipman. And again, at graduation, at commissioning for the folks who are watching this year or in the stands this year, those who are in the top 10% of the class will go first. Like if you are in the like top 100 order of merit, like you won't even sit with your companies, you will sit separately and go up and graduate with merit. And I think like that piece is is really fascinating. And so um for the purpose of this episode, what I want to focus on is that there's really three phases of order of merit. We have your overall order of merit, which you'll see abbreviated as OOM. You're gonna have your military order of merit, which is abbreviated as MOM or MOM, and then you're gonna have your academic order of merit or abbreviated as AOM. Now, unlike what you'll hear even later in this episode, but a lot of things when it comes to the Naval Academy and the militaries, we're a big acronym organization, but this is not one of those things where you would use an acronym. You would not ask a midshipman, like, oh, what's your OOM or what's your AOM? Like, you would never hear it said that way. You'll see it abbreviated and written that way, but it would absolutely be spoken fully out, right? So it would be like, oh, um, you know, again, you ask your midshipman. I don't know if you want to, but but if you did, you could have some like, what was your overall order of merit? Or what was your academic order of merit? Or what was your military order of merit? And you would want to speak those things. Again, if you're texting them, you could absolutely use the abbreviation of A-O-M, O O M, M-O-M. Um, but you wouldn't like say that, right? You wouldn't say, oh, what's your what's your M-O-M? They're gonna look at you like, what the what the heck are you talking? What the heck are you talking about? Um and so again, just from the perspective of semantics and understanding the language here, um, academic order of merit, military order of merit, or overall order of merit. Abbreviated, written as AOM, M O M, and O O M. However, it is absolutely spoken without abbreviation. So academic order of merit, military order of merit, overall order of merit. The academic order of merit is quite literally just your ranking academically. It is your CUPER. And so this is, as we talk about this stuff, you will see QPR, which stands for that's actually a great point, quality point rating, something like that. Um I I probably should actually uh learn what the acronym breakout on that is, but it is the equivalent of a GPA. Your CUPER in the eyes of the Naval Academy is what a GPA would be at another institution. It's still on a 4.0 scale, so it's number wise exactly exactly what you would expect to see. Um, but you will have your cooper. Within the cooper, you have like your cumulative cooper, uh, which usually would just be, you wouldn't even use the C, you would just have like your CUPER, QPR Cuper, again, pronounced spoken Cuper, um, which is your overall GPA for the total amount of semesters that you've been there. You can also get or ask for what you would see as an again, like the S Cooper, which again, this is an abbreviation written. You would see the S Couper, which is just your semester Cooper, which is your grades just from this previous semester. If you were talking to someone, you would just ask, like, oh, what was your cooper this semester? You wouldn't use the term S Cooper, right? And I think even if you were texting with someone, you would probably just say, like, hey, what was your cooper this semester? But if you ever saw an abbreviation in some of these things, and again, on like again, on the USA website, if you were to look at what gets you on the Dean's list or the DON's list or the Soup's list, it'll talk about like a 3.4 SCUPER, which just means that you had a 3.4 that semester specifically. Like it is a semester performance base. Um and so again, your academic order of merit is very specific to your cooper in your non-military classes. Like you're you it is your like things that are purely academic and educational in your overall matrix uh that will go into your academic order of merit. Your military order of merit, on the other hand, is a little bit more interesting. It composes all of the things that aren't necessarily aren't necessarily academic. So your PRT score, your performance in PE classes, your military classes, your conduct grade. Again, what school in the nation gives their students a conduct grade? Midshipmen will literally be given a conduct grade based on their behavior. And again, if you get zero demerits, like you don't get in trouble, you'll get an A in conduct. If you get some demerits because you do something uh outside the boundaries of what is deemed appropriate behavior and you get docked, then you're probably not gonna get an A in conduct. And that affects your military order of merit. And so all those things kind of wrap up into your military order of merit. And both of those things, your academic order of merit and military order of merit, kind of combine uh to form your overall order of merit. That combination can flux. There are different priorities that go into what generates the overall order of merit. Historically, and like when I was a midshipman, um, it was very heavily dominated by your academic order of merit. So if you were high on the academic order of merit, you were gonna be very high on the overall order of merit. Um that that could change. Uh, there's nothing to say they can't adjust it. Um, you know, I thought I actually saw something recently that West Point is uh starting to adjust like overall order of merit, like how they do their rankings to uh have a much higher weight for like their physical readiness test, like what they do, their physical test affecting the overall order of merit. And so those things can change, right? Like that is the decision of the leadership and the priorities of what goes into your order of merit. Um, again, historically, when I was at the academy, it's very much heavily dominated by the academic side of things, but it is not necessarily a guarantee. So, again, at this point, we've covered academic order of merit, your military order of merit, your overall order of merit, your cooper or your GPA. Uh, and then we'll get into, and I think this is gonna be kind of like the meat and potatoes of the episode, um, and what people I think are like always kind of interested in knowing about, which is peer rankings and your overall rankings, because all of those are objectively data driven, right? Like your academic order of merit, purely data driven. It's what you got in the classes, your military order of merit. Yeah, this is a this is a it's a it's a pretty objective data thing. What's what's your score on the PRT? What'd you get in your grade in your PT class? What or your PE class? What did you get grade-wise in conduct, right? Like these things are pretty set in stone, black and white. But another piece of the equation, and when it comes to what we'll talk about qualifying for the soups list and the DONS list and the dean's list, uh comes into your aptitude or what we call your military performance. And um, this idea, your peer ranking within your company is a big factor. And this has adjusted a little bit since I have been a midshipman. And so um, again, I encourage you to take every single thing with a grain of salt. This is meant to provide a baseline foundation to have context to understand and potentially ask smart questions. Uh, this is not the Bible truth on exactly how it may be going here today. Um, but my goal is to like break these down and just provide some perspective um into what's going on. And and within rankings, within like these peer evaluations and rankings at the end of the semester, it's gonna be broken up into two types. So you're gonna have actually like if you are a plebe, for example, as a plebe, you will be part of a fire team. In your fire team, that means you will have um, you know, a couple of youngsters ahead of you and a couple of second-class midship that are part of your fire team. And then you're gonna make up uh a squad with another fire team. Um and your like squad leader will be a first class midshipman. And so that group of about 10 midshipmen will make up a squad. That squad will be broken up into fire teams, and that fire team will basically be again, plebe youngster, second class, and your first class midshipman will be your squad leader. At the start of the year or the start of every semester, um, and this is new, this is something that like this was not the case when I was a midshipman. And so I think it's really cool and interesting because I've been able to hear a little bit about it. I've been able to hear about the positive impact that this has had, and I think this is a really positive change, which I think is really cool. Um, but now there are um, again, within your squad and within your fire team, there are like performance evaluations with people that see you all the time. Because I think one of the things that like constantly frustrated a lot of folks was like you were being evaluated by your peers, but like you never ran across some of your peers. And so, like, how are they evaluating you on a certain thing when um, you know, they don't know for sure that things are great? Um and uh it's just like it's one of those things. Now, that is still a piece of it, and we'll get to there, but the fact that there is a goal setting portion and like true mentorship teaching, coaching, and mentoring happening at the squad level, at the fire team level for the midshipmen, I think is really cool. So at the start of the semester, you know, plebes and and youngsters, like they will be required to work with their squad leader, work with their fire team to set three goals. You'll set an academic goal, you'll set a fitness goal, and you'll set a professional goal. So, for example, like on the academic side, you'd say, my goal for this semester is I want to get a 3.0 GPA. My goal for fitness is I want to max the PRT. And my goal on the professional side is to reach out to at least three different fleet mentors in different communities that I may be interested in. Right. And at that point, now that you've kind of set your goals, you have smart, measurable goals, you have checkpoints that you can meet up with your squad, your fire team about and learn and follow up and have accountability towards your actual performance for the semester and what you want to get out of the semester from the people who are directly involved in your life. And at that point, they're actually able to, again, kind of like rank you based on performance and leave comments about your performance over the course of a semester. This is something that wasn't really a case when I was a midshipman. And I think this is really cool where again, your fire team leader, your squad leader can like leave a comment for you and and and not just like an auto-generated one, but literally write in and say, you know, midshipman X or Midshipman Y set these goals. They did an incredible job in pursuing these goals. They either met them or didn't meet them, but their effort was incredible. Like whatever the case is, there's an ability to provide good constructive feedback and work with people individually on goals that are set specifically for them based on what they want to accomplish that semester. And so you have a really cool opportunity for performance evaluation and metrics and trying to meet your overall goal of what you are trying to do. Um, and there are different like categories as well, uh, where you can get ranked on a scale of like one to five on your level of uh, you know, being like a novice to expert in certain categories. Um it it was really interesting. I I got shown uh a little bit of the background there, and I was like, man, this is like a there's a lot going on here. I was like, man, if I'm not even following this, the parents got no chance, man. Um but uh but again, I think it's it's really cool. There's a really good opportunity to provide real concrete feedback uh to show progression over the course of a semester and have more check-ins than just a blind ranking at the end of the semester, right? And so I think this change has been a really positive one, uh, especially since my time. And I'm happy to see this progression in this way. Um I I think it's really cool. So again, I you know, it may be a fun, interesting conversation piece to kind of see how their performance evaluations went out, uh, you know, what their goals were to start the semester and how it worked out for them. Um and so all those things are happening. Now, the probably most interesting piece, excuse me, um is always about like the overall rankings within your company because there are still evaluations um that you have to do, right? Like this, like setting goals and performance evaluation and this kind of stuff um is for the squad. It's like within the squad and within the fire team. Your your company officer and senior enlisted leader, like staff, also have an opportunity to submit like positive events or comments if something happened, they can input it into the midshipman's like performance record and and have comments about this. And so you have all that aspect, which I think is incredible. And then there's still the overall, like just quite literally the slate of trying to rank overall performance of all the people in your class. And what's interesting is this is an everybody for everybody, right? So again, on the ones above, like your squad leader is doing a performance evaluation report for the person in their down, like in their down line below them in the chain of command, the people that they are leading or managing. Um, this evaluation system is more of like an everybody for everybody, right? All the plebes will rank everybody in the upperclassmen, uh, all the upperclassmen will rank all the plebes. So like it goes both directions, 360-degree feedback of how things go. And I think one of the funny things I heard this recently described just based on like the format of how it was. Again, when I was a midshipman, you would literally go into mids and you would kind of like click and and and like literally submit, like, oh yeah, I think this person is ranked one, I think this person is ranked two, I think the person's ranked three, like all the way down. Now they kind of have a more again, it's based on an app. We're in the 21st century, baby. 21st century. And um, you would literally again, you break people into thirds, whether you believe they should be in the top third of their class, the middle third of their class, and bottom third of all of their class. And all of this is restricted within the company, right? So you are you are um again being grouped with the people in your company. So it's not like you're being ranked in the top third of all 1,000 plebs, but rather just like the 32 plebs that are in your company, just for clarification there. And um it quite literally, it was joked, it was told to me, it was like, oh yeah, it's it's like almost like uh evaluation tinder now, because quite literally, like someone will pop up on your screen the evaluation. It's like uh, you know, a picture and card, like, oh, midshipment X. And then if you think they should be in the top third, then you would swipe up. If you think they're supposed to be in the middle third of their class, you would swipe to the right. And if you think they're in the bottom third of the class, then you would swipe down. And so you have this evaluation system now where you have to go through and say, like, okay, like, yep, I think this person is like definitely in the top third of all the people in our company in that class. I think this person is a mid-third, and I think this person's a bottom third. And so you would go through and and submit all of those. Um usually, and again, there there are times where it just kind of gets like completely done one-off, right? Like, all right, well, I'm just gonna sit in my room and do it myself. But I think an interesting thing that you will also hear in relation to this is a term that I want to bring up, is a term called a murder board. And it sounds ominous, this murder board. Like, why would we use the word murder? Um, I have no idea. I think there actually is a history to the term murder board, but I don't know what it is. So I have no actual good information for you on that one. Um, but a lot of times, and this happens in the fleet as well. Um, like my chiefs and I, we would sit down and we would have like a murder board and rank, like have a discussion, dedicated time and discussion about how we wanted to submit our evaluations. Which person was gonna get the number one rated early promote recommendation, which person was gonna get um, you know, again, which three or four people were gonna get the early promote recommendation, which five or six people were gonna get the must promote recommendation, uh, you know, and which 10 people were just gonna get the general promote recommendation. And that level of structure and ranking requires. Discussion. It required an opportunity for every subgroup, right? Like again, when I was the department head, I had two chiefs who ran two different shops. And even within the two different shops, there were a couple of different, um, even like smaller groups that had LPOs, a leading petty officer that did different jobs. And so, you know, if we were ranking all them together, I would want an opportunity for every leading petty officer and for every chief petty officer to get in there and to advocate for their people, to advocate for the person who they interact with every single day and tell me why they should be the overall number one rated person and what they have contributed to the group. And that idea lives on at the Naval Academy. Like this idea of a murder board, a lot of time, like the firsties, all the first class midshipmen, they'll get together, all the second-class midshipmen they'll get together, and they'll have a murder board. They'll put up the entire list of people in the company, you know, plebes, youngsters in the company, and it'll turn into an open forum discussion of like, who do we think should be in the top third of this plebe class? Who do we think should be one? Who do we think should be two? Who do we think should be three? And why? And it gives an opportunity for the fire team leaders and for the squad leaders to say, like, this person has done X, Y, and Z. Like they have gone above and beyond in every single thing they do. They make a proactive effort to be everywhere, they're on top of their stuff. I've never had an issue. They they contribute to everything that's going on. They they they come from a place of service, right? All this different stuff. And then guess what? The other fire team leader, the other squad leaders are gonna try and advocate for their people, right? And it's gonna start to like form clusters and groups where you start to figure out, like in general consensus with everybody in the company, they're like, yeah, like we generally believe that like this should be the top third, this should be the mid third, and this should be the bottom third. So that way, when it comes to the actual like submission of these things, um, as people do it individually, at least there's been discussion amongst the group about a general consensus and an opportunity for people to advocate for the people in their squads and in their fire teams to understand what's going on and again get the opportunity to like brag for them. And so um, you know, all that's great. Again, quite literally brag for them. One of the things that you also do, we can we call it when you're in the fleet, is everyone will submit a brag sheet. You'll submit everything that you've done that semester. You'll submit everything that like you did in that evaluation period. Your sailors will submit a brag sheet, even you as an officer, like when you're getting ready to submit your fit rep, your fitness report, which is your performance report in the Navy. Um, when you're submitting your fit rep, you submit a brag sheet. You submit all the information, all the things that you've done in that evaluation window. And so all that stuff is happening also in a microcosm of the Naval Academy experience. And it feels funny at times, it feels weird because a lot of this stuff at times to me feels like whose line is it anyway, where like the points are made up and they don't matter, or whatever, whatever the phrase, the phrase is where um uh yeah, oh man, I'm not, I'm not gonna I'm gonna mess it up now, but shout out whose line is it anyway. Um everything's made up and the points don't matter, right? Like the rules are made up, points don't matter. Um at the Naval Academy, the points do matter. Your your overall order of merit does matter, especially when it comes to like um, you know, actual uh commissioning and um, you know, your service assignment and potentially ship selection, right? Like these things do matter. Um, but it's an opportunity. Again, everything about the Naval Academy is a training ground. As silly as some of these things seem, it's a training ground to feel a little bit more comfort and have a little bit more familiarity with how things may be in the fleet and getting reps and experience of advocate, advocating for yourself and your people in the midst of a group is something that you will have to do as a junior officer. The amount of times I've had to go in to my department head's like office as a as a young JO, as an ensign or JG, and advocate for why my sailor deserves to be the number one ranked petty officer in the entire command is freaking huge because that number one rating for that person, the person who I'm in charge of taking care of, might be the difference between him getting promoted or not. And that promotion may be the difference between real money for their family, right? That may be the real opportunity for them to progress in their career. And it requires me to be competent enough, to be brave enough, to be experienced and practiced enough to advocate on their behalf to get them that number one ranking instead of the number three ranking. And that's why, again, that's why this stuff matters. I know, like there's so much here, and like I love this new the wave of the academy that's been pushing back for like to everything war fighting, like hoo-yah war fighting. I love this promotion of the physical fitness and all this, and and and like the warrior mentality and the warrior spirit. And that translates down into like some of the realities of being an officer, which is the administrative side of your job. The amount of time I spent doing administrative work was a ton. But you have an opportunity to change people's lives. You have an opportunity to make an impact in people's lives at 22 years old. As soon as you graduate, you're gonna walk in in a department. There's gonna be like three divisions. There's gonna be three division officers, three division chiefs trying to advocate for why their E5 or their E6, their enlisted sailors deserves to receive the number one ranking out of the command and most influence or provide possibility or probability that they're gonna promote. That changes people's lives. That changes the trajectories of their careers, that causes good people to stay in the Navy. And that's your responsibility, and that's your job to go through and do those things. And so, as crazy as it sounds, and like this nexus in this small little bubble of the Naval Academy, it can feel interesting, it can feel weird, it can feel like why do we have like why do they have to do all that for just the midshipman? It's it's just reps, it's it's experience, it's all these different aspects, and going through and having a murder board and going through and advocating for your sailors, like your midshipmen that are in your squad or in your fire team, that's exactly what you're gonna have to do when you go hit the fleet. It's exactly what you're gonna have to do when you go hit the fleet. So um, you know, again, I just think that's a really interesting piece of this overall experience. And that's why I love like now getting to do Academy Insider with knowledge from the fleet, because I would have never known that. I would have never gotten that. But having been on both sides now, where I was the department head and like received these conversations and recommendations from people, and being on the flip side where I had to go in as an ensign and fight for my sailors to receive, you know, the highest recommendation, that kind of stuff matters. Like that's where you can make an impact in people's lives. Like, you just need to take it so seriously. Um, because it does, it matters. It really does matter. It if you hadn't listened to like my previous episode um about like general advice, like adulting advice for the fleet. I talk about being a champion for your people. This is what I'm talking about. Like, this is another freaking perfect example of being a champion for your people. How are you going to make a positive impact in their lives? You don't have to give some transformational speed, you don't have to give some uh, you don't have to be freaking Leonidas, you don't have to make people of the world write books about you. If you prepare and you do your due diligence and you listen to your people and you come ready to go to advocate for your sailor and talk to your department head about why your sailor deserves the number one ranking, and that leads to them getting promoted, you have made a freaking positive impact in somebody's life who matters to you and is a part of your organization. It's that, like, that's it, man. And so, again, I think these things are a really interesting microcosm of the overall Naval Academy experience, um, which is which is pretty fascinating. A lot of times, this is gonna be my second rant now as we get into this. Um, the second thing that I think is worth bringing up is I think the number one you complaint you get in this type of evaluation system from a lot of people over and over again is oh, it's just a popularity contest. This ranking, these rankings are dumb. It's just a popularity contest, blah blah blah. Uh look, I hear you. I I and and and I do like I genuinely understand and empathize, and people who may not be necessarily the most social might have a harder time relating and and resonating with people and may fall lower into the um you know the peer evaluations and rankings. Um, but I challenge anyone who's listening, and I challenge people who think about this to change their perspective and mindset, which is it is not a popularity contest. Your ranking a lot of times reflects the effort that you have put in to build relationships with the people who are around you. It is that like and I hate to say that simple, but that's the reality. You can say that's like a popularity thing, but no, at the end of the day, your world as a military officer is gonna come down to relationships. It's gonna come down to your ability to connect with people, to resonate with people, to empathize with people, and then to lead people and lead people in warfare. And relationships are so freaking big in that. I I just I encourage you to read any incredible book. If you read Brothers Forever, if you read any of these books that kind of document the story of American, especially Naval Academy war heroes, folks who have died for us, the Travan Manions of the world, the Brennan Looneys of the world. Everything in those books goes back to those gentlemen talking about relationships. It goes back to talking about them, wanting to do everything that they can to sacrifice themselves to take care of their people. And guess what? Those kind of folks and that effort that goes towards building relationships is the it's it's a translatable idea, right? It's not about being popular. Yeah, shout out uh wicked, right? Popular, uh, love it. But like again, it's not about this like idea of being popular. It's about this idea of who's gonna make the extra effort to truly build relationships with people in their company, who's gonna make the extra effort to get to know the people in their company, to get to show them that they care, to show them that they want to help, to make an impact in their lives. If you do that and people think positively about you, they reflect positively on you, and they and they feel a certain way about you in a positive light, yes, like that's going to impact your ranking. But guess what? That's also leadership. That's building relationships. That's the kind of stuff that gets things like moving through life. We are we are human beings, we're built around connection. There are times where you have to be, again, a like a manager and and like demand certain things as a leader. But the foundation that allows you to do those things is based on relationships. And if you can go through and do that, like that's gonna separate you. And so every time I hear like, oh, I hate it, it's just a popularity contest. I I mean, like, I hear you, and and that can be a certain aspect of it, but I encourage you to think about it rather as like this ranking might be a reflection on the level of effort that I've put in to build relationships, to build genuine relationships with the people around me. Think about it that way. Hold up a mirror to yourself. What level of effort have you put in to like be good to the people around you, to invest in the people around you? Even if you're struggling, even if things are difficult, have you gone and asked for help for some from someone who does really well in that thing and be like, hey man, like I'm struggling. I know you do really well in this. Is there any chance you can help me out? Building that relationship, guess what? When that person goes, they're not gonna see him and be like, oh, bottom third, he sucks. They're gonna be like, no, like this person has the humility to ask for help and has worked extremely hard. Like, in my book, that's a top, that's a top third person. So anyway, I'm gonna I I could I could rant on that one for hours. Um I just think the the evaluation system at the Naval Academy, a lot of times it can be taken in a negative light, it can be reflected on a part like a certain way. Um, but I encourage people to think about it rather as an opportunity, as a reflection on what level of personal effort that they've actually put into building relationships with the people in their company. It was a huge change for me. My plebe year, I hung out with just with the athletes. I did, like objectively. I looked at it, I looked back my soft, my youngster year first semester, I was rooming with two athletes, and you know, as a result of our schedules and our everything, we just weren't around the company much. And my ranking, plebe, my my rankings plebe year were relatively poor. My rankings um first semester of youngster year was also uh not great. And uh, and I asked for a room change. I I started to realize how important it was that I actually integrated myself into the overall company, that I built relationships with people that my schedule as a varsity athlete otherwise wouldn't necessarily force a mix with or integration with. And um, and that changed everything because then people got to see, right? Like I remember my roommate, Jeremiah Harding, my best friend to today. Um I remember him pulling me aside, like second class year, second class year, first semester when we were rooming together, and he was like, dude, I had no idea, like I had no idea what your freaking schedule was like as a basketball player. I had no idea. I thought you were just like missing things because you wanted to miss things. He's like, no, you're a second class. You're like, you're gone all the time. Morning workouts, lunch, film. I'm in here like working on homework and taking naps and doing stuff, and you are never here because you are always at basketball. And he just never knew that otherwise. But I also like didn't make an effort to show people that I that I that like that's what I was doing, right? It's easy to be out of sight, out of mind. Um so what are you gonna do? Right? Like, yeah, you can either complain about it or you can make a uh a concrete action to try and improve it. And um it all comes back down to relationships for me. So um that's probably more than you guys wanted out of this episode about evaluations, and I apologize. Um, but that's that's what it's all about. Um and again, that everything that we've talked about, these rankings um and evaluations, those will go into what we call like your aptitude grade or your military performance grade. And um it doesn't really have much impact on a ton of things um besides your like recognition lists. And this is how we're gonna end the episode. Um, so there's really three recognition lists that exist at the Naval Academy. You can be a part of the superintendent's list, you can be a part of the commandant's list, and you can part be a part of the dean's list. The superintendent's list is like the gold standard. The superintendent's list is for the people who are like absolutely freaking crushing it on a personal level. They had a 3.4 cooper, so a 3.4 GPA the previous semester, um, and and no D's or F. So if you got like five A's and one D and it and it you were still over a 3.4 3.4, but you had a D, technically don't qualify. So 3.4 Cooper with no D's or Fs, um, a minimum of 15 credit hours, you had an A in conduct, so you basically never got in trouble. You had an A in military performance, so you're basically rated in the top uh like you know, top percentage of your company. You had an A or B in PE and an A or B on the PRT. If you meet all of those criteria, then you fall in the superintendent's list. And this is like a semester-long list. You would have to re-qualify every single semester. If you got selected on the SUPs list, so let's say it comes out and you find out that you're on the superintendent's list, then you are authorized to wear a gold star on your uniform for that entire like next semester, up until the new release of the next superintendent's list. And so you will see midshipmen in their working blue uniforms in their left breast pocket, just below their uh like where their name tape is and and like above like the little pocket, you'll put a uh a gold star. And that'll that'll show uh that you are on the superintendent's list. That's exactly the same spot you would wear it in in their summer white uniform as well. Uh and if they're wearing their SDBs, uh their service dress blues, the suit-looking uniform, then they would wear it above their anchors, both anchors on their collar, like on the lapel. And um, and so that's how you would tell that someone has earned the privilege of being on the superintendent's list uh for their performance, is by the wearing of the gold star. The commandant's list is kind of like just the next step down. This is um, again, usually for someone who has maintained an incredible like military order of merit, but maybe had a little bit just a little bit more struggle on the academic side. Uh you need a 2.9 uh Cooper for the previous semester visa 3.4, but you still need an A in conduct. You need an A or B in aptitude, an A or B in PE, and an A and B uh or an A or B on the PRT. So again, high performance in fitness, high performance in conduct, high performance in ranking and aptitude, high performance in your military and PE classes, and at least a 2.9 GPA. If you do all of those things, then you would be a part of the DONce list. And right, like you wouldn't double up. You wouldn't wear like a silver and a gold star. Like if you are on the soups list, you just wear a gold star. If you fall down into the category of the DONS list, then you'd wear a silver star. Um during my time as a midshipman, I had done all three. I have not made a list, I have been on the dance list, and I had been on the soups list. Um, and so again, these are the cool things that it again, it based on semester, your ability to impact your performance, change the way things are. Um, you you can do that. You can do that. And so um those are those are kind of the primary two soups and don'ts, and then and then there's the dean's list. These are this is kind of the one for McGimmins who are excelling academically, uh, but maybe having a harder time on some of the the fitness or military things. And if you are on the dean's list, you would wear a bronze star. And to be on the dean's list, you'd have to get a 3.4 couper the previous semester, um, at least a B in Conduct, a B in military performance, um a C or better in your PE classes and on the PRT, right? So uh basically this this accounts for uh a drop in um conduct grade and aptitude grade and PE and PRT, uh, but you may maintain a 3.4 cooper on the academic side. Um those are everything that's going on. Um when I look back on my time at the academy, um it's amazing how like silly some of this stuff may feel in the moment. Um, but but there really are direct translations to everything you're doing. And I think this skill, again, especially going back to like relationships, the rankings, murder boards, advocating for your sailors, the amount of times people are gonna go on through life, and as a result of the Naval Academy, whether that be in the military or whether that be in government or in citizenship or in uh you know the private sector, whatever the case is, in management and leadership, you're going to have to advocate for your people and for your organization, for your budget, for promotions, for whatever the case is. If you're gonna make a positive impact in the life of the people who are a part of your world, that is gonna require uncomfortable behavior from you. Um and this is honestly, like when I look back at it, this was step one. This was step one. This is the first kind of experience I got at it all. So um, incredible life experience. I hope this was helpful. Um, congratulations to everyone for all the firsty families who may be listening. Congratulations. You're at the freaking end. Uh the commissioning and graduation is one of the most special days in the entire world. I wish you all luck. Um, I will be certainly putting out lots of content over this summer regarding summer trainings and plebe summer. So make sure to stick around. Um, please go sign up for the newsletter. I'll be pushing out information and I want to do some more like closed private events for uh the Academy Insider community as well. Um and uh all the above. I appreciate it. I hope this was helpful. I'm sorry that I'm not on camera. Um and uh Yeah, have a good day. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it, and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves, and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen, and their families. Thank you.