Some congresspeople specifically target their nomination process advertising to lower income schools and communities, and some even go so far as to have workshops and training sessions for people who might be interested.
It really depends on your congress member.
John Boehner didn’t care, but his district at the time was mostly rust belt small cities and farmland, so there wasn’t really anyone super rich/upper class coming to him for a nomination, anyway.
It’s usually the other way around. As I understand it, learning to fly at the naval academy and transitioning into the higher-paying job of flying commercial 747s is a standard career path. I think I had a great uncle who went from being on the Air Force One team and switched to the airlines.
heh, pilot training happens after academy graduation. But yes, military pilot → airline is very standard.
Even something like becoming a cop has military service as the most common first step.
Also vets and pharmacists, I think. Yes, there are a few military veterinarians.
Other than that, since most veterans’ life paths start with the military then transition to civilian life, yeah, most things are home-grown. To be fair, though, most military professions are highly specialized versions of what you find on the outside. I was a project manager, but military project managers specifically deal with the DoD acquisition process, while project management in the civilian world is obviously much more broad.
One of the reasons that so many veterans struggle when they leave the military is that civilian companies and employers have no idea how to “read” military experience, so they often turn veterans down for jobs that they would be good at.
Otoh, federal government gives military preference for many jobs, which can mean hiring people who “weren’t college material” before those who were. Or the East Tennessee State grad over UCLA grad.
The least capable people I have dealt with, other than just losers, were former enlisted military personnel doing “technical” jobs, like cybersecurity, thanks to various preferences.
funny you chose East Tennessee State as your example. My dad’s family is all from Johnson City, and my uncle, who graduated from there, retired from the army as a 2-star general. His son also went there and retired as a Colonel. Don’t you be bagging on ETSU! 
I’m sure plenty of fine people go there, but the competition to get in and do well isn’t like UCLA.
But back to the original point, I wonder about the percentage of people at both of those schools who become officers in the military. or the percentage of officers who are form schools like ETSU vs. UCLA. Gah, you know what I mean.
hmm, Honestly, the VA is probably not a good example. since most veterans heavily dislike the VA, it’s not a popular place for them to work after their military career.
Which is the point. It’s become de riguer for people who attend the “high end” schools to consider serving in the military to be beneath them, so fewer (percentage-wise) do. (Which is funny, because it’s a damned sight harder to get into USAFA than it is to get into UCLA)
They made us take the ASVAB in HS. Is that not done in other parts of the country?
Certainly not in MA.
depends on your state’s rules about recruiters in high schools. Some are more strict than others.
I think it was optional. I took it because I do well on tests. I did well and then told a recruiter who called that I wasn’t interested in the military.
Wtf. Lol Florida as always. I got calls/mail from the military for years after that because I scored well.
To bring things around, we are discussing nuances of a highly functional military and how it relates to US class strata, but my sense is that the Russian conscripts who sign a contract to stay on for another year after conscription are not the near equivalent of the worst enlisted US military recruits. Put these people in a much worse training, social, and command and control situation, and they do not flourish on the battlefield.
I saw a statistic that of a sample of confirmed dead many were from poor rural areas and only one was from the moscow district.
I can’t remember whether I ever talked with anyone directly, but I just remember they wouldn’t take a hint.
I was military-skeptical but thought I might be interested in an academy, mainly because it was a free prestigious college, but my parents could pay for college, I didn’t come from a military family, and I was pretty anti-authoritarian by the time I was 16. And my congressman was a right wing nut job. I think I had one phone call with a recruiter and said I wanted to study philosophy or something.
