Nuke Placement

[Baby jay's mama]

Hi! My boy graduates next week and he just wrote homeand said he's been classified as a EM. How do they go about determining who is classified into what category? He said he wanted MM, probably because A school is shorter.

[Baby jay's mama]

Are you serious? Because my son is in fact very good looking!

[jfrier(EM)]

My son is a EM and he is quite handsome.

[haps]

Tom must be an EM,huh? 

I think part is what position they need people in and part is what they think you will be good at.

ETs do more computer technical stuff,  MMs do the actual welding and fixing things, and EMs are in between.  My sailor is an EM and is enjoying everything he has learned.  The A school is shorter for MMs but then they do another school later on so the actual school time ends up being the same.  I know that re enlistment bonuses are more for ETs than EMs and MMs.

[NF Mom]

Some MM's are selected for additional Engineering Lab Technician ( ELT ) training or additional Welder training after prototype, however the vast majority are not.

During the make work period between A-School and Power School, known as T-Track, there is often a extended wait period for that rate, those rates,  less in demand in the Fleet, so they can push through more of those in higher demand.

There may be similar extend holds during Grad Hold between Power School and Prototype, but our son only mentioned medical delays during Grad Hold in his circle of friends.

When my son went through ETs were in highest demand in the fleet and MMs were in lowest demand.  Some MMs waited in T-Track fives months or more.  Some MMs were transferred to Georgia for T-Track if they were expected to wait for six months or more.

That is another reason why MMs might not graduate before ETs and EMs who go through Boot Camp at the same time.

[NF Mom]

That is interesting about your son wanting to be an MM, and being selected for EM.

When my son signed up as a Nuke on delayed enlistment the only guarantee you could get was MM. Anyone who wanted to be an EM or ET just had to sign up as an open to anything Nuke wanna-be and  take their chances at Boot Camp of being selected as an MM, EM or ET.

My husband has always said the one thing the military aptitude test are very accurate at is identifying mechanical aptitude, so perhaps your son was being saved from a life of ridicule by those who could just do it, without too much thinking involved :)

[NF Mom]

There is also a psychological dimension to the selection process.

My son was struck by how different the atmosphere was in the offices where they did the Nuke selection, than everywhere else at boot camp.

They wanted the Seaman Recruits to be relaxed and part of the process was a one on one interview with a Nuke Field Chief where there was a wide ranging discussion about why the SR wanted to by and ET/EM/MM and everything else under the sun.

My son's circle of friends after power school included many EMs and ETs.  Many of them scored 99 percentile on their ASVABs - but the smarter ones based on ASVAB scores were  the EMs.    My son is an ET so if he had a bias it would have been with the ETs.

Of course there may be another explanation to these AVAB scores along the lines of Toms statement:  "How is it possible that every nuke got the highest score that the recruiter has ever seen on the nuke entrance exam?"

[NonnaB]

We in the Richmond, VA area are surely having more winter than we've had in a LNG time. In fact, when my son was in BS for prototype, he had snow on Halloween and then a pretty mld winter. He had to come back to VA t experience winter. He's stationed in Norfolk and had 8" last week (an extremely large amount f snow for eastern VA). Then, he got his car stck in that snow! LOL!