With its Beaux Arts buildings, oak-lined streets and the Chesapeake Bay as a backdrop, the U.S. Naval Academy and its location in historic Annapolis , Maryland, have wowed would-be midshipmen and their parents for generations. Says Zac Dannelly, who graduated last May, “None of the other service academies have a stronger connection to the city that they’re a part of.”
Still, despite the appealing locale, midshipmen spend most of their first year on campus adjusting to military life. It can be challenging even for those like recent USNA grad Caroline Zotti, who grew up in a Marine Corps family and whose mother is a professor at the academy.
“The regimented schedule is a shock to the system,” she says. From reveille at 6:30 a.m. to taps at midnight, weekdays are highly structured with two formations, six class periods, roughly two hours for sports or extracurriculars, and a mandatory study session in the evening. Free time depends on your year, ranging from the precious 12 hours of “town liberty” allotted to plebes (freshmen) on Saturdays to full weekends for first classmen (seniors).
While majors at the academy range from Arabic to quantitative economics, at least two-thirds of students are encouraged to major in one of the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering or mathematics — to meet the needs of the U.S. Navy. All students graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree.
[Get a jump-start on college classes as a STEM major.]
Summer training throughout all four years is mandatory, starting with basic seamanship and military skills during “plebe summer” leading into freshman year. Each subsequent summer, mids are required to participate in “fleet cruises” to explore various career paths. First classmen, for instance, can choose from surface, submarine, aviation or other cruises, where they’re expected to lead sailors and Marines as division officers in specialized training.
Mids must also take professional development courses each summer, which range from dive school to faculty-led cultural trips like one Zotti took to Ethiopia’s South Omo Valley. First classmen submit their career preferences in August before their senior year and are assigned by November.
[Use lifestyle and career goals to narrow your college application list.]
All 4,400 midshipmen live under one roof – Bancroft Hall – that is the center of social life. “There’s a forced unity in the sense that you can’t leave,” says Zotti, now a surface warfare officer stationed in San Diego.
But it’s not all homework and formations. Dannelly, who will be a cryptologic warfare officer after he wraps up a master’s in technology policy at the University of Cambridge in England and a master’s in management science and engineering at Stanford University, fondly recalls the annual Army-Navy game and going up to Baltimore’s Camden Yards for Orioles games. “There’s so much more you can do than studying calculus,” he says.
Read on to find out what life is like at the rest of the five.
— U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
More from U.S. News
Tips to Avoid 7 Common Scholarship Application Pitfalls
How Competitive Is College Admissions?
Colleges Innovate to Help Students Succeed
U.S. Naval Academy Trains Students for Success originally appeared on usnews.com
