So that is where our FITREP concept comes from ...

I had to read this article by Sam Fellman at NavyTimes twice. Surely this is a mistake.

The Naval Academy is artificially inflating its number of applicants to boost its status among other colleges, according to an academy professor who based his accusations on the school’s own documents.

Specifically, the academy counts as “applicants” people who have not completed an application but have shown an interest through other means, such as applying to the school’s weeklong Summer Seminar or beginning an online application, the documents show.

Come on - surely we have at least the same standards for proper accounting of what is and is not complete for USNA as we do for Seaman Timmy's PQS.

An academy admissions official Dec. 5 used this standard to boast that the school had 18,651 applicants so far this year, saying it put the school on track for a record year for the Class of 2016.

The academy’s number of completed applications is much lower. For example, the Class of 2015, which began training during the summer, had 5,720 completed applications; the academy cited its applicant number as 19,145 — more than three times the number of completed applications.

YMBFKM. Can't you go to mast for sea lawyering/gundecking PQS?

Does US News have UCMJ procedures ... they should as it reads like someone needs to press their dress whites.

An official with U.S. News & World Report, which ranks colleges annually, said it’s “very atypical” for schools to use such a benchmark.

Here is what burns me a bit; shouldn't the press have broken this story? They don't expect mild mannered English professors to do this kind of inquirey ... or do the?

Bruce Fleming, an academy English professor and frequent critic of the school’s admissions process, filed a Freedom of Information Act request on how the academy counts applicants and provided the results to Navy Times.

Yep, our friend Professor Bruce - doing the job the press won't; wait, that isn't fair - he did the prep work and Sam did the rest.

This is nothing new.

The documents Fleming received from the academy show that the school’s total number of applicants includes every high schooler who applied to participate in Summer Seminar, regardless of whether the prospective student later completed an official academy application. It also includes high school juniors and seniors who initiated an application online, according to the documents.

An academy official said the practice of counting applicants this way has been in effect for at least 20 years.

Whoa. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying - I guess.

The documents Fleming received from the academy show that the school’s total number of applicants includes every high schooler who applied to participate in Summer Seminar, regardless of whether the prospective student later completed an official academy application. It also includes high school juniors and seniors who initiated an application online, according to the documents.

An academy official said the practice of counting applicants this way has been in effect for at least 20 years.

You need to read it all - as it gets very complicated from there.

Not everyone is doing the same thing.

Similar to Annapolis, both the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Military Academy report the total number of applicants as anyone who has started an application. However, both of these academies also provide the total “qualified” applicants — a figure that Annapolis doesn’t provide. The Coast Guard Academy bases its acceptance rate on the number of qualified applicants.

This is important as it is a matter of integrity and transparency - critical for a military institution in a Representive Republic. We shouldn't be playing games like this. When we do, we don't just hurt our institutional reputation, but that of our MIDN - who as anyone can tell you - represent the best our nation has to offer - but this just puts a cloud over them. Uncalled for.

We should be able to hold our own - and if we don't we should take defendable steps to raise our game. Really.

In the 2011 U.S. News rankings, Annapolis and West Point were in a three-way tie for 14th among liberal arts colleges nationally alongside Vassar College, a private college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Yet Vassar counts only completed applications when reporting admissions statistics.

“The only applicants we count are the ones who we get a completed application from, certainly not anyone who begins an application,” said Vassar spokesman Jeffrey Kosmacher. “Basically, you won’t even be considered for admission if your application were incomplete.”

Still, Kosmacher stopped short of blaming the academy for misreporting its statistics.

“I think the onus is on U.S. News to be sure that if they’re measuring the Naval Academy against any other undergraduate institution, that the way that data like this is being gathered is consistent,” Kosmacher said. “Otherwise, there’s no validity to comparing one school to the other.”

Vassar has more integrity than the Navy? Vassar? Please tell me this is just all a misunderstanding.

How about this. Assuming there isn't a double-secret protocol that no one knows about and USNA didn't throw out with a dismissive, "Take that Fleming!" that makes all the above a sad misunderstanding; in the future let's hold ourselves to the same level of integrity we demand of our junior enlisted's PQS books ... or at least meet the same standard as the bloody Coast Guard.

We're better than that; and I know our MIDN are.