Episode 42: PODCAST: Episode 42 | How do I become a SEAL Officer? | SEALSWCC.COM

SEAL/SWCC Podcast 2022 Episode 42  Title: How do I become a SEAL Officer? Subtitle: The How-To guide for candidates Description: We dive into the mailbag and answer your questions about SEAL Officer programs with our guest, Andrew Dow.    (Host) Scott: Welcome to The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy SEAL and SWCC podcast. I'm Scott Williams, your host, and today we have with us, Andrew Dow, who's a retired SEAL, and also our officer programs expert. And we thought, well, today we’d just take a look inside the mailbag. We get a lot of questions about officer accession programs, and in particular, about what we call SOAS which is the SEAL Officer Accession and Selection. And maybe Andrew, you can just start by giving us kind of a synopsis of what SOAS is.   (Guest) Andrew: Sure, well, first of all, thanks for having me again, guys. SOAS, the SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection, was developed in 2014 and it has now become an official program for the Navy, prerequisite for BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition SEALS. It's a two-week long course where we assess officer candidates, whether they're coming from the Naval Academy, ROTC, OCS candidates, lateral transfers, some candidates from the big Navy active duty. It’s a two-week course of instruction during the summer where we will assess specifically four attributes that we're looking at: one being their cognitive abilities, their character, which is a real important one, their leadership and their ‘team-ability’. That's what we're looking at with those four main attributes. They will go through a week of physical and mental assessment evolutions, where we will be testing them through their physical capabilities, as well as presenting them with some mental challenges that they'll be faced with. One being, it could be, you know, some evolutions they'll see as similar to what they'll see in BUD/S more, it's log PT, or boats on their heads. But they'll also be introduced to new types of evolutions that specifically are assessed there, those four big traits. And then the second week being interview week, where they will sit down with an officer and a senior enlisted SEAL in the community, and they will sit down – and note it's a business interview, where there will be asked questions and regarding the community, regarding where they stand and how they were raised, challenges they faced, and to get a good idea of what the individual, who the individual is. And all this gets thrown together and goes to the selection panel, which happens after SOAS.  Scott: And just to be clear, this is not for enlisted candidates; it's for officer candidates only. And when does SOAS occur during the assessment pathway?  Andrew: SOAS happens during the summer, and it happens, like I said, two weeks, in June, two weeks in July, two weeks in August, and this happens after applications have been submitted to the SEAL Officer Community Manager. And correct, like you said, it's only for SEAL officer candidates; the enlisted side is completely separate. Those applications are due in February to the SEAL OCM, and from there it's a – they find out if they receive an invitation to SOAS, they complete SOAS, then the SEAL selection panel, which is a panel of O-5 and O-6 SEAL officers that determines who will receive orders to BUD/S. After that, pretty much a month, two months after that, depending on which accession source, you will head off to BUD/S.  Scott: Okay, so it's definitely pre BUD/S.  Andrew: Yes.  Scott: And it's after the application piece. You get a notification; if you're invited you come here during the summer, and then you get notified if you're going to attend BUD/S. And that notification usually comes when? Andrew: So, selection panel is in September. Most candidates, specifically OCS, will be notified late October. ROTC and Naval Academy, since they're rising seniors, they won't find out until abou(continued)