In order to attend Federal OCS at Fort Benning, a civilian or soldier must already be in possession of a bachelor’s degree.
A civilian may apply for OCS through USAREC a year out from their projected graduation date from college. In that case, all a civilian applicant would need is a signed letter/memo from their school, stating that the civilian is projected to be granted a Bachelors of Arts in History on ________. The civilian’s recruiter would put the applicant’s packet together with that letter, and they could be accepted by HRC and given an OCS class date. The only stipulation is that they would have to have that degree completed by the time they shipped out.
College Requirements for National Guard OCS
The National Guard is a little different. The NG has a “traditional” OCS in each state. The traditional OCS for each state is usually two years long, and requires the NG soldier to spend each drill weekend and two weeks of training in the summer doing OCS. Those NG soldiers are taught by the state OCS cadre, and at the end, are commissioned. Generally a NG soldier will start this traditional state OCS once they have half of their bachelors completed; hence the reason why this route takes two years.
The NG also has “accelerated” OCS programs; one in South Dakota, and one in Alabama. These accelerated programs take a NG soldier, usually with their bachelors already completed, and sends them to one of those two locations for eight weeks of solid OCS. Again, that OCS is ran by NG soldiers.
