I recall one Marine recruit from West Virginia who was in my friend's boot camp platoon while he was enlisted who started crying one night at chow during the first week. This caught the attention of the DIs who thought he was going to crack or try and quit. Once the young man recovered his composure he explained that he felt bad to "Have things so good" while his family still had things so rough at home.
Now that is a young man who will serve enthusiastically and value the opportunities the Corps gives him.
The crap about officers being from second rate schools is just ridiculous and fails to paint an accurate picture. It is much harder to get into any of the five service academies than the liberal crapholes from which the ranks of the N.Y. Times are filled. Further, getting an active duty ROTC scholarship can be pretty tough depending on where you apply and for which branch. Most of the kids who do ROTC knew they wanted more than a wuss civilian job coming out of college, so they attended whereever they happened to get a scholarship. This is because, unlike applying to McKinsey or Deloitte & Touche, the military is going to judge them based on grades and performance in leadership exercises, not the "prestige" of their school.
Thus, you meet many former military officers who score over 700 on the GRE for grad school (indicating they could have gotten into a top 10 undergrad) but went to Western Butthole State University for undergrad and don't regret it. This is because their school didn't matter -- Unlike the liberal chumps at Berkeley they already had direction and already had a real job plan laid out for themselves. If you already know you're going to be an Air Force pilot, why would you care about spending an extra $20,000 a year to go to a private school? Better to keep your finances in order.
Anybody who doubts what I'm saying should visit a few websites like www.whartonvets.com. It's a group of former military personnel at the nation's top business school. Listed on the site are alumni who've gone on to top firms on Wall Street and top consulting firms. Many are ROTC grads and not from particularly "elite" undergraduate institutions.
There is a reason that former junior military officers are overrepresented in so many Fortune 500 firms-because they have real skills, unlike sociology majors from Harvard. Mr. Welch (of General Electric) wrote a very good section on this in his book. Statistically, military officers will often make more money than the average Ivy League school graduate, since most of those people end up majoring in subjects with no practical application and get only marginal jobs after graduation (business majors excluded). The Merchant Marine Academy in particular is recognized as one of the top schools in America for sending people on to eventual senior leadership positions in Fortune 500 companies. This has been quantitatively verified.
I've had a few country club idiots ask me, upon hearing that I owed at least 4 years military service, "Oh, did they at least pay for your college?" And it pisses me off. My family was not poor. I am not some freaking mercenary who joined because I needed the money. I didn't. My family offered to pay all of my expenses. I was not an economic conscript.
These chumps need to look at the Chinese military. Now there is a socioeconomic nightmare.