Johhny Chase
Hi mate,
Can you please confirm that you have received an actual Letter of Offer from the Australian Army? If you have received a LOO it will detail which method of entry it was for - be it GSO or SSO. Bare in mind that you can only apply for either GSO or SSO at the one time - I was in this same boat earlier this year - do I apply for GSO or SSO???? I picked GSO and got my offer.
Here's a few home truths for you to help you out:
1. Recruiting has the most amount of people sitting in the pools of successful applicants all wanting a spot on some sort of pilots course, than they have ever had.
2. A lot of the people sitting in these pools have scored very highly.
3. The intakes over the next twelve to eighteen months and possibly longer have been scaled down considerably, for all services, for all methods of entry.
4. Put simply, there is excess supply of good applicants and limited demand.
5. You have received an Offer for a service that wasn't your first preference.
6. I will completely disregard what you think your flying scores were and look purely at the situation. You have obviously scored well enough to earn an offer for a service you wanted in to, but not well enough to earn an offer for what you wanted more.
7. The powers that be honestly have your best interests at heart, as well as those of the ADF. They will not cut their nose off to spite their face. They have offerred you a place because they want you as an ADF pilot, but couldn't offer you the service that you wanted for any numerous reasons.
8. If you turn an offer down you will not be offerred it again. I don't know what your chances of getting an offer with a different service are, but if you were going to get one, you would have gotten it instead of this one.
9. Inter-service transfers do occur, but not regularly, and if you bank on doing it in the future you should really reconsider accepting the offer in the first place.
10. And finally, one of the first things you would have been told by recruiting when you went in there at the beginning was that pilot selection is more than super competitive and a "willingness to accept an offer that is not your first or possibly second preference will greatly increase your chance of getting a jersey".
I apologise in advance for being a bit blunt in parts - but it's best you have the home truths out on the bare table to help you make your decision.
Regards Ryan