In 1968 I was one of the Cranwell Flight Cadets who got offered the opportunity to go to University in 1969 as an APO, post a year at the Towers.
At the time we were told to write 68/69 off as "being down to experience".
In retrospect I wonder if this transitional exercise had some merit.
A year of O.T. ,Exercises, Drill, Cranwell gamesmanship and general Royal Air Force exposure ,combined with weeding out the "also rans", meant that only those who had jumped the hurdles and then were properly commissioned got off to University.
The post academic drop out rate from those of us on return, compared to other "post grads", was minimal ,for it was just a second time around (and a lot softer). Indeed for us it was mostly nugatory and could have been largely abbreviated.
Thus in our case the RAF basically did its Officer selection for a year pre-commissioning before committing three years ( or more) of the Service's time and money on otherwise de facto untested and overpaid students.
Last edited by Haraka; 18th Apr 2015 at 16:07.