This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
This week in our Foreign Student Series,
we talk about military education programs in the United States. There are public
and private colleges and universities that offer military educations. But
international students can also attend the nation's five service academies.
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| Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point celebrate graduation as Army officers on May 23 |
Three
of these come under the Defense Department. The United States Military Academy
at West Point, New York, prepares officers for the Army. The Air Force Academy
is located at Colorado Springs, Colorado. And the Naval Academy is in
Annapolis, Maryland; it prepares officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps.
Nominees
for these academies must be seventeen to twenty-three years old, unmarried and with
no children. Candidates are usually nominated by members of Congress. International
candidates are nominated by their home governments, which pay for their
education.
Each
government has its own requirements for military service after students graduate.
Americans who attend these four-year colleges must serve at least five years of
active duty.
The
Defense Department chooses more than one hundred countries every year and
invites them to nominate students to the academies. As many as sixty foreign
students may attend each school at any one time.
For example, the
next class at the Naval Academy will include eighteen foreign students, four of
them female. This will bring the total number of foreign students at the Naval
Academy to fifty- three.
Tim
Disher, head of international programs, says those interested should contact the
agency that includes their own naval department. Plus, all of the academies
have admissions information on their Web sites.
International
students can also attend the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut,
and the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. The Coast Guard
Academy can have thirty-five international students at any one time; the Merchant
Marine Academy, thirty.
These
schools have their own entrance requirements. The Coast Guard Academy says
interested students should contact the defense attache at their local United
States embassy. Foreign students interested in the Merchant Marine Academy must
request application forms directly from the admissions office.
And
that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our
Foreign Student Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.
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