Army grapples with higher cadet standards after yanking memo

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The Hill's Headlines (PM) - August 19, 2026

The Hill's Headlines (PM) - August 19, 2026

The Army is eyeing new minimum academic standards for college students in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), but not without some internal drama. 

The service branch issued fresh standards earlier this month, only to pull them days later amid differing opinions and an apparent lack of consultation with some senior leaders. 

Under the withdrawn standards, incoming ROTC cadets would have to meet one of the three academic benchmarks: score a 20 on the ACT, a 1000 on the SAT or test in the 50th percentile on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), a standardized test on science, math and language. 

“The Army must cultivate intelligent and adaptive officers to build a lethal and ready Army

prepared to deter, fight, and win our nation’s wars. The strength of our Officer Corps is the

strength of our Army,” Jules “Jay” Hurst III, who was the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, wrote in an internal Aug. 5 memo, which was obtained by The Hill. 

The Army requires enlisted soldiers to score 110 on the ASVAB “line scores” to participate in Officer Candidate School, which trains civilians and enlisted personnel to gain a commission as officers in the armed forces. Line scores are a combination of subtests in the ASVAB that qualify candidates for certain career tracks in the military. 

No equivalent standards exist for cadets to contract into the Army Senior Reserve Officer Training Corps (SROТС), Hurst said in the internal document. Two days after signing the memo, Hurst was confirmed by the Senate as the........

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