The Leadership Reaction Course is an important component of your leadership grade at Marine OCS. It is not as heavily weighted as SULE, but the skills practiced in the LRC will carry forward to SULE. Essentially, the LRC is a group of mini challenges and obstacles that are carried out as a fire team. Every candidate will be required to take the role of a fire team leader and attempt an obstacle. Candidates are given a set amount of time [...]
Throughout Marine OCS candidates are exposed to a small amount of training from the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). There will be much more MCMAP training at The Basic School. These sessions are generally not very physically intense, since you will only be doing basic punches, kicks, and a few other things. However, there was a very intense workout involving MCMAP that I can recall from my time at OCS. It has been a long time, so parts of [...]
Night land navigation is an important event at Marine OCS. It makes up 5% of the 25% academic grade (i.e., 5% of your total OCS grade). There is going to be at least one practice round so don't worry too much if you aren't confident in this area. Candidates will be able to get the help they need from instructors to be successful with this. Here is a simple diagram showing how the course is setup. Every candidate is given [...]
Physical fitness and leadership are interconnected in more ways than can be written. On paper, leadership accounts for 50% of candidates' overall grade while physical fitness makes up 25%. The reality is that the two categories of evaluation and not separable. Physical fitness will play an important role when it comes to proving your leadership ability. It should come as no surprise that Officer Candidates School tests for leadership competency in the midst of stressful and physically intense environments. Maintaining [...]
Before anyone could ever hope to lead Marines they must first learn to lead their peers. Officer Candidates School is interesting in that it tests whether individuals are capable of establishing command authority over their peers. Being put in a candidate billet is going to mean close to nothing to your peers. It is an interesting reality that you must experience for yourself. After 3-4 weeks of training and over a dozen billet changes candidates begin to lose respect for [...]
