Any college student, whether a cadet at a school like VT or any other school can apply for the Marine Officer Program. I would assume that a VTCC cadet in the NROTC would be pretty much automatic in if they wanted to. All college students regardless of affiliation with an ROTC program have to do OCS at Quantico, except for students from the Naval Academy. The OCS experience at Quantico normally takes one of 3 modalities... 1) a ten week program after the candidate has graduated college. If successfully completed, the candidate commissions as a 2nd Lt. and heads directly to The Basic School (TBS...also at Quantico, 6 months). This is called the Officer Candidate Course, OCC 2) a ten week program after the candidate completes his junior year of college. Identical to the above, but the commissioning and TBS wait until the candidate graduates from college. This is called the Platoon Leaders Course - Combined, PLC-C 3) two six week programs, one each after the candidate's sophomore and junior years. Again, the commissioning and TBS waits until after college graduation. These are called the Platoon Leader's Course, first and second installment, PLC. The Platoons for OCC and PLC-C are integrated. You have degreed prior enlisted Marines, college graduates, and rising college seniors together in the same cohort. Those college graduates or students might or might not be from an ROTC/corps or cadets type situation. One last twist...in that 10 week group, you have some in on a law contract that are college graduates or already part of the way through law school. Depending on exactly when they get in the program, they may commission before or after completing their JD. My son just completed PLC-C. He knew of some VT and VMI guys in his platoon. His closest buddies were a UT grad headed to law school, a TAMU rising senior in their Corps of Cadets, and a non ROTC kid rising senior at UCF (I think). My son is not a part of an ROTC program. ** Edited by JoesterVT at 7/31/2026, 11:03:43 PM