FY17 O5 Promotion Opportunity Decreased to 65% for Medical Corps
The FY17 O5 Staff Corps Promotion Board just concluded. Here is the convening order and here is the board membership.
Of note, all CDR hopefuls should read the convening order because that is the document that explains what the board was looking for when selecting people for CDR. The language is very similar to the O6 convening order that I already broke down in detail in this post, so I won’t do that again. The major takeaway is that the promotion opportunity was down to 65%. Here is the historical trend taken from Joel Schofer’s Promo Prep:
| FY08 | FY09 | FY10 | FY11 | FY12 | FY13 | FY14 | FY15 | FY16 | FY17 | |
| LCDR | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| CDR | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 70% | 70% | 65% |
| CAPT | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 50% | 70% |
Promotion opportunity. This percentage is multiplied by the zone size to give the number of officers to be selected for promotion. For example, if the promotion opportunity is 60% and there are 100 officers in-zone, then 60 will be selected for promotion. This 60, however, may come from officers who are below-zone, in-zone, or above-zone. For example, maybe 50 of the 60 are in-zone, and 10 are above-zone. That is why the percentage of people in-zone who are selected for promotion is always lower than the promotion opportunity. See below…
| FY08 | FY09 | FY10 | FY11 | FY12 | FY13 | FY14 | FY15 | FY16 | FY17 | |
| LCDR | Average of 94% (best data I could find) | 97% | 89% | 90% | 93% | |||||
| CDR | Average of 62% (best data I could find) | 58% | 66% | 49% | 53% | |||||
| CAPT | Average of 60% (best data I could find) | 55% | 43% | 47% | 39% | |||||
Actual percentage of in-zone candidates selected for promotion.
Joel Schofer's Career Planning Blog 