A guide to Marine Officer Candidates School
Hello everyone. If you have somehow been guided to this page, you are probably shipping off to OCS soon!
If you are interested in becoming a Marine officer and you have not been accepted to OCS yet, contact your nearest "OSO" (Officer Selection Officer), who will know more information than me. I'll include a page in the back that details my experience with an OSO. You can also read my Meeting an OSO guide. If you have graduated OCS, you can check out my TBS (The Basic School) guide.
Okay so the links have been acting weird, so try these:
https://sites.google.com/view/officerselectionofficer
https://sites.google.com/view/officercandidatesschool
https://sites.google.com/view/thebasicschool
Before you read this page and share it with others, I must explain how important integrity is at OCS. I have a separate page going into detail about this. But just so it's upfront here, there are no test answers in this guide and I don't share anything that would be considered cheating. All the information here can be found on other various accounts of OCS, or on official Marine Corps resources or videos found on the internet.
I provide contact information at the end of this page, and I'm happy to answer any questions. However, I can't help you with any academics, or any Combat Orders writing WHILE at OCS. I can help you with orders writing before OCS, but I can't help you write your orders while you're on liberty or anything.
Another thing I must tell you, I really struggled with OCS. I barely made it through. I graduated on a broken foot and with a lot of luck. So you might ask, why am I in any position to give you advice? Well, because, sometimes it's a good idea to have someone who you learn mistakes from, instead of making them yourself. And because sometimes all you need someone down in the shit with you.
At OCS you will be graded on leadership, academics, and physical fitness. I'll go into a little about these, but please just know that this is not the place where you will find test answers or anything like that. Also, a lot of OCS is supposed to be a bit of a mystery, so I'm going to purposely leave out some details.
I'll also go into details about useful things to bring, things you can buy once you're at OCS, and other things you may want to know.