Peer Evaluations Word: Fill & Download for Free

Comparing the difficulty in military training for SOFs is an exercise in futility… especially when comparing ‘pass rates’. The number of people who ‘pass’ will be determined by the needs of the service testing them, and has very little to do with the difficulty (particularly just the physical difficulty) of the course. All SOF assessments are physically extremely demanding.Some of it has to do with the numbers of people they need to qualify. As an example, an SAS selection and assessment course mighty start out with thirty troops, and whittle them down to between 2 and 5, because that is all the slots they are looking to fill, while a BUDS class might start out with twice that many and accept anyone who can pass to go on to the next phase of training.The SAS raters will determine that so many are going to be cut at each stage of the assessment, and base who stays and who goes to a large degree on how well they think someone will fit in the SAS. They might have thirty people who pass everything thrown at them, but after the first day of assessment, four to six are going to be selected to be cut. And four are going to be cut after the next phase (even if they pass the physical requirements). Their purpose is to not only get down to people who can physically cut it, but to people who they think will be an ideal fit into the teams, and part of their particular method of assessment is to pit applicants against each other (as to what they are looking for) rather than just against a standard.SEALs and US Army SF do that to a degree too. If someone passes all the physical requirements, but is deemed by the selection committee to be a bad fit, they’ll be sent packing. But SAS sends people who are meeting the physical requirements just fine packing as a matter of course. So comparing ‘pass rates’ when the criteria for acceptance is completely different is no indicator of the difficulty, or if you prefer, how “formidable” the training is in comparison.I was Army… so I can’t really speak to Navy training, but in SF, we lost more people during MOS training after having been “accepted” into training than we lost during assessment. Assessment was primarily testing leadership and your ability a stay the course and get the job done no matter what obstacles were put in front of you….. as well as to meet certain minimum physical standards. The MOS training tested your ability to absorb and successfully use massive amounts of data, and in many ways was much more difficult. The criteria… what they were specifically looking for in those two different phases of training was completely different. And depending on how the training was structured, would be completely different among different services and different SOFs.It was common in medical schools at one time to flunk the bottom 10% of any given class. That doesn’t mean the course the students in that class took was any more difficult than one today where a student with a passing grade gets his or her degree. In fact, today’s medical school course is much more difficult and comprehensive than forty years ago. But the pass rate today would generally be higher, because they no longer automatically drop the bottom 10%.When I went through OCS, we had to do a quarterly peer evaluation with regard to leadership. After each peer evaluation the bottom 10% was boarded (you had to go before a board of officers and plead your case for being allowed to remain in the program). About half the candidates boarded would be cut, and anyone boarded twice during the course was automatically cut. In the end that meant that roughly a third of the class was dropped based on peer evaluations of leadership ability. You could easily have met every class requirement… even stood out… and been dropped from the course.When I went through my SF assessment, we were evaluated over a six day period where we were not allowed to eat at all and could only catch snatches of sleep maybe fifteen minutes at a time… but mostly didn’t sleep at all… and had to accomplish the training we did carrying 90 lb rucks and weapons everywhere we went and in everything we did. I was in great shape going-in and lost 22 lbs in six days.I trained with SAS in Europe at one time (we were a mountain combat specialty team and they came to us to learn mountain combat techniques), and asked them about their selection process. They told me that their process was physically extremely demanding, but also involved a lot of interviews and psychological and emotional evaluations throughout the assessment, but they were fed three meals a day and got four to six hours sleep every night and did the majority of the assessment without weapons involved. Later training, if you passed selection, was in many ways more difficult yet. You had to show you could master various techniques (rather than just meet minimum physical standards and be a good fit) and you could still be thrown out if you didn’t fit in…. much like in US SOFs…. but that didn’t happen at anywhere near the rate it did during assessment.In other words, the criteria for successfully completing the assessment and selection courses were completely different, and were specifically suited to what the raters were looking-for. You really couldn’t compare the two.BUDs training is considered as formidable as it is because it is formidable. And pass rates are generally where they are because they are determined by ability to meet a standard, even more than acceptability into a team. You can’t use ‘pass rates’ to determine course difficulty when the criteria for acceptance may be completely different.

Out of his depth.OrOut of her depth.

Helping colleagues at work is very underrated in my opinion. Some benefits include:Earning the respect of your colleaguesStellar references you can list on your resumeColleagues being very kind to you and often returning the favorFeeling appreciated in the work environmentFunctioning more efficiently and effectively as a teamExcellent peer evaluations which can lead to faster promotions in-houseJob opportunities down the line due to long-term connections and word of mouthInspiring others which makes most people feel great