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The middle initial of President Ulysses S. Grant was a bureaucratic error that taunted him his entire life. The poor man’s multiple names were a constant source of amusement and derision.The Civil War general and later US President was born Hiram Ulysses Grant (neighborhood children mocked him over his H.U.G. initials). The boy preferred “Ulysses,” though the local kids still creatively called him “Useless Grant.”How did he end up with a phantom ‘S’ as his middle initial? It began with his local congressman Thomas Hamer.Hamer had agreed to nominate Grant for entry into the United States Military Academy at West Point, at the request of Grant’s father.In 1838, Hamer, in his hastily written nomination letter, incorrectly listed the applicant as “Ulysses S. Grant.”Two explanations are offered for this mistake. Hamer could have confused Grant with his younger brother Simpson. Or the congressman thought that Ulysses used his mother’s maiden name “Simpson” as his middle name.Grant did not know about this until he arrived at the academy. From Ron Chernow’s biography Grant (page 20):Upon arrival at West Point, Grant registered under the name U.H. Grant, inscribing his name as Ulysses Hiram Grant in the adjutant’s office. He then discovered, despite his unavailing protests, that he had been nominated for West Point under “Ulysses S. Grant” and perhaps began to suspect that fate had pasted this label permanently onto him.As soon as fellow cadets spotted the name “U.S. Grant” on the bulletin board, they made great sport of it and promptly branded the newcomer Uncle Sam Grant, or “Sam” Grant for short. Henceforth, he would be known as Sam Grant among the cadets.By the end of the four years at West Point, he had capitulated to the tyranny of the clerical error and adopted Ulysses S. Grant as his new moniker for life.There was no fighting the immovable bureaucracy. Grant simply gave up. The middle initial of ‘S’ would be permanently etched in history.As Chernow states in his biography (page 18):The mistaken name, which persisted at West Point and beyond, was the bane of the young man’s life…As Grant later confessed to his wife in frank exasperation, “You know, I have an ‘S’ in my name and don’t know what it stands for.”Source:Grant: Ron Chernow: 9780143110637: Amazon.com: BooksImage Source: Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant Portrait Photo Print

You can do anything, if you are willing to pay the price. If you choose not to go into the military after graduating from West Point, you will have avoided service at the cost of your integrity and, to a large extent, your reputation. Applicants are made specifically aware and acknowledge in writing that they will have an 8-year service commitment (5 active, 3 inactive reserve) upon graduation. They know they can leave without owing anything up to the start of their junior year and that leaving anytime during the last two years can result in being placed on active duty as an enlisted soldier to “pay back” the nation’s investment in their education.West Point’s motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.” It is more than a catchy tag line. If you attend, it is your duty to serve the commitment you make to defend the nation, and it is dishonorable to seek to avoid that duty or perform it halfheartedly.Anyone who can even consider accepting an appointment to West Point, graduating and somehow deliberately avoiding his/her military service obligation should do themselves, their potential classmates, their own family and the nation a favor and look for another school. They’ll be miserable at West Point if they go there without being committed to serving, and they cannot possibly conceive the cost to theirsense of integrity should they succeed in such a scheme. They will have to look in the mirror every day for the rest of their life, and inevitably they will compare their own character with that of their fellow graduates as time, service and age take their inevitable toll on each class in war and peace.We all have former classmates who discovered as cadets that the Army was not for them and left before that third year started. Some even attend our reunions where we welcome them warmly. Many more graduated with no intention to serve longer than they were committed to serve, but they served in those years with honor and commitment. They did their duty. Those of us who stayed in uniform many years longer honor them as our brothers and sisters. Hell, many of us who served to retirement age and beyond had no idea at the beginning we would stay beyond the minimum service obligation, but all of us accepted our initial commitment “without mental reservation or purpose of evasion” as we promised in our commissioning oaths. We might be old and tired now, but we still revere and serve the ideals of West PointYou should know the West Point Alma Mater’s words are in fact a prayer that each graduate might live, serve and die for the ideals and principles of our school so that when our life is done, when our race is run, it can be said to each of us “well done” and we can be at peace with ourselves and the life we have led, measured against the standard set by those who preceded us and marched with us in the Long Gray Line. Cadets learn the words during New Cadet Training, and we old grads still sing it with tears in our eyes half a century and more later. If you think you or anyone else can take the oath of office upon admission intending to shirk service and fully enjoy for life the many benefits of a West Point (or Annapolis or Air Force Academy) education without Investing their full cost, just stay home. Being an graduate (and especially being a member of a West Point class) is priceless. It cannot be bought. It must be earned by embracing the values of Duty, Honor, Country and all they demand of us.

West Point is one of the most competitive educational institutions in the US. Just to begin with, the non-citizen applicant must:Be sponsored by a national-level government official.Be between the ages of 17 and 22.Not be married or pregnant, or have any legal obligation to support children.Here is the application process for non-citizens:Admissions