Well buckle head to day is your lucky day because I am a marine currently out in Korea for a big excercise.  I am enlisted.  You have to be an officer to fly.  I was planning on going to Embrey Riddel to be a commercial airlines pilot. Well that all changed the past two weeks I have been working with an f18 pilot everyday.  Both of us are not doing our real job as we got randomly selected to work in part of a command center type of thing(its hard to explain just bare with me).  Well Im telling this guy about my plans to be a pilot and he asked me why don't you become a marine aviator.  I told him that I would love to but I don't meet the requirements to be a pilot because you have to be a golden child.  Boy was I wrong.  I graduated Highschool with a 2.0 GPA with exactly the required credits.  I went to college for a year and never went to classes and got kicked out.  I joined the marines and had to get a drug waiver for smoking pot 10 times.  I have been in 3 years now.  I tell him all of this and he says so what.  He knows people that were in my shoes that are f18 pilots.  What you need to do is get a college degree.  Doesn't matter what type.  Go to a marine OSO and tell him you want a flight contract.  DO NOT GET A NAVAL AVIATOR CONTRACT OR YOU WILL DO WHAT GOOSE DOES IN TOPGUN, A WEAPS O, OR AN ECMO.  Find a way to pay for college, whether its a loan or not its up to you.  Get a flight contract.  When you get that you will go to OCS to become an officer.  OCS is a 6 week "boot camp" for marine officers.  After this you will go to tbs (the basic school) This is where people realize they got suckered but you will have no worries to get a pilot slot.  Its not unoften they have 5 pilot slots out of a class of 250 and if you want to choose it you better be top 5.  These 5 slots have nothing to do with you.  You are already guaranteed your slot.  After TBS you go to a 6 week school that all pilots no matter what they fly go to.  This is where you start competing.  This school teaches you basic principles of lift, drag, aerodynamics, a little survival stuff, about an ejection seat.  Just misc stuff that every military pilot must know.  You have a class averaging 24.  Out of these 24 some of you will be flying helos, some will fly cargo planes, and fewer will fly jets.  The highest score gets first pick and so forth.  Remember there will be less jet slots.  Then you go to a ten week course to fly t-34s.  You have to master this airplane.  At this point you are flying jets, you just dont know what jet.  The marine corps has f18s, av8b, and ea6b.  The hardest to fly is an av8(harrier) its the hardest cause you have to learn the vertical takeoff.  Harriers arent what I want to do because they are the slowest jet and there pilots get made fun of even though they tend to be smarter.  Then you have f18s you know what those are.  And then ea6b which are for electronic warfare and you wont be bombing anything.  Anyways at this school THE ONLY PERSON WHO CHOOSES WHAT HE FLIES IS WHOEVER PLACES FIRST, everyone else gets placed where the marine corps needs them.  I dont know how big these classes are.  They only pin on 100 wings a year in the marine corps for jets.  Im not sure if that is per jet or all of them combined.  Well Good luck and I hope this was helpful.  If you want to ask me questions shoot me an email at kevins84@hotmail.com because I wont come back to this forum.  I was actually surfing the internet cross referencing everything I just told you.  Take care and good luck with your dreams.  If someone tells you this isn't true dont listen to them.  The marine corps is about proving yourself.  If you putforth the effort to do what you want anything is possible in the marines.  And being a pilot is a whole other ball game.  A lot of the officers I work with are considered fallen angels.  A lot of them top ten percent in highschool, High gpas in college.  Americas golden childeren.  A fallen angel is a marine term for someone who went to flight school and didnt make it.  The thing is some of these guys are geniuses but they just can't seem to learn how to fly.  I always wondered why they didnt make it.  So I asked him, why do most people not make it.  He said from what I was describing the officers I work with didnt have a prob getting through the 6 week school.  He said some of the smartest people just can not seem to multitask and get so caught up on things that they are unable to perform the tasks needed to be a succcesful pilot.  Well like I said Email me with questions Kevins84@hotmail.com