I'm joining the coast guard can anyone tell me how you choose your first duty station?

[bearchan]

feel free to leave suggestions for some one who is going in for maritime law enforcement

[oakley]

It USED to be that in week 6, a list of available billets came out, and then you chose according to your class ranking in Week 7... but they got rid of that.

Now, all you do is a dream sheet - you list the units or areas to whom you would like to be assigned, and that's it.

For SUCCESS, go ahead and place your "OMG I WANNA GO HERE" choice first - your dream billet - and then follow that with choices that would meet your needs. Your dream job may be at Station Lake Tahoe - so go ahead and pinpoint that. If you would accept any unit on the Left Coast, just follow the Tahoe entry with "Any Units in D13 or D11" - for Thirteenth and Eleventh Districts. This could put you anywhere from Washington to San Diego.

You didn't say whether you were married or not, so I'll give generic advice...

To help you out for your NEXT assignment, I, personally would recommend an Afloat tour - on a Cutter - and if you are single, I would recommend overseas (specifically, in Alaska). We don't send married members overseas for their first tour unless you are from that area, as we've had too many problems arise because of the isolation and lack of support due to the isolation. Most of our units aren't near big bases, so we don't have the amenities that the other services have.

Why do I recommend a Cutter for your first tour? Because of assignment priority. For all of your subsequent assignments, you will be subject to assignment priority to get your job - and it runs like this: the higher your priority, the more likely you will get the billet you want - as follows:

5 - CONUS (continental US) ashore unit
4 - CONUS afloat (on a Cutter)
3 - OCONUS (outside CONUS) ashore
2 - OCONUS afloat
1 - Restricted duty

If you and I want the same billet, the assignment officer will check out assignment priorities - and if you are stationed on a Cutter in Alaska, and I have Station San Diego, you've got a 2 while I have a 5 - and you'll get the job. If we both have the same priority, then they look at evaluations and such.

The problem with this - is that if you are stationed on a Cutter, you won't do that much LE - you'll be doing other stuff as well. If you are at a Station, you WILL do LE (along with search and rescue), but you'll have a lower priority for after you go to A School.

Unfortunateloy, it's a trade-off. Which is more important to you - assignment priority or your present job?

[eorl]

You do indeed choose by District in boot camp. A listing of Districts can be found here:

http://www.uscg.mil/top/units/

To most new recruits, "martime law enforcement" means Miami Vice sort of stuff (it actually means much more than that - more on that in a second).

For that mindset, the common choices (in order) for those with MLE interest:

1. District 7 (Florida and Caribbean)
2. District 8 (coastal, not inland but you take your chances there)
3. District 11 (California)

Of course, Maritime Law Enfortement is found everywhere in the Coast Guard, it just means different things in different places. MLE in some places tends to be heavy on fisheries enforcement (D1). Other places are mostly about maritime industry regulation enforcement (inland D8). There's LE everywhere.

My advice: pick based on the general area you think you'd like to be stationed, don't worry about mission too much. Most CG missions exist in all places, and especially since you can only request District coming out of boot camp, it's very difficult to end up at a specific location with a specific mission profile.

Good luck!

[jarl]

Having just graduated from boot camp within the last month, I will refine what the master chief said. These days you pick 4 districts that you want to serve in during week 5. Week 6 you find out where you are stationed. So its not very easy to get what you want. You can write some places you would like to go in the remarks section at the bottom, but most likely it wont matter, as we have very few billets open.

[ingel]

With all due respect ma'am, they do have age limits. Try the merchant marines.

Love, Kyle