The appointments will be made annually in the month of February or March, on the applications made within the preceding year. The claims of all the candidates on the register will be considered and acted upon. No certain information can be given as to the probable success of the candidate, before the arrival of the period for making the selections. Persons, therefore, making applications, must not expect to receive information on this point.
As a general rule, no person will be appointed who has had a brother educated at the institution.
QUALIFICATIONS.
Candidates must be over sixteen and under twenty-one years of age, at the time of entrance into the Military Academy; must be at least five feet in height, and free from any deformity, disease, or infirmity, which would render them unfit for the military service, and from any disorder of an infectious or immoral character. They must be able to read and write well, and perform with facility and accuracy the various operations of the four ground rules of arithmetic, of reduction, of simple and compound proportion, and of vulgar and decimal fractions.
It must be understood that a full compliance with the above conditions will be insisted on—that is to say—the candidate must write in a fair and legible hand, and without any material mistakes in spelling, such sentences as shall be dictated by the examiners; and he must answer promptly, and without errors, all their questions in the above-mentioned rules of arithmetic: failing in any of these particulars, he will be rejected.
It must also be understood, that every candidate will, soon after his arrival at West Point, be subjected to a rigid examination by an experienced medical board; and should there be found to exist in him any of the following causes of disqualification, to such a degree as will immediately, or in all probability may at no very distant period, impair his efficiency, he will be rejected:
1. Feeble constitution and muscular tenuity; unsound health from whatever cause; indications of former disease; glandular swellings, or other symptoms of scrofula.
2. Chronic cutaneous affections, especially of the scalp, or any disorder of an infectious character.
3. Severe injuries of the bones of the head; convulsions.
4. Impaired vision from whatever cause; inflammatory affections of the eyelids; immobility or irregularity of the iris; fistula lachrymalis, &c., &c.