> So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done? The material is largely classified, so there is no way to "pretrain" it. T

> So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done? The material is largely classified, so there is no way to "pretrain" it. The first 6 months to a year of the program is not self-paced, it's semi-traditional classroom learning except its 8 hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week. Homework and studying are done after lecture and the number of required study hours are mandatory depending on the sailor's GPA. It is very common for students to spend 60-80 hours a week in the classroom. You could think of this as an enforced minimum speed limit. The first year is spent teaching students how to learn at all-gas-no-breaks speed. After that, the next year to 18 months of a nuke's education are spent in a qualification program that is entirely self-paced. You study the material independently, and when you feel you have a solid grasp on it you request an evaluation (think technical interview) about the subject. How fast or slow one moves through these interviews is entirely up to the individual sailor. But too slow and the sailor will be dropped from the program, thus why it's important to train them how to learn quickly. Anecdotally, after the nuke program, university (NYU Tandon in my case) is trivial. The workload is nothing compared to the expectations of the nuke pipeline.