Pass the Maneuver Captains Career Course Entrance Exam on Day Two

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The Maneuver Captains Career Course Entrance Exam Is a Doctrine Floor

The MCCC entrance exam is a written test of core tactical doctrine, given at the start of the Maneuver Captains Career Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. The people in the room are infantry and armor captains, senior first lieutenants, Marine captains, and a group of allied officers. International officers also need a score of 75 on the English Comprehension Level test before they arrive, per Wikipedia's entry on the course.

The test does not select you for anything. It checks whether you can follow the tactics instruction that starts right after it. Instructors expect you to know troop leading procedures, read an operations order, and speak the language of tactical tasks from the first day of planning.

It is a floor. The test confirms you already own the doctrine the course is about to build on. The bar is set where a prepared officer clears it comfortably. The cost is on the far side: fail twice and you go home with a mark in your file. A low bar with a high price for missing it deserves two honest weeks, not a panicked Sunday.

It is also a different kind of test from the aptitude tests some officers took before commissioning. Those measure how you reason. This one checks what you have read. Our guide to military aptitude tests and officer screening covers the other kind.

When do you take the MCCC entrance exam?

You take it on day two. Day one is in-processing: paperwork, gear, briefings, and a lot of standing in lines. Day two is the exam. For reserve component officers, the course policy letter places it on the second day of the resident Phase I, and it tells every student to work through the study guide before arrival.

Day one eats the evening you planned for a last review, so treat the night before you travel as your real deadline.

What the Maneuver Captains Career Course Entrance Exam Covers

The MCCC tactics exam draws from a short shelf of doctrine. The official study guide is built on ATP 3-21.10, Infantry Rifle Company, plus a few capstone publications: ADP 1-01 for doctrine basics, ADP 3-0 for operations, ATP 2-01.3 for intelligence preparation, FM 3-90 for tactics, and FM 1-02.1 and FM 1-02.2 for terms and graphics. Each list is there because an instructor will use it the next week.

What is on the Maneuver Captains Career Course entrance exam?

Here is what is on the MCCC entrance exam, where each topic lives in doctrine, and the spot that is easy to get wrong.

Expect recall with a twist: a short situation, and a question about which step, task, or graphic fits it.

What are the steps of troop leading procedures?

Troop leading procedures are the company commander's planning method when there is no staff to run the full decision-making process. ATP 3-21.10 lists eight steps:

1. Receive the mission.
2. Issue a warning order.
3. Make a tentative plan.
4. Initiate movement.
5. Conduct reconnaissance.
6. Complete the plan.
7. Issue the order.
8. Supervise and refine.

The numbers make it look like a strict sequence. Doctrine notes that steps 3 through 8 can overlap, and several can happen at once. You may start moving before the plan is done, and reconnaissance can begin while you are still building the tentative plan. Knowing the steps overlap is worth more on this exam than reciting them in order.

What are the steps of IPB?

Intelligence preparation of the battlefield is how you read the ground and the enemy before you plan. ATP 2-01.3 gives four steps:

1. Define the operational environment. Set your area of operations and area of interest, and name what in them matters.
2. Describe environmental effects on operations. Terrain and weather, usually walked through with OAKOC: observation and fields of fire, avenues of approach, key terrain, obstacles, and cover and concealment.
3. Evaluate the threat. How this enemy fights, what it can do, and how that looks when drawn on a map.
4. Determine threat courses of action. What the enemy is most likely to do, and what it could do that would hurt you most.

For the MCCC entrance exam IPB steps, the usual miss is between steps 2 and 3. Terrain belongs to step 2 even when you are thinking about how the enemy will use it. The enemy's doctrine and habits belong to step 3.

Tactical mission tasks and unified land operations tenets on the MCCC exam

Tactical mission tasks are the verbs of an order. Some describe an effect on the enemy, like block, canalize, contain, destroy, disrupt, fix, isolate, neutralize, suppress, and turn. Others describe what your own unit does, like attack by fire, breach, bypass, clear, occupy, retain, secure, seize, and support by fire. The exam likes the pairs that sound alike. Seize means take the ground by force. Secure means protect a unit or place from damage by the enemy. Retain means keep ground you already hold free of the enemy. Block denies the enemy an area or an avenue of approach, while fix keeps the enemy from moving part of its force out of a location for a set time.

Then there are the tenets, where doctrine has changed in the last few years. The 2019 ADP 3-0 described unified land operations with four tenets: simultaneity, depth, synchronization, and flexibility. The October 2022 FM 3-0 made multidomain operations the Army's operating concept, as the Army announced with the manual's release, and its tenets are agility, convergence, endurance, and depth. Older study sets still teach the earlier lists.

Lists to know cold

These are the lists the exam and the first weeks of the course lean on hardest. Learn each one from the manual it comes from.

• The 7 MDMP steps (FM 5-0): receipt of mission, mission analysis, course of action development, course of action analysis (the war game), course of action comparison, course of action approval, and orders production, dissemination, and transition.
• The 5 OPORD paragraphs (FM 5-0): Situation, Mission, Execution, Sustainment, and Command and Signal.
• The 6 forms of maneuver (FM 3-90): envelopment, flank attack, frontal attack, infiltration, penetration, and turning movement.
• Offense tasks (FM 3-90): movement to contact, attack, exploitation, and pursuit.
• Defense tasks (FM 3-90): area defense, mobile defense, and retrograde.
• Core graphics (FM 1-02.2): phase line, boundary, objective, assembly area, attack by fire position, support by fire position, and battle position. Be able to draw each one, not only recognize it.

The three security tasks from FM 3-90 are where most people slip, so learn one line for each:

• Screen: gives the main body early warning, mostly by watching, and fights only to protect itself.
• Guard: protects the main body by fighting to buy it time, and stays within range of the main body's artillery.
• Cover: does what a guard does, but operates on its own, well away from the main body, as a self-contained force.

MCCC Entrance Exam Passing Score, Retest, and What Happens If You Fail

The maneuver captains career course entrance exam passing score is 70 percent. That is a fair bar. It leaves room for three misses in every ten questions, and a prepared officer should clear it with margin. What makes the exam serious is the short line of chances behind it.

What score do you need to pass the MCCC entrance exam?

You need 70 percent or higher. The official guide does not promise a question count or a time limit, and you should not plan around a format you heard about from a friend's class. Study the content. If you can explain every item in the guide without looking, the format will not matter.

Can you retest the MCCC entrance exam?

Yes, once. Under the course policy letter, a student who fails gets one retest, no more than seven days after the first attempt. Fail the retest and you are released from the course with a referred DA Form 1059, the academic evaluation report, marked as failing to achieve course standards.

The retest week has its own cost. You would study for it at night while your small group starts company planning by day. The risk worth planning around is spending your one retest in the first week of the course.

Policy letters get revised. If the current one differs from this page, it is right.

How to Study for the MCCC Entrance Exam

Start with the official guide, go to the source manuals when the guide is thin, and test yourself on use, not definitions. Spread it across two weeks. A weekend cram gets the lists into short-term memory, and short-term memory is exactly what fails when a question hands you a situation instead of a prompt.

Where is the MCCC entrance exam study guide?

The MCCC entrance exam study guide is free and published by the Maneuver Center of Excellence on the MCCC student information page of the 199th Infantry Brigade. The current version is the February 2024 study guide. It carries a date on the cover, and several versions float around online (2022, 2023, and a February 2024 edition, for example). Download the newest one you can find. If your welcome letter links to a specific version, use that one.

Pull ATP 3-21.10 and the other cited publications from the Army Publishing Directorate, which hosts current doctrine for free. When a guide entry makes no sense, read the paragraph around it in ATP 3-21.10, the backbone of the exam.

A two-week MCCC entrance exam study plan

This assumes about an hour on weeknights and a longer block on each weekend, roughly 15 hours in total. Adjust it to your own schedule, but keep the order, because each block leans on the one before.

1. Days 1 and 2: Download the guide and ATP 3-21.10. Read the guide once and mark every item you could not explain.
2. Days 3 and 4: Troop leading procedures and the five-paragraph order. Write the order format from memory until it comes out clean.
3. Days 5 and 6: IPB and the military decision-making process. Know what each step produces, not only its name.
4. Days 7 to 9: Tactical mission tasks, forms of maneuver, offense and defense, and security tasks. Drill the pairs that sound alike.
5. Days 10 and 11: Graphics. Draw them. Then draw them again without looking.
6. Days 12 and 13: Self-test on everything, timed. Every miss goes back to the source manual, not just the answer key.
7. Day 14: Light review of your marked items only, then sleep. Pack the night before you travel.

Two weeks of self-testing on scenarios beats a weekend of reading the same lists.

Practice questions

These are original scenario questions in the style the exam uses. Answer each one before reading the explanation.

1. A warning order arrives at 0600. You brief your platoon leaders, then send the lead platoon to the assembly area while you keep building the plan. Which troop leading step is that move? Step 4, initiate movement. It happens before the plan is finished because steps 3 through 8 overlap.
2. You note the river north of the objective has two fording sites and the fog lifts around 0900. Which IPB step is that? Step 2, describe environmental effects. It would only be step 3 if you were describing how this enemy fights, such as where it usually puts its reserve.
3. An enemy squad holds a bridge. Your order says to take it by force. Seize or secure? Seize. Secure means protecting a place or unit from enemy damage, and retain means keeping ground you already hold.
4. Brigade wants the enemy kept off the one road through a valley, and destroying them is not required. Block or fix? Block, which denies the enemy an area or avenue of approach. Fix would mean keeping the enemy from moving part of its force out of a location.
5. Your task is early warning on the brigade's open flank, fighting only in self-defense. Screen or guard? Screen. A guard fights to buy the main body time, which is a heavier job.
6. Where do the resupply plan and casualty evacuation go in the OPORD? Paragraph 4, Sustainment. Paragraph 3, Execution, holds the intent, the concept of the operation, tasks to units, and coordinating instructions.

Are MCCC Entrance Exam Flashcards and Paid Answer Keys Worth It?

Flashcards have a place. For locking in lists, a deck on your phone during a slow hour is useful. Search for an MCCC entrance exam Quizlet set and you will find several, and some are well made. The problem is that each set was built by a student reading whatever doctrine was current that year. A flashcard deck ages with the manual its author studied. A set from before the 2022 FM 3-0 will hand you a tenets list the Army has since replaced, and it won't warn you.

The paid documents are a different case. Some listings promise "verified answers" and a "guaranteed pass." If those are live exam questions, using them is an integrity problem. If they are not, you are paying for the free guide reworded.

Make your own cards from the current official guide instead. Writing the card is half the studying.

Active vs Reserve Component MCCC Entrance Exam

Both paths reach the same exam by different roads.

On the RC path you know months ahead when resident Phase I starts, so the two-week plan can run slower around drill weekends.

How long is the Maneuver Captains Career Course?

The resident maneuver captains career course is about 22 weeks. The reserve component version runs 6 to 12 months across its four phases. Both end with the same qualification. The two paths differ in length and pacing, and both open with the same test.

Resident graduates can transfer up to 9 graduate credit hours to Columbus State University toward a master's degree. Before you report, read your welcome letter for the reporting checklist and finish the study guide, since the exam comes before any class time.

After the Maneuver Captains Career Course Entrance Exam: Using MCCC as a Career Checkpoint

Once the exam is behind you, see the course for what it is: a fork. Most captains leave it headed for company command, then staff. Many are also weighing whether to stay in once their commitment ends. The exam checks doctrine. It can't tell you which of those seats you will still enjoy in year three.

Career options after the Maneuver Captains Career Course

• Company command. People, training, and decisions with your name on them. Our look at how to measure leadership skills helps before you take a company.
• Battalion or brigade staff. Building the plans that let commanders decide.
• Broadening or a functional area. Instructor jobs, fellowships, or a new specialty.
• Civilian work. The Department of Labor's military-to-civilian crosswalk shows which jobs match your experience.

Plenty of strong officers are good at both command and staff and only sustained by one. Among 1,528 professionals in Pigment's survey, 43 percent said the setting, not the line of work, was the part that did not fit. Command spends your energy in front of soldiers all day, and staff spends it alone on a plan. Learn which one refills you before MCCC sends you to either.

The Pigment career test is built for that question. It asks about 120 forced-choice questions, each making you pick between options instead of rating yourself, and most people finish in under 20 minutes. The results show which kinds of work sustain you, next to the ones you are simply able to do. The Army doesn't use it for selection. Bring the result to your next talk with your branch manager. If you are leaning toward getting out, read what military career assessments measure.

First, though, pass the exam. Download the current guide tonight, block out two weeks, and walk into day two ready for it.

Retests, Quizlet Sets, and Whether the Score Follows You