The Army is having to turn to more high school dropouts and lower-achieving applicants to fill its ranks, accepting hundreds of recruits in recent months who would have been rejected a year ago, according to Army statistics.
Eight months into the recruiting year, the percentage of new recruits in the Army without a high school diploma has risen to 10 percent, the upper limit of what the Army is willing to accept, from 8 percent last year. The percentage of recruits with scores in the lowest acceptable range on the standardized test used to screen potential soldiers has also risen to 2 percent, also reaching the Army's limit, from slightly more than a half-percent last year, reaching the highest level since 2001.
