How does the E4 to E5 promotion work in the Army National Guard?

Pass current PT test. Be Green on medical. Be off any profiles. Finish SSD1. Go to WLC. Come back get you packet set up, and submit it.

Every promotion board looks at soldiers as complete package. PT, weapons scores, deployments, awards, military schools, correspondences courses, civilian education and time in service and grade all are give points for a tabulated score. You also will go before a board and the board will give you so many points based on your general performance and knowledge of common tasks questions. the scores get tabulated by state G-1 and you are put on a order of merit list. As guard soldier, you can limit your chance of promotion to certain cities, at least bigger state do that. For Texas, my soldiers can select to be considered for promotion in the entire state or select the areas they are willing to drill in. Remember promotion is driven by vacancy, you many be number 10 on the list in the state but if there are only 9 slots open, you have to wait. The list is good for one year, so as slots open up in your MOS and next grade, the promotion gets offered to the next person on the list. If it is too far for you to drive, you can decline a promotion but you go to the bottom of the list.

Google Soldier of the month board study guide, they are pretty much all the same. some guys I have seen get flash cards.
civilian education and extra Army on line course are a big plus, because it shows you are seeking self improvement.
hope this helped

http://www.ngbpdc.ngb.army.mil%2Fpubs%2F600%2Fngr600_200.pdf is a good start to look at. This is going to get a bit wild as it is a lot of information to put out. I was a SGT and made it to SSG before I commissioned. I read up on this so I knew what I was doing.

First, soldiers don't actually go to a board like they do in the regular Army. Each soldier builds a packet and that packet go to a board, or panel, and they assess the soldier based on various criteria. This ranges from awards, college, time in rank/grade, and a few more areas. Once your packet has been reviewed you will be assessed against your peers in your MOS and Rank. You will be given a numerical value or point score. This is how many promotion points you have.

Once you have your points you will be put onto a promotion list with all the others soldiers in you MOS with your rank. Every MOS and Grade has a list. Once your packet has been assessed you will be put on the Combat Engineer SGT list along with all of your peers.

When a unit has a vacancy they will view the list of those eligible to be promoted. If you are within the milage of that unit they will call you and offer that SGT position. If you accept they will notify your state command and orders will be published promoting you into that unit that had the vacancy. If you didn't accept the promotion you will be removed off the list until next year.

The promotion lists are produced once a year. Once the number one soldier get promoted the number two soldier becomes number one and so on. They will only promote as many as they have vacancies. If a unit doesn't want to promote anyone into that vacant slot then the promotion process pretty much stops. Usually the state will prevent that from happening. I hope this helps.