In your experience and opinion, which cadets make the best officers?

The ones that make the best Officers are the ones who listen yet don't waffle. The ones willing to put it all on the line when they are right and the ones that take responsibility for their mistakes. Then again you can say the same things about NCO's and lower enlisted when it comes to being the best Leaders and troops.

There were very good West Pointers and very good OCS, didn't experience active ROTC officers.
* The best officers I had experience with, were the OCS, coming from the ranks.
* Second was the Marine officer who changed to Army.
* I can't say West Pointer's were last, those officers were all in charge of the other two.
And, maybe I mentioned the West Pointer last because, That CO use to take a chair and stand on it to inspect for dust on top of your locker with a white glove, then he would gig you for dirt on the chair.
Salute!

I believe it's not the commissioning source, but the individual Service Member that makes a good officer. I taught Air Force pilot training for 3 years. We had students from AFROTC, Air Force Academy, and OTS. For the first 6 to 12 weeks the Academy grads and prior service officers had a little bit of an advantage. They had been part of the military for several years before commissioning, so they could cope better with the training environment. After that time, all of the students leveled out in terms of their capability to deal with pilot training in general. The student's differences in personal ability and initiative governed their success as student pilots. An Academy Grad could fail to study for academics as easily as a liberal arts major from a state university AFROTC program; same for a prior-service OCS grad.

In the real world of a flying squadron, I seldom knew an officer's commissioning source. There were always a few "ring knockers" who made sure everybody knew they were graduates of the Academy--most Academy grads did wear their class ring when not flying. Sometimes they created a small group of people looking out for each other. More often, field grade Academy grads just tended to play "did you ever meet" or "how things have changed since I graduated" with their fellow "Zoomies." The net result was negligible.

If you look at biographies of AF Generals on AF.mil, you'll see a fairly even distribution of officers by commissioning source making O-7 or above. Academy grads have some advantage, but it's not overwhelming to the point of "all others need not apply."