Editing Military rank (section)

==== Subordinate or student officer ====
Officers in training in the Canadian Armed Forces are either [[naval cadet]] for naval training or [[officer cadet]] for army or air force training.

In the US and several other western forces, officers in training are referred to as student officers, and carry the rank of [[cadet]] (army and air force) or [[midshipman]] (navy, and in some countries, marines). These officers may be serving at a [[military academy]], or, as common in the United States, as members of a military training unit attached to a civilian college or university, such as an [[ROTC]] unit. This is due to a requirement that commissioned officers have at least a four-year collegiate undergraduate degree.

The British Army refers to its trainee officers as officer cadets, who rank as private soldiers at the start of their training, with no authority over other ranks (except when appointed to carry out a role as part of training). Officer cadets are addressed to as "Mister" or "Miss" until the completion of the early stages of their training at the [[Royal Military Academy Sandhurst]] (at which point cadets "pass out" and formally gain their commissions), thereafter other ranks (non-officers) will address them as "Sir" or "Ma'am".

While cadet has always been a rank of limited authority and prestige (cadets and US Navy midshipmen have no authority over commissioned personnel, warrants, or officers, only subordinate cadets), midshipman has historically been a rank with limited leadership responsibility, particularly in the Royal Navy (where cadets are commissioned at the start of their training, unlike their army counterparts). This tradition was continued by the US Navy after its original adoption of the rank, but now US Navy midshipmen are limited in the same manner as cadets in the other US services. Additionally, US Marine officers in training are also midshipmen, trained and educated alongside their naval counterparts, and wear distinctive insignia to indicate their branch of service.

[[US Coast Guard Academy]] students are referred to as "cadets", while those attending the military branch's [[officer candidate school]] are "officer candidates".

In the US an alternative to spending four years as a cadet or midshipmen is for college graduates with a four-year degree to attend officer candidate school, an intensive twelve-week training course designed to convert college graduates into military officers. Each service has at least one, and usually several, officer candidate school facilities. Students at these programs are called [[officer candidate]]s.