Not necessarily "automatically" - if a college graduate enlists in the Army they can be accelerated to Specialist (E-4) following boot camp if their education and training warrants that degree of promotion in comparison to their chosen MOS. Some may only be promoted to E-2 or E-3 depending on the number of credit hours they completed. If they have a Bachelors degree or higher they can put in for OCS to potentially be promoted to O-1. She wouldn't have come out of boot as a Corporal, unless things have changed since I last had a look over enlistment advancement rules (I have a nephew that was interested in enlisting).
What blew my mind is a college graduate was a corporal.
Isn't a college graduate automatically an E4?
Not necessarily "automatically" - if a college graduate enlists in the Army they can be accelerated to Specialist (E-4) following boot camp if their education and training warrants that degree of promotion in comparison to their chosen MOS. Some may only be promoted to E-2 or E-3 depending on the number of credit hours they completed. If they have a Bachelors degree or higher they can put in for OCS to potentially be promoted to O-1. She wouldn't have come out of boot as a Corporal, unless things have changed since I last had a look over enlistment advancement rules (I have a nephew that was interested in enlisting).
I remember being told that taking the ROTC classes in highschool would be enough to skip to E-4, but I'm not sure if that's still the case.