Hi Lailoken. I am also a nuke ET who made E-5 on her 3rd try. Yes, it is rare that someone makes E-5 the first time around, especially at Power school or Prototype, reason being primarily that you just haven't seen some of the stuff yet. I saw one of my buddies make E-5 in prototype. We had one E-5 at power school, but he was a sea returnee. Just keep learnin your stuff. Your eval scores will help w/ PNA points. I made it just a few months out of prototype. Now I'm in the STA-21 program, so go figure, I'm not even standing watch right now, but anyway.... Also, doing well in the general military stuff will help, at least it did for me. If you have any more questions, let me know.