He also played some basketball during his time there as well joining a fraternity. Carter's ultimate goal was to attend the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. While he was waiting to be accepted to the Naval Academy, Carter transferred to Georgia Institute of Technology for one year, where he took classes in mathematics and joined the Navy ROTC program. Other classes that were a requirement of the ROTC program were classes such as seamanship, and navigation. The year he spent at Georgia Tech proved to be somewhat of a preparation period before starting the next chapter of Jimmy's life. .
Jimmy Carter was accepted into the Naval Academy in June 1943 at the age of 19. What was normally a four-year program was reduced to three years due to the war. While attending military college Jimmy was subject to a very strict routine and set of rules. The idea in the beginning was to break down the men, and force them to adjust to a military type lifestyle. They were constantly told what to do and when to do it throughout the day. Jimmy as well as the rest of the cadets had very limited communication to the outside world and their families. The cadets were constantly exposed to less than kind treatment and hazing. Jimmy being the person that he was did not let this scenario get to him and kept his head high. In one statement later on in his life Jimmy said, "I refused to take the abuse seriously and treated it as a game (Betty Glad, pg. 50). Throughout his time at the academy, Carter continued to take classes in engineering and mathematics. Jimmy was well known and said to be a very upstanding student of the academy. It is said that he was a very nice and cheerful person and helpful to his classmates. Although he may have had somewhat of a rebellious attitude and liked to stand his ground, Jimmy was a respectable student, that was looked highly upon by his classmates. By his senior year, Carter was ranked, based on his academics, 99 out of 822 students in his class.