SPARTAN-III Qualification Achievement Tiers

The SPARTAN-III Qualification Achievement Tiers (QAT) was a competency-based grading system used in the. Derived from tertiary education system used within trade schools and universities, the QAT was designed to give each trainee a single categorisation code that corresponds to their average skill level, which informed the administration personnel what rough unit they needed to be assigned to. This information was directly affected by the units of competency they have achieved, divided between mandatory and voluntary units. While it was not affected by the difficulty an individual trainee's chosen specialisation had, as all subjects had equal weight, the final amount of completed excess topics usually determined the difference between a higher and lower standing. It was more-or-less permanent when bestowed at their graduation, as additional qualifications were instead recognised via a more thorough alternative the rest of the used.

Despite its complexity, the QAT was established - and used - as early as Alpha Company's training, where requested a simplified monitoring system to easily identify promising individuals. This allowed his staff to sift through a vastly smaller pool, which could then be rated by other means to guarantee that only the most capable and promising SPARTAN-IIIs were removed from the company. This unfortunately created a waiting list which was very slowly cleared, and this led to saw many highly-skilled operatives being lost during the twin suicide missions of and. The QAT was used as late as, where the child-soldiers of Delta Company were still given competency codes to determine which ones could be retained and which ones could be exchanged away for additional resources.

List of Known Tiers

 * Category Zero (Washout): Any trainee designated as a Cat-0 has not achieved the required subjects necessary to function as a soldier in the field, which may include failing a single non-negotiable subject they were expected to learn.
 * Category One (Standard): The baseline for any serving SPARTAN-III supersoldier, Cat-1s were any individual who, although they passed every required subject and topic they were expected to learn, did not prove capable enough on the whole to adequately distinguish themselves from their peers. All Cat-1 Spartans served in the mainline companies at some point.
 * Category Two (Elite Outliers): The incredibly-harsh training regime of the SPARTAN-III program made it difficult for some individuals to truly rise above the rank-and-file. Cat-2 operators were fully certified in all areas that Cat-1s were, but they had achieved several unique skills and certifications that very few others in their unit could. They typically were made up of the Company leaders and subunit commanders, but more interestingly, they were the trainees hand-picked by LCDR Ambrose to serve independently in -equipped teams to better-support the war effort.
 * Category Three (Other): An anomalous ranking, Cat-3 Spartans were those that were for some reason exempt from the common education curriculum that all other peers must take. They were often withdrawn from their company mid-way through training, as they had succeeded in specific tests to determine this status. All were Cat-3 personnel.