Prospective commissioned officers in a pre-commissioning status, for example, U.S. Air Force Academy cadets wear slide-on cadet or officer trainee "soft rank" insignia on their shirts and hard "shoulder boards" (similar to commissioned officer mess dress shoulder epaulette insignia) on their service dress coats, again with cadet or officer trainee rank insignia. College and university AFROTC cadets and OTS officer trainees will also wear the soft ranks on their shirts, but will also wear on the service coat. The hard ranks are only worn on the Mess Dress uniform for ROTC or OTS cadets. The typical headgear for all is a flight cap with medium density silver metallic thread piping and the prop & wings insignia for cadets who successfully complete recognition (USAFA), Field Training (ROTC), or the first half of OTS in place of the traditional officer insignia.