Yah, I don’t really understand either. I know on our 3s they kept shuffling postings around until the last few days. They do keep you in the dark in regards to that a bit.
And I feel the dets need more patrolman right now than NIS, I could be wrong (correct me if I am) but manning seems pretty low from what I gather speaking to colleagues around the country in other dets.
Will be interesting to see where most of your course ends up. Ours was mostly sent east, a few central, and a few west. Only a small handful got their actual top 3 and that was mainly due to service spouse or other personal/family reasons.