CurrentFSO

Other Foreign Affairs agencies, like USAID, Commerce, Agriculture, etc. have internship programs, too. Other federal agencies may also have internationally focused offices where you could intern. There are any number of think tanks, NGOs, etc., where you could intern.

The FSO hiring process is indeed quite different than the Civil Service hiring process. I don't have any experience on the Board of Examiners or in HR, but as far as I know, the process is as straightforward as it seems and it is really your performance on the various parts of the assessment process that counts. The entire process is based off of how well one demonstrates the 6 precepts/13 dimensions, and as far as I know, there's not a "gotcha" or an "edge" that will get you in or not. Back in the early 1900s, the Foreign Service really was a sinecure primarily for affluent people, but at some point (and I'm fuzzy about what happened when) they made a decision to swing the other way and make the hiring process as fair as possible. There has been legislation like the Rogers Act, the FOreign Service Acts of 1946 and 1980, etc. that have created the staffing, hiring, and promotions process that we have today. So, the hiring process is as egalitarian as they can make it.

You're welcome!

First things first, keep in mind that about 20,000 people take the FSOT each year and State hires anywhere from 250-750 new FSOs a year, meaning that only about 1-4% of the people who take the written test are ultimately hired, and hiring has been on the low end of that for the past few years. You may very well be one of those people hired, but it's always best to keep the Foreign Service as a Plan B until you actually get an offer for an A-100 class. So, I'd look at it in the context of whether you think the MA would open other doors that would be of interest, rather than just whether or not it will get you ahead in the Foreign Service. The promotions process is based only on one's performance while in the Foreign Service. A MA would only benefit you professionally in as much as the skills/knowledge you gain during your MA help you to perform better. For example, maybe you improve your writing skills while doing your MA, and consequently you write better cables which gets you promoted faster, etc. An MA also affects your salary determination when hired.

You're welcome! DIRs are great resources, so definitely reach out to him/her. It wouldn't be a problem throughout the testing process. Your security clearance investigation may take longer due to living overseas, in multiple places, etc., but many FSOs have extensive overseas experience and get their clearances without issues. Additional citizenships won't be an issue in the testing process, but will come up in the security clearance process. It'll depend on how you acquired the citizenship, your ties to that country, and which country it is. I know FSOs who are dual citizens and it did not impede their security clearance, but it's certainly something that will require scrutiny. You can check out https://careers.state.gov/uploads/8f/f7/8ff7b0bab879946e78f30e62c859c0f1/DualCitizenship.pdffor more info. FSOs are paid on the FS pay scale, not the GS scale. The two scales are similar, but not exactly the same. You can see the FS pay scales at http://www.state.gov/m/dghr/pay/ You can see the SOPs on FSO salary determination at https://careers.state.gov/work/domestic/benefits/fs-entry-salaries/fso:-sop-134a2 So, entry level FSOs start out anywhere from the equivalent of a GS 9 to the equivalent of a GS 11, depending on education, experience, and prior salary. The salary determination is made off of the salary table with Overseas Comparability Pay, so a new FSO with just a bachelor's degree and no work experience would start out making about $50,000/year and a new FSO with a graduate degree, six years of work experience, and a high previous salary would start out making a little over $91,000/year. Hardship and danger differentials are an additional percentage of your pay on top of your base pay plus the Overseas Comparability Pay. So, if you were serving in Kabul which has 35% hardship and 35% danger pay, and you made $70,000/year in your base and OCP, you'd get an additional $24,500/yr in hardship pay and an additional $24,500/year in danger pay. For the Priority Staffing Posts I mentioned in an earlier post (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya), there may also be some additional allowances that kick in, but those change a bit from year to year and I'm not sure what those are right now, but you might get some extra differential for working essentially a 6-day week in some of those posts, for example. You can see differentials for different posts at http://aoprals.state.gov/web920/location.asp?menu_id=95 The Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) is based off of a certain percentage of your pay, not the whole thing, and the percentage varies based on the size of your family, etc.

When you accept an offer of employment as an FSO, you agree to worldwide availability, meaning that State can send you wherever they need you. Your first two tours are directed tours, meaning that you get a bid list of available jobs, provide input on which jobs you want and why you want them, but at the end of the day, HR tells you where you're going. So, you have input but limited control over where you go for your first two posts and could end up with something you don't really want. That said, in my experience, people haven't been sent to unaccompanied posts without volunteering. There are Priority Staffing Posts that are unaccompanied, and currently include Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen (though DOS doesn't have people posted in Libya and Yemen right now). Currently, DOS policy is to not send first tour officers to those posts. There are limited positions for second tour officers in those posts and there are typically more volunteers than there are positions available. People are interested in the jobs there because they're interested in those issues, like the financial incentives, like the career-enhancing aspect of them, etc. There are some other posts that are at least partially unaccompanied, meaning that perhaps adult spouses can come but not school-aged children. Some examples I can think of are Tunis, Algiers, and Beirut. Those can appear on a first tour bid list, and you could be directed there, but again, my experience has been that there have been more volunteers for those types of posts than jobs available. There are also danger posts that are considered accompanied, so family members can accompany FSOs at those posts. A couple of examples of these that spring to mind are Mexican border posts and Bogota. You could be assigned to any of those posts and depending on the post, there may or may not be a lot of people interested in it. There are also posts with high crime rates that are not considered danger posts. I'm far from an expert on how hardship and danger differentials are calculated, but general crime falls under hardship. So, Caracas, which has a very high crime rate, has a high hardship differential due to crime and other factors, but does not have any danger pay. Again, a new FSO could be sent to those posts. After your first two tours, the process becomes much more of an interview process. So, you choose to bid on 6-15 jobs normally, and it's then up to you to convince the people in charge of staffing decisions that you're the best candidate for a job. So, if you don't want an unaccompanied or danger post, you don't bid on those. There may be tradeoffs you have to make to avoid those jobs, but it may be possible to avoid them for quite some time. I've known people with children who were directed to danger posts and people without children who have not (yet, at least) served in danger posts. So, having children or not won't necessarily have a bearing on whether you might be directed to a danger post. I did not specifically request the danger post I ended up in. It was a large post with a high need for entry level officers, so someone had to go. I think that one can manage the timing of danger posts in their career and can make some tradeoffs, but the fact of the matter is that we need people to go to danger posts to do important work and it's not fair to ask the same people to go to those places over and over again. So, I think that it's highly likely, if not inevitable, that FSOs entering the service today should expect to do a tour or two, at the very least, in a danger post over the course of their career. Though, given all of that talk about danger and unaccompanied posts, can you guess what I've heard over and over that the leading cause of death for FSOs is? *drum roll* Car accidents.

No one can pre-adjudicate a security clearance, but debt in and of itself is not necessarily a dealbreaker. A lot of FSOs have significant student loan debt and it didn't hinder their security clearance process. For the most part, as long as you've been responsible with your payments, 50k isn't a problem. There are a lot of recovering lawyers in the Foreign Service with significantly more than 50k loan debt.

Well, there's only so much they can put on the website. You might want to check out the books "Career Diplomacy" by Harry Kopp, "Inside a U.S. Embassy" by Shawn Dorman, and/or "America's Other Army" by Nicholas Kralev for more info on the different career tracks and life in the Foreign Service.

I won't weigh in on the other parts of your post, but what I included in the quote box is false. AFSA, the Foreign Service union, compiled info on which schools FSOs attended and you can see the info graphic here. Currently serving FS members have 1190 degrees from Georgetown and 1116 from GWU. Georgetown is a great program, but it does NOT produce as many FSOs as the next three schools combined.

1.) I honestly don't know. I can't think of any similar instances with people I know, so I just don't have any data points to make a comparison. 2.) In entry-level consular work, you will adjudicate non-immigrant visas and may also have opportunities to adjudicate immigrant visas and/or passport and consular report of birth abroad applications. You may have the opportunity to visit U.S. citizens in jail overseas, but you may not, depending on where you serve and what opportunities available. If you serve at a smaller post, you may have some role in managing locally engaged staff. So, you may be putting our fires, but you may be sitting in a visa window interviewing 100+ visa applicants a day. As a mid-level (so after your first two tours) officer, you'll likely spend more of your time managing entry level officers and locally engaged staff, instructing them on procedures and laws, interfacing with various offices in Washington, etc., but may also spend some of your time doing the same things you did as an entry level officer. As a senior-level officer (not all FSOs will make it this far), you may head a large consular section, be in charge of consular affairs for a whole country, etc.

There are some masters programs you can bid on in the Foreign Service. There's an MPP at Princeton, MS in S&T Policy at GWU, and a few more. Nice to get State to pay for it, rather than worrying about the cost yourself.

Bumping this in light of a recent question posted about the FSOT.

There's a lot of good info on the FSOT at http://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/officer/test-process including how to take a practice test, a study guide, a reading list, etc. The best practice for the FSOT is to take the FSOT. I'm not sure what your timeline is, but if you have time to take it twice before your grad program is up (keeping in mind you can only take it once a year and that it's likely to be at least a year between when you take the FSOT and get an offer if you make it through the selection process), it might be worth it to take it sooner rather than later just to get a sense of the exam and your strengths and weaknesses. Then, assess what you need to work on and take it again. If you don't have the time for that, then take the practice test and figure out where you need to focus your efforts based on those results.

When I went through initial training, the director of the language testing unit came and spoke to us. He said that people who majored in a language usually scored around a 2. He did not specify whether that was for a "world language' or a harder language. You can see English examples of the different levels here. The videos should give you a rough idea of the bar for each level. You can take a language test after passing the oral assessment to get bonus points. You can also test in languages after you're hired for assignment purposes and/or to demonstrate proficiency in a language for tenure purposes.

The scoring on the Oral Assessment is 0-7. 5.3 is passing and it's rare to see scores above about a 6.0. So, the .25 and .38 language points make a huge difference. You can also take .17 in non-recruitment languages or in a recruitment language but without an obligation to serve in a job that uses that language, which is a smaller bump, but could still be helpful. It's strange they don't use prior experiences and it isn't. A lot of it is honestly the timing of things. There has to be a vacancy open and the timing has to work out. If you speak Spanish, then probably you can find a Spanish vacancy, no problem. However, if you speak Swedish and are econ coned, there are only going to be may be about 3 economic officers at embassy Stockholm and the odds of something coming open at your rank and where the timing works are small. Then you add that there might be other people who are qualified and want the job, too, and you may well be out of luck. A lot of consulates have economic officers or combined political and economic officers. There are often business issues of interest to the United States in consular districts. Often an political and/or economic officer's focus in a consulate would be state/regional policies, trade promotion, etc.