Chatter

There is a Yahoo Group called A-100. It is a members-only group for people who have passed the FSOA (Foreign Service Oral Assessment), the last step of the testing cycle before getting on a hiring register and attending what has been unofficially named the A-100 class (named for the room number in which the first Foreign Service Officer training class was held). People on this group share information with each other, such as how long it really takes to get through security and medical clearances, how to write a comprehensive resume for salary review, and it even contains shadow registers. I should explain registers. After a candidate's security clearance and medical clearance have gone through, and a final review panel has deemed the candidate worthy of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, the candidate is then placed in rank order by test score (plus any bonus points for languages or military service) on the register of the track for which the candidate has applied. When invitations to a training class go out, they start at the top of the list and work their way down. Amazingly, some people do decline. Others have their candidacies on hold for up to 2 years. For some people, it is to finish a degree or another life event like marriage or pregnancy, and for others it is to wait so that they can mesh their schedule in a tandem couple arrangement. A shadow register is made up of people who have joined the A-100 group and have submitted their score, position on the register, and other helpful information so that others can have a little better idea than just their position on the official register while they wait for up to 18 months to see if they get a job.

DH's track is Economics. He has been on the register for a week or two now with a raw score of 5.7 (meaning he has no bonus points as of yet for language). He started as #5/79, but is now #6/85. Yes, people who have higher scores get to jump ahead. But that's okay. We know from the A-100 group that at least three of those people have their candidacies on hold until after the September class. We don't know about the other two. But either way, another nifty spreadsheet on the A-100 group shows that, historically, invitations have always gone out to at least the 20th person on the register, and sometimes all the way into the 40s. So we're fine.

Yesterday, the Consular candidates had a major upset. The chatter on the board was that invitations to the September class had gone out, been revoked, gone out again, and been revoked again several times. Since they go out by email, it appears there was a glitch in the system. One person on the board claimed that their registrar confirmed his invitation in the end, but the rest claim theirs are not valid. My guess is that the registrar told him that the budget hasn't gone through yet, but when it does (which another thread referencing a discussion with the Management cone's registrar leads me to believe will be next week or at least by July 1st), they will have an offer. The reason I believe this is that DH called his registrar yesterday morning before all that chatter, and she said that the budget for the class has not yet been approved. All of the cones go to the same A-100 class, so how could one have budget approval before the others? If anyone knows, let me know.

Of course, this means that DH did not sleep last night. He is way too excited. He started going through binders of papers that he has collected up over the past 20 years and purging stuff. At 11:40pm, he asked me if I wanted to help him. I had to decline, as I was about to fall asleep, which I did a few minutes later. When I woke up at 7:30am, it was to more papers shuffling around and binders clamping together. He says he slept a little bit, but I don't have any knowledge of it.

Pray for speedy invitations!!

P.S. Just after I posted this, another bit of chatter came up on the board. "I just confirmed that ... offers for PD, Econ, Pol, and Mgmt will be sent out between the 26th and July 1st."