Clearances, Rankings

Update on the Foreign Service stuff -- SY and I are in the process of getting our medical clearance checkups. I also got news on where I stand in the rankings.

First off, let me say I like being male and under 40. There's a lot of tests that don't apply to me, and considering the ... uh ... nature of those tests I'm really grateful. Blood, urine, chest X-ray, general physical, and tuberculosis tests are all I really have to do. SY, being female, has a few others.

Although these tests are not covered by my health insurance, they are covered by the State Department. That's nice, partciularly because they don't even know if they're going to hire me.

That's brings me to my next point -- I called Washington and got my ranking in the List of Conditional Eligible Hires: 58 out of 60 in the Management career track. Very low indeed, as I had guessed from scoring only 0.7 percent higher than the minimum score.

However, as I'd mentioned earlier, I get bonus points for speaking a language. With the bonus from French (0.17 on top of my 5.3), I would move up to number 34. Not too helpful, but in any case I've scheduled that test on for April 28. Regardless of my score, I can try in Chinese after that, and hopefully the French test can help direct my studies for the Chinese one.

Passing the Chinese test is critical to my candidacy. The bonus from Chinese (0.4 added to my 5.3) would move me all the way up to 9th place on the Management list, and that's what I would need to have a realistic chance of an offer. State plans to hire about 300 people across the five career tracks this year, of whom 60 would come from Management. Being in the top 10 would certainly help increase the chances of getting a call as soon as possible.

If I don't get a call before the end of my China internship, SY and I will have to think about what we want to do from there, but I really, really hope this works out.