Welcome Letter from Placement

Today Ben and I received our welcome emails from the Placement office!

"Welcome! Congratulations on your nomination to a Peace Corps Master’s International assignment! Your recruiter has nominated you to be considered for programs departing in October, November or December 2012. The nomination from your recruiter is a recommendation that your application be given further consideration.

Your file has been received in the Placement Office at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC. This is the place where several important screenings and assessments take place and assignment matches for qualified prospective volunteers are finalized.

As you discussed with your recruiter during the interview, the medical screening has begun. Please note that it takes OMS 8-12 weeks to review an applicant’s paperwork and determine whether that applicant is medically qualified for service."

Next Step: Wait for medical qualification... wait... wait...wait

Ben takes the lead

UPS delivered Ben's medical packet safely into the hands of the Peace Corps medical review office. The review process generally takes between  1-6 months depending on the complexity of your health history, the number of applications under review, and the completeness of your submitted information. Although this process may take several months, 85% of applicants who complete the medical evaluation are deemed medically qualified to serve. Once you are qualified, your name is automatically passed to the Placement Office.

Next Steps: Sarah submits medical review packet, and Ben waits.

Doctor, Doctor, Give me the News!

Our Medical Packets

Today, we received our Peace Corps medical packets in the mail! They include all the paperwork we will need to complete the medical review process. The review consists of three main parts: a physical exam, a dental exam, and an optometry exam. Special evaluation forms may be included based on your responses to the health status review section of your application (be careful of how you answer those questions; they request tons of additional paperwork for each item you list; it may save you a lot of headache later on).

Luckily, the Peace Corps is willing to provide partial payment for these exams and certain doctors offer them for free. Physical exams: $125 (males), $165 (females); Optometry: $12; Dental: $60. Dentists who are members of the International College of Dentists (ICD) will provide free exams and x-rays. You can search the list by city and state to find a dentist near you. Ben and I called the office at the top of the list and have already booked our free dental appointments. Federal medical facilities offer free physical exams, but they can be frustrating to work with because Peace Corps applicants are considered a very low priority.

Next Steps: Complete all of our exams, Fill out the paperwork, and Return the medical review packet to the Peace Corps

We have been nominated!

A little over 3 weeks after our interview we received our nomination email from our recruiter. We have been nominated to the Forestry Program with a potential departure of November/December 2012. Because we are Masters International applicants, this assignment is not set in stone and may be changed later in the application process.

Next Step: The Medical Review

Interviews

We just completed our Peace Corps interviews today! For couples, you must be interviewed individually, and then together. The entire process took about 3.5 hours (but we had lots of questions to ask our recruiter).

The individual interview questions were almost identical to those on the Peace Corps Wiki site:
http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Interview_Questions

The couple interview questions came directly from the couple questionnaire (See previous post).

Our recruiter told us we will probably be nominated within the next couple of weeks. Then on to the medical review!

Packets!

We put both our packets in the mail today!

We received our packets about a week ago in the mail. They were stuffed with information and additional paper work we needed to submit.

Here are a few of the things they requested:

• Fingerprint charts (We went to the Sanibel Island Police Department for these)
• National Agency Check Form (a waiver for a background check)
• Reference Label Sheet (indicates our three references and includes contact information)
• Marriage License
• Couple Questionnaire
• College Transcripts (can be unofficial)

Additionally, an email from our recruiter requested:

• Skill Addenda (Sarah's was environmental education; Ben's were environmental education, business development, and education)
• Financial Obligations Form (Ben)
• Masters International Acceptance Letter (Sarah)
• We also included copies of our relevant certifications

To keep things organized, we topped it off with a table of contents sheet. Hopefully, that will help our recruiter sort through all the paperwork. Soon we will schedule an interview!

Info Session

Tonight we went to a Peace Corps Information Session at the Atlanta Library. We were able to talk to a recruiter who served in Malawi.

Here are some things we found out:

• 90% of volunteers carry cell phones.
• Volunteers typically work Monday-Friday and have the weekends off.
• Currently, applicants are nominated to go to a specific region 8-10 months into the application process. This process will change in January 2012, but this change will not effect our applications.
• Your placement officer (not recruiter) determines where you will be placed.
• It is very rare for married couples to have a choice of where they will serve.