"...the smartest, most qualified people representing America"

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The Foreign Service Exam
Rarely Win at Trivial Pursuit? An Embassy Door Opens
By TAMAR LEWIN

THE path to the Foreign Service has always been straight and narrow: the first step is the written test, perhaps the nation’s leading smarty-pants exam. Since 1932, hundreds of thousands of applicants have grappled with a half-day of questions on geography, English usage, history, math, economics, culture and more.

“It’s like being on a golf course,” said Justin Norton, a 26-year-old who flunked the test this year and last, but wants to take it again. “You’ve got all the sand traps, the water hazards. I remember I didn’t understand the question about economies of scale. I remember something about Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. And sometimes even when I knew it, like a question about George Kennan and containment policy, I got it wrong anyway.”

It is not an easy exam to study for. The State Department suggests reading a good daily newspaper for a year. There are prep books, and at places with lots of applicants, like the Fletcher School at Tufts University, maybe even a study group. But mostly, people prepare on their own, looking through a world atlas, the Constitution or the word problems they did on the SAT.

Still, the exam gets rid of most applicants. More than three-quarters of the 17,000 to 20,000 who take the exam each year flunk. Even those who pass often remember for years the lacunae in their general knowledge exposed by the test. Where, exactly, are the pampas? What countries neighbor Tunisia?

The test is more about breadth than depth. So for a question about Etruscan vases, the applicant might need to know that the Etruscans preceded the Romans in Italy, but nothing more.

Those who pass the exam go on to an oral interview, where they are hammered with questions and situations by several Foreign Service officers, and the best performer gets the job.

But now, the State Department wants to try a new approach, a bit less quantifiable. At the suggestion of McKinsey & Company, the management consultants, it plans to revamp the process to evaluate what it calls “the Total Candidate,” The Washington Post disclosed last week.

The written exam will stay largely the same, although streamlined and given by computer, instead of bubble-sheet and bluebook. Online, the exam will be given more often, to speed the recruitment process, one of the State Department’s main goals.

As applicants register for the exam, they will submit an online “structured résumé” describing their work experience, foreign residence, leadership experience and language abilities, among other things. Then, on the basis of the test results and résumé, combined in some undisclosed metric, a screening committee will decide who goes on to the oral assessment.

Some Foreign Service officers, past and present, applaud the new approach:
“Testing people on their general knowledge, their ability to parse questions, is a poor standard for bringing people into the Foreign Service,” said Mark Van Fleet, who was posted in Thailand for five years. “You get people who are well educated, and understand the relationship of inflation and interest rates. But the test doesn’t measure more important things, like good judgment.”

But the change raises concerns. Some worry that adding more nonquantitative factors could open the door to political considerations, or applicants with family connections. (Note to State Department: to understand the possible complications, talk to the admissions officers at Harvard or Princeton.)

Anthony Holmes, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said he was not worried, because the factors to be considered are things like foreign experience and language ability.

“Whether you gave to a political party is not in the paradigm,” Mr. Holmes said. “And experience living in a different country is important. McKinsey was just astounded that we didn’t consider anything but test results.”

Others, though, are troubled by the proposed revamping, given that the Foreign Service is already so prestigious and so competitive.

“Since it’s working really quite well, why make such a major change?” said Robert Gelbard, a former ambassador to Indonesia. “I have great confidence in Condoleezza Rice, but what about the law of unintended consequences? Who knows whether, some years down the road, political factors could creep in?”

And will the Foreign Service be dumbed down, given that adding factors will mean that some candidates could qualify with lower scores?

Not to worry, said Marianne Myles, director of the State Department’s office of recruitment, examination and employment. There will still be a failing score, and the passing score won’t drop all that much.

“The population that applies is so large — and so many of them are so qualified and smart and capable and have so many skills and abilities — that we can’t take them all,” she said. “Rather than sorting by one criterion, we’re going to use more factors. But the very small percentage we take will still be the smartest, most qualified people representing America.”