Do you have what it takes to be a U.S. Foreign Service officer?
The Foreign Service Officer Test was once a proving ground for a privileged few—the often Ivy League-educated, striped-pants diplomats who populated Foggy Bottom and U.S. embassies around the world. As Andrew Curry writes in “The Diplomatic Surge,” this 72-year-old test and the State Department staff it cultivates have certainly evolved over the past 30 years. But the test’s latest and most extreme transformation—the McKinsey makeover of 2007—may alter the world of Foreign Service officers beyond recognition. Nowadays, even if you aren’t descended from diplomatic royalty or weren’t groomed to hold court with multilingual attachés, you might be better prepared than you imagine.
So, do you think you have what it takes to be a diplomat? Have a go at these official sample test questions from six key “knowledge areas”: U.S. society and culture, management, communication, computers, administrative methods and procedures, and mathematics and statistics.
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To learn more about what it takes to be a Foreign Service officer, visit the U.S. State Department’s career page or download the complete sample test.
