Make the Wiki Work for You, Part II: Timelines from Clearance to Invitation and Invitation to Service

I noticed a couple of days ago on my online toolkit that the percentage of applicants responding that they are ready to leave in 1-4 months has been steadily increasing from the time that I applied (up to 54% last time I checked), which indicates to me that there are a lot of applicants sitting out there somewhere in this process and ready to go soon. I’ve been wondering if that bottleneck of applicants slows the process or increases competition for available slots (or both!).  Ultimately, there seems to be a whole lot of great people out there waiting for the news that will define the next two-plus years of their lives.

In my case, I’ve been doing everything I can think to do. As soon as I cleared medical and legal I sent my updated resume to my Placement Assistant (because the blogs I was reading almost universally indicated that an updated resume was one of the first things requested in the Placement Process).  At that time, she informed me that my file would be reviewed within 2-4 weeks. 

That was twenty days ago (but who’s counting?). 

During that time, I have been very patient and keeping myself very busy, but as every day passes without an email from the Placement Office or any change to my online account I can feel the pressure and anticipation building again, and so I returned to the Peace Corps Wiki to see what other data I could play with to give my antsy mind some peace.

My last project involving the Peace Corps Wiki was to use the available placement data to try and deduce where I might be invited to serve. While I didn’t find much more than temporary peace of mind, I was astonished at how many people read that blog. Apparently, I am far from alone in the world of applicants patiently (or not so patiently) waiting for information about their placements and looking for any kind of comfort in the form of hard data. 

So this time, I decided to see if I could get a sense of the normal timeframe between clearance and invitation as well as the how far out the staging date typically is from the invitation date.

There are some limitations to the data that I perceive as significant:

1)      The data on the Wiki is self-reported, which can leave a lot of room for error.  Also, if the person putting their information into the site doesn’t put the day of the month, it is assumed to be the first, which could make it up to a month off.

2)      There is not very much data on the Wiki, 158 entries from 2004-2011 and 128 of those are completed.  I believe I read at one point that there were around 200,000 applicants per year, so the significance of the Wiki data is questionable. (See my plea below that you add your information to the site).

3)      The Federal data is from 2006, and I don’t know even where to start accounting for procedural, programmatic or funding changes in the meantime between 2006 and now.

That said, what did I find?

The chart shows my complete analysis of the timelines, but basically what I learned was:

Clearance to Invitation: The data on the Wiki shows a significantly longer period of time between medical clearance and invitation than the federal report.  For applicants under 50 years old, the report shows an average of 29 days (for all applicants, it shows an average of 38 days).  The Wiki shows an average of 76 days and a median of 54 days.  This means that I should expect to wait between 4 to 11 weeks for an invitation.

Invitation to Start of Service: The data on the Wiki again shows a longer wait between invitation and service than the federal report, but not by much.  Again, for applicants under 50 years old, the report shows an average of 82 days (94 days for all applicants) and the Wiki shows an average of 101 days and a median of 107 days.  This means I should be expecting to leave between 12 and 14.5 weeks after I receive my invitation.

So, given that I’m pretty much three weeks out from medical clearance that means that I am looking at 13 weeks at the least and 25 weeks at the most before my staging date. 

I want to do this too!  Where do I start?

1)      Go to the Peace Corps Wiki Application Timelines page and copy all of the data in the table.

2)      Paste the data into Excel (I had to copy and paste only values into a separate sheet after this because of the sorting buttons that are built into the table).

3)      Sort and analyze as you see fit or helpful.  Personally, I deleted the dates and left only the number of days and then looked at averages and medians overall and by year compared with mine.

4)      In order to see how the Wiki data compared with the Federal data (I assume the Federal data is more accurate because it pulls from a larger sample of applicants), I used the report referenced on the Wiki site that came from the Office of the Inspector General, Final Program Evaluation Report Peace Corps’ Medical Clearance System IG-08-08-E, published in March of 2008.  It uses data from 2006, so I did some digging around for a more recent report and couldn’t find anything.

My requests of you dear readers!

First, PLEASE put your application timeline data on the Wiki site!  The more of us that add our information, the more helpful and informative the data will be for future applicants.

Second, I want to write about the impact of the Federal budget on the Peace Corps.  I’ve been wondering if the lack of a Federal budget is impacting the agency’s willingness to move forward on future programs.  If you have any recommended resources or links or ideas that might help my research on this, I would love if you would share!