So Mrs. FSOwannabe and I have begun to get serious about studying for the FSOT. With two little girls and full-time jobs, finding time to study is challenging. Here's what I'm doing:
Initially, I took the State Department's sample FSOT to figure out my weak points. Unfortunately, I seem to be a generalist as my points in each section were fairly equivalent. So I'll try and do what I can in a broad spectrum.
First, I'm taking daily quizzes (basically at work when I need a break) to bone up on all that history from high school and college I've forgotten. Here are some of the websites I'm using:
http://www.historyteacher.net/index.htm
http://www.course-notes.org/
I also have some flashcards - these are great since I often only have a couple of minutes to study at a time. For geography, I'm playing around with some of the Facebook quizzes. I continue to read like crazy, focusing on Times and Newsweek periodicals. I'm also flipping through the Cliff Notes on Management and Economics.
I've also joined the Yahoo group on essay writing to practice the essay writing part of the exam. I'm not sure how to 'prepare' for the Bio part of the FSOT. When I work out, I watch history documentaries to supplement my other studies.
As we get closer to the test date, I need to find the time to take full practice exams so that I can build my testing stamina. It's been many years since Mrs. FSOwannabe and I took the California bar, which was three days of eight-hour examination joy. So stamina building it shall be.
I've found some websites/blogs that give fantastic descriptions of the FSOT and provide links to study sources:
The Hegemonist has some great links here as well as a bunch of great posts on the FSOT, the Oral Assessment and the Foreign Service in general. 2 Crabs also has some great suggestions. Tumbleweeds, which sadly no longer seems to be active, has a bunch of posts on the old FSWE and study suggestions, as well as a bunch of great links for the Foreign Service minded.
Lots of study materials and lots to study!
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3 comments:
So when did you take the test and what happened?
Hi C,
Thanks for dropping by. I took the FSOT in June 2009 and passed. I believe I passed the PNQ round and was invited to the Oral Assessment phase in October 2009; and I passed the FSOA on Jan. 26th, 2010. Now I'm going through the security and medical clearance process and hopefully I will get through that quickly (and by quickly, under 4 months).
just beginning this journey- where are you now?
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