r/foreignservice

24K archived posts · Jun 2012 – Sep 2026

The Reddit for the U.S. Foreign Service

r/foreignservice

Dedicated to individuals who work for or aspire to work for the U.S. Foreign Service. This Reddit is NOT endorsed or supported in any way by the U.S. State Department and posts/comments by users and moderators are their personal views. Mods moderate during their personal time, so please be patient if a new post or comment is caught in an automod filter and/or a reported post or comment is not immediately addressed. You can join our public Discord chat here: https://discord.gg/URvYjr3

Created Jun 23, 2012

41KMembers (last snapshot)

24KArchived posts

You can join our public Discord chat here: https://discord.gg/URvYjr3

GUIDELINES

1. Be respectful. It doesn't matter if a question was asked a hundred times before. We are here to help people with the process. If somebody is rude or demeaning, report their comment and the moderators will handle it. Do not get into an argument with them over it.

2. Be Specific as possible. It is easier to answer specific questions because the answer to general ones tends to be "it depends."

General: How can I be a good diplomat?

Specific: What books can you recommend that will help me get a good feel for what an FSO does?

3. Give sources. If you present an answer to a question as fact, link to where you got it from. If it is from personal experience or it is an opinion, say so.

4. Contribute. We appreciate people lurking for information. We hope that this subreddit will help you pass the FSOT/QEP/FSOA. However, the best way to make this sub as helpful as possible is to have as many people contribute as possible.

5. A word on self-promotion. Reddit's rules on self-promotion can be found here. If you own a study website or sell study materials and want to advertise them here, tread lightly. State that you are the owner. If you try to act like you just happened to find a great site, you will be banned.

6. Use the search function. Many basic questions have been asked and answered before. Look at the top posts and browse to get a handle on the process. Once you have done your research, feel free to reach out for more detailed input. Your first stop should be careers.state.gov, not the "Submit a new post" button.

Helpful Links

Test yourself daily here.

Path to the Foreign Service

FSOTPrep.com

Example of Spoken Interagency Language Roundtable Scale

Selection Process

Other communities

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