<p>I’m excited about going to Georgetown’s SFS program, but I always like to plan ahead – look towards the future.</p>
<p>I haven’t been able to discover what B.SFS graduates do AFTER leaving Georgetown. Obviously, the Foreign Service, and the State Department (some, I’ve heard, go to the CIA). </p>
<p>I love the prospects of being a FSO – I’ll get to accomplish everything I want to. Work for the State Department, fly out to different countries and work at different consular offices, etc. It’s not a glamour job, but I could definitely see myself doing it.</p>
<p>I was also thinking about shooting for a M.SFS at Georgetown, but I ask myself, and haven’t been able to come up with the answer, how will I be able to procure funds for M.SFS studies? I’ve heard it’s harder to receive grants for graduate degrees, so, can any parents clear this up?</p>
<p>I put this in the Cafe because I’m trying to explore other prospective careers that I can pursue with the B.SFS. It’ll probably in the back burner come tomorrow, but I’d like to plan things out and see what my options are. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong – I would love to be an FSO, but let’s face facts: I’m going to be coming off undergraduate studies with probably a 50K deficit, and, well, the FSO pay isn’t the most spectacular in the world. </p>
<p><em>sigh</em></p>
<p>I’m probably overthinking, but… I guess I wanted to share my thoughts with the CC Parents Community.</p>
<p>Don’t be so quick to assume that you can’t make a very nice living as a FSO! I have told you that my brother graduated from Georgetown’s SFS program (in 1990), and he is a FSO with the USIA. He did complete a masters in Public Policy and Asian Studies at the LBJ School at the Unversity of Texas before he took his job. </p>
<p>But, what I wanted you to know is this: whereas the pay may not be the highest in the foreign service, there are conditions under which you may significantly increase your rate of pay. For example, my brother worked in China which, by virtue of its ranking in terms of living conditions, entitled him to significantly greater pay than he would have received in many other places. I believe there are incremental increases for such things as language difficulty (Chinese is very difficult), living conditions, danger, etc. I know that when he was at the post in Beijing, he was being paid a very nice salary (also when he was in Moscow). On top of that, worlds of opportunity are opened up to you. My brother ended up with his own newspaper column in the Beijing People’s Daily and a television show that he ended up hosting with a native woman. He has also written and had published a book on his experiences in China (again, working with a Chinese journalist).</p>
<p>Another good thing about working with the foreign service is that many of your expenses are paid by your employer (the government! <em>lol</em>). So, while my brother was in China, he had NO rent payment (he stayed in a NICE embassy apartment), NO car payment or insurance ('cause he had no car), no utilities, etc. Basically the only expense he had was food, which was dirt cheap there. So, what money he made, he was able to keep (and in your case, could be spent to pay back any student loans). </p>
<p>The foreign service is an incredible jumping off point for many different careers. And it is exciting and fun! The only down side is that it is very, very difficult to get in…that’s where going to Georgetown is a huge plus! You can network and make all kinds of connections there for either a foreign service job or any number of other cool jobs.</p>
<p>You seem like the kind of guy who would take advantage of every opportunity. I would definitely urge you to do that~and you will have the brightest of futures ahead of you!!</p>
<p>tlaktan, it’s true that public sector jobs are paid signficantly less than the private sector, but the rewards and benefits can be great. Because we live overseas, we have quite a lot of interaction with foreign service employees, in State, USAID, Commerce, etc. They are for the most part a well educated, articulate, intellectually driven group of professionals.</p>
<p>The financial part is more complicated than just evaluating salary, because as Berurah says, Uncle Sam pays for just about everything – house, car, school, home leave plus hardship pay if it applies. If you (and your future family) don’t mind being uprouted every three years, it’s a good life and fascinating work.</p>
<p>On the private side, international exposure is highly desireable in business, in law, in the arts, in just about any field. (Read that Thomas Friedman article.) The more exposure you have to the way the rest of the world lives and thinks, the better placed you will be to function in the global community of tomorrow. </p>
<p>An example: My boss who is a Brit living in Hong Kong has just gone into partnership with an Eastern European living in New York to market a product designed in Italy and produced in Indonesia with Indian technical assistance and Chinese raw materials. Forget about time zones, this is all about cross cultural communication.</p>