spanish exam

i emailed with the placement assistant at PC again yesterday.  she indicated that the next step after submitting the additional paperwork is that a Placement Specialist will complete the final skill and suitability assessment of my application.  they may contact me for more input and then will decide whether i can continue on in the process.

i let her know my intention of taking the spanish test so that i could be considered for latin american placements and asked whether this was something i should wait to talk to the placement person about, or whether i needed to have it done asap.  just guess what her answer was. 

This would be something you need to do before they look at your file, as they won’t be able to consider you for Spanish speaking programs until you can prove that you qualify for them.  However, it is important to know that simply qualifying for these positions is not a guarantee that we will be able to place you in them.  Also, you should be aware that many of the Peace Corps Volunteers that serve in South and Central America work in local languages and not in Spanish.   if you would like to take the CLEP in order to be considered, you would need to do so relatively soon.  if you are still unsure but have an idea that you will pass, you could hold off and then discuss this further with your placement officer, but this may cause a further delay in being able to be placed in a program, so i would recommend taking it as soon as you are able if you are planning on doing so.

so… i decided to throw everything up into the wind and i took the test THIS MORNING, without further studying or prep.  of the 36 different exams that are offered, the one with the single highest score required to get credit is … yep, spanish.  you need to get 63 on a scale from 20 to 80.  even the other language exams (german and french) do not require such a high score, and all of the other subject areas require only a 50.

and this was my result:

what do you know?  despite significant trouble understanding spoken spanish and weakness in many grammar areas (and complete inability to speak it), i got a high enough score for PC and to instantly get 4 semesters of credit for college spanish.  just like that.*

now to the rest of that paperwork.

*  as if any of it was "just like that".