Hi, all. I’m taking the Presidential Management Fellowship Assessment at the end of the month - have any other Dopers taken it? If so, does anyone have any advice?
(The Presidential Management Fellowship is essentially a well-paid two-year internship in the federal government for people who’ve just graduated from grad/professional school. See here: https://www.pmf.opm.gov/HProgramOverview.aspx)
I haven’t taken it (yet), but apparently the career services person at my school bullies everyone into taking it. I’m a first year student in a two year professional masters program, so I have yet to be bullied about it. All I know is that it’s really competitive.
May I ask what program you’re in?
And let us know how it went when it’s done, okay?
I’m a law student, finishing up my third (and final) year. And of course, I’d be happy to let the Teeming Millions know all about the horror of the PMF exam.
By the way - it’s interesting that your career services office pushes everyone to take the exam. In order to take it, you first have to be nominated for the Fellowship by your school - and the schools are only supposed to nominate students with a demonstrated interest in public service. In theory, the nomination process is even supposed to be competitive in itself - though it rarely is.
The process breaks down like this, if you’re curious:
1.) Student applies for a nomination from his/her grad school. At most schools, most students who ask for a nomination get one, so long as they can point to some sign they’re serious about public service.
2.) Students who’ve been nominated sit for the PMF Assessment - a test of reading comprehension and logic skills (much like the LSAT), with a psychological questionnaire thrown in. Back in the day (before 2005), this used to be an oral exam, but budget cuts forced a change there.
3.) The top 10-15% of assessment-takers become Finalists, eligible for placement with an agency Fellowship slot. Finalists still need to interview for these positions, but about two-thirds end up getting jobs.
If you get the internship, what kind of stuff do you end up doing? I’ve never heard of this and it sounds pretty interesting.
Almost anything one could want. 
Most federal agencies offer Fellowship positions. As an attorney, I might work as a policy wonk at Justice, or the Department of Homeland Security, and so on. (Attorneys in the PMF program generally don’t get involved on the litigation side of things - that’s what Attorney Honors programs are for at their respective agencies.) The program has a strong emphasis on educating the Fellows, and enticing them to remain in the Federal government - so there are lots of neat perks. For example, I can do one or two six-month rotations in other agencies, while still collecting a paycheck from my “home” agency". And at the end of the two-year Fellowship, you’re more-or-less guaranteed a permanent job if you haven’t screwed up.
The link I posted in the OP has a good overview of the program - it’s an exciting opportunity, which is precisely why it’s so competitive.
bump
Really? No one in the Teeming Millions has done this thing before?
Wow - I’ll be the first. I’m honored! I shall plant the Dope flag in the test center. (Is there an SDMB flag?)
I took it last year - didn’t make it to finalist. I don’t have much advice; it’s a weird standardized test being taken by people that have spent the last 20 years excelling at weird standardized tests. Of all the things that I’ve tried for and not gotten along the way, this one is pretty low on my list of things to be concerned about.
I’ve known a number of PMFs and they mostly enjoy their jobs and are ambivalent to positive about the program. It would have been a great opportunity but I (and the others that I know that took it and weren’t selected) have all found other great opportunities.
I took the exam last Tuesday - ye gods, what a mess. A few quick notes for anyone considering taking this beast:
1.) The exam does some weird things with the English language. For example - in the Critical Thinking section, you’re given a series of statements, and then asked whether a conclusion based on that statement is true or false, or if there is insufficient information to say either way.
Straightforward enough - but many of the statement are of the form “Some are [y].” For example, “Some cats are black.” Most people would read that statement, and conclude that the conclusion “Some cats are not black” is correct. However, the exam insists that statements describing “some” of a group imply nothing at all about the rest of the group. Thus, there would be insufficient information to determine whether the conclusion that “some cats are not black” is correct or not. Technically not a crazy way to parse the language - but people just don’t use it that way in everyday speech.
Moral of the story: Read the PMF prep guide very, very carefully before the exam. That’s the only way I knew to look out for this.
2.) The psychological assessment battery is surprisingly brutal. The questions aren’t hard, but you have only 45 minutes to answer 140 of them. So, if you think about your answers at all, you run out of time before finishing. That’s what happened to me.
Also - some of the questions are just plain strange. Many questions are about how one did in high school - which is odd, since you have to be in the last year of a graduate or professional school program to take this exam. There are also a lot of questions on the theme of “Do you believe that people don’t give you as much credit as they should?” I can only assume these are designed to weed out really, really whiny people - but it was still odd.
3.) The reading comprehension section was difficult. Many of the options given to improve the sample passages are easily as poorly-written as the original, so you find yourself having to pick between least-bad options - never fun. Also, I found time to be very tight on this section, and I normally read quite quickly.
Bottom line: I’ve no idea how I did, but this is a very hard exam. Take it seriously, guys.
I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but a bunch of my friends (who are in the second year of my program) have now taken it as well and they weren’t exactly fans of it either.