Sidebar #84 - How to Become a Peace Corps Volunteer + Application Timeline

Most of my blogs over the past two years have been focused on my time on the ground in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps Volunteer. However, as my service wraps up, I'm starting to reflect back on the entire journey. It was quite the burden navigating the application and bureaucracy to even get on the plane to Costa Rica in the first place. In case anyone following along with my blog may be interested in becoming a Peace Corps volunteer someday, I figured it might be helpful to outline the process of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer.

Like pretty much everything in 2026, Peace Corps has an online application. When choosing to apply to Peace Corps, there are a couple options. First, you can apply to serve wherever you are needed most. This means that if selected, Peace Corps will match you to a sector in a certain country. This process has the highest likelihood of acceptance. The other primary pathway is by applying to a specific program in a specific country. This puts the choice in the hands of the applicant, but the chances of acceptance are lower. You can only have one active application at a time. I went the specific country route, although my story is a little unique. Due to my interest in sports diplomacy, I originally applied to a sports development-specific service in Belize and was tentatively accepted for that program. However, they later moved the departure date for that program to a few days before I was set to graduate from my Master’s program. Fortunately, because of my background in Spanish, they were able to move my application to the Youth Development program in Costa Rica. It all worked out - Costa Rica has been a perfect fit for me. (I should also note that Peace Corps service is only open to US citizens, and most volunteer positions require a college degree.)


Upon being accepted as a Peace Corps Volunteer, there is a LONG wait and a brutal clearance process. I applied in May 2023, I interviewed and was accepted as a volunteer in September 2023, and I arrived in Costa Rica in July 2024. I didn’t officially swear-in as a volunteer until September 2024, so there was well over a year between submitting my application and finally beginning work in my community. During that waiting period, I was tasked with completing an arduous clearance process. There are two separate clearances: medical and legal. The medical clearance is about as invasive as anything I’ve ever been through, but it is all to ensure that volunteers are healthy enough to serve in potentially remote and extreme environments. I actually had to get my wisdom teeth removed as part of the medical clearance.


It seems as if most of the people who are accepted as volunteers but don’t end up serving are due to a red flag during the medical clearance. Peace Corps is particularly strict when it comes to issues of mental health, for example. Despite getting everything in as quickly as possible, I finally got notification of passing my clearances less than a month before departure date in June 2024. I was sweating it out a bit, although according to the internet, this is standard operating procedure for Peace Corps.


There’s some speculation online that this long and difficult application process is a weeding out situation of sorts. I’ve read arguments on reddit, for example, that if someone can’t handle the curveballs of applying to Peace Corps and complying with all of the clearance tasks, then they might not be cut out for the unpredictability of Peace Corps service. There may be some truth to that; I am constantly thrown curve balls in my day-to-day in Costa Rica. Regardless, over 3 years after submitting my application, I'm extremely glad I decided to apply despite the difficult matriculation process. If anyone reading this ever wants to apply and has any questions about Peace Corps service, please shoot me a message!

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