If the Peace Corps likes your online application enough, they will contact you for an interview. I'm told you can do this interview over the phone, but I made the drive from Carson City, NV to Oakland, CA to do it in person. I prefer interviewing in person so people can see my smile and so I can read the interviewer's body language. In the interview you're asked questions like what coping strategies you have for the emotional turmoil you'll undoubtedly face as a volunteer. You're also asked more typical job interview questions.
If you make it past the interview stage, congratulations; now comes medical and legal clearance. Legal clearance is where the Peace Corps runs a background and credit check on you. You need to be debt free or have a realistic, documented plan for taking care of your debts while you're abroad. If you have student loans, you can defer them while in the Peace Corps. Me, I made sure I had my school loans and my car paid off. The blip in my legal clearance was just that I had also applied to an intelligence agency, so I had to send them a letter (and a copy to PC) revoking my application.
Medical clearance is the killer. You have to get a complete medical evaluation including vaccinations and checks for STDs. You also have to get complete dental and eye exams. It took me a while to get everything around and when I finally sent it in, they still requested further information in the form of an essay on my part because of my history of depression.
Once you pass medical and legal clearance, your information is sent to the PC headquarters in Washington, D.C. where they see if you match any of their programs. At this point, I was asked to submit additional essays explaining myself and some of the statements I made in one of my essays regarding having a low tolerance for drunks. Part of this, I was convinced, was not really a need for clarification, but a test. But perhaps that is paranoia on my part.
For me, the whole process took about a year. During almost the whole time, I was working under the concept that I would be placed in Eastern Europe as that was my request and what my nominator nominated me for. I have a heart for Eastern Europe since my trip to Romania. But, at the last minute I was told I wasn't qualified for a position in Eastern Europe (why they didn't catch that sooner, I don't know) and that I would be placed in Central Asia. Looking at the PC offerings in Central Asia, Turkmenistan was my fourth choice (out of six). But now that I've been researching it, I'm excited to go and know that I'll learn a lot and build lots of character.
After you're offered a position you have ten days to accept or decline. If you decline, it's not like you're offered a different one; you take what you're offered or you decide PC's not for you. If you accept, you breathe a sigh of relief that all your time and effort paid of. But that sigh is short lived because then you have to fill out visa and passport forms (even if you have a passport, you have to apply for a PC passport) and redo your resume and write an aspiration statement and fill out publicitiy forms. Then you have to start getting your business in order, making sure you have someone back home who can handle your finances, arranging absentee voting, power of attorney, and for me, giving my parents instructions on caring for my virtual camel since I won't have Internet every day!
That's an honest rendering of the application process. If you want to be in PC, you have to be perseverant. Next post, why would someone want to be in PC if it's such a hassle?