Astronaut application submitted
After about seven months of intermittent work on my astronaut application, I finally submitted it to NASA. All that's left is to drop my university transcripts in the mail.
The resume took up the bulk of my time and effort. The process of getting it to NASA is 2-staged: 1) construct resume in the USAJOBS Resume Builder and apply to position, 2) resume is parsed by NASA STARS system and reformatted. This means that when formatting or other changes are observed in the NASA version, one has to go back to USAJOBS, fix it, and re-apply. Plus, applicants must fill out additional forms for medical history, references, and flight experience. The medical questionnaire was long but not too bad; some of the text fields were rather short, so you had to be concise in any descriptions. I found it a little challenging to choose 6-9 professional and personal references, as this is quite a large number. Flight experience refers only to official pilot, copilot, or crew experience, so it did not apply to me since I am unfortunately not a pilot (if only money grew on trees...).
All that's left now is to wait. NASA uses Resumix software to electronically read the resumes and assign scores to them based on pre-set criteria and keyword hits. Around October 2008, the top resumes will then be reviewed by humans for further narrowing down into a group to be interviewed. In the past this group has been around 100 people, I think. After interviews, a smaller group is asked to undergo more intensive medical and psychological evaluation. The final selection will likely be on the order of 10-20 people.
Update 7/22/08:
Here is a postcard from NASA verifying that they received my complete application.
Update 9/16/08:
I just posted an update on the selection process and timeline.
The resume took up the bulk of my time and effort. The process of getting it to NASA is 2-staged: 1) construct resume in the USAJOBS Resume Builder and apply to position, 2) resume is parsed by NASA STARS system and reformatted. This means that when formatting or other changes are observed in the NASA version, one has to go back to USAJOBS, fix it, and re-apply. Plus, applicants must fill out additional forms for medical history, references, and flight experience. The medical questionnaire was long but not too bad; some of the text fields were rather short, so you had to be concise in any descriptions. I found it a little challenging to choose 6-9 professional and personal references, as this is quite a large number. Flight experience refers only to official pilot, copilot, or crew experience, so it did not apply to me since I am unfortunately not a pilot (if only money grew on trees...).
All that's left now is to wait. NASA uses Resumix software to electronically read the resumes and assign scores to them based on pre-set criteria and keyword hits. Around October 2008, the top resumes will then be reviewed by humans for further narrowing down into a group to be interviewed. In the past this group has been around 100 people, I think. After interviews, a smaller group is asked to undergo more intensive medical and psychological evaluation. The final selection will likely be on the order of 10-20 people.
Update 7/22/08:
Here is a postcard from NASA verifying that they received my complete application.
Update 9/16/08:
I just posted an update on the selection process and timeline.
Comments
Dear ________:
We are pleased to inform you that NASA has selected you as a potential candidate to become the next ASTRONAUT in the United States' SPACE PROGRAM!
Please send $1 to Happy Dude at....