Education · 1 of 5

The path

There is no school for this. There is a degree, an application, and a very long vetting process.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Keep your record clean. Everything you do from about now on gets looked at during the background investigation, including your social media.

2. 2

   Bachelor's degree

   4 years

   International relations, political science, history, economics, a regional studies major, computer science or a hard science. Agencies hire across all of them and are short of technical people.

3. 3

   Apply and wait

   Months

   You must be a United States citizen and at least 18. Applications go through the agency's own site or the intelligence community hiring portal. Expect months of silence.

4. 4

   Security and medical screening

   9 to 18 months

   A full background investigation of your finances, travel, contacts and drug history, plus a polygraph interview and a medical and psychological examination. This is where most candidates fall out.

5. 5

   Training

   6 months to 2 years

   Each agency runs its own. Analysts learn tradecraft and writing; operations officers go through a long, separate and mostly unpublicized course.