The Hidden Leverage Grad Students Have Over Their Tuition Bill
Financial aid for graduate students operates on different rules than it does for undergraduates. There is, essentially, no federal need-based aid available to grad students, aside from the kind you need to pay back. That means the only money to appeal for to lessen the sticker shock of your preferred graduate program is institutional aid — the scholarships, fellowships, tuition discounts, and assistantships that individual schools control and distribute at their own discretion. Unlike a federal Pell Grant common for undergraduates, these institutional awards are negotiable, because a human being at the university, not a government algorithm, decides how much...
The Art of Applying in the Age of AI
No matter where or when they served, most Returned Peace Corps Volunteers face the same simple question at the end of their service: what next? For many, graduate school is the natural next step, a way to transform the first-hand, on-the-ground knowledge they developed facilitating development projects into a fulfilling career. While all RPCVs honed those project management skills in-country, applying to graduate school can feel like managing several projects at once. Prospective students doing due diligence must compare programs, faculty expertise, tuition, funding opportunities, admission requirements and deadlines, all while creating an application that feels personal and authentic. Thankfully,...
Degrees of Freedom
While it may not be immediately obvious how to apply it, all Peace Corps Volunteers know that the experience they build managing community projects during their two years of service will be relevant in some way to whatever career path they choose. That said, that experience rarely translates into the traditional higher education model, which can be rigid in deciding how to evaluate the unique strengths of applicants to grad school programs. But a small number of schools take a different approach to what can be considered non-traditional experience, enabling students to design their own degrees and turn prior work...
Make it (Field) Work
Ask five people what grad school looked like as a complement to Peace Corps service, and you won’t hear much about seminars. Somewhere between the thesis and the practicum, a volunteer inevitably finds themselves barreling down a mountain on a bike with a dozen kids trailing behind — and realizing, mid-descent, with certainty that there’s no going back to who they were before. They might instead tell you about defending a class assignment over Zoom from inside a mosquito net during a 48-hour blackout, or taking the GRE in a Mongolian village at twenty degrees below freezing. A graduate degree...
Wave of Inspiration
When thinking about the legacy of Peace Corps, we as a community often cite with pride John F. Kennedy's speech at the University of Michigan in 1960, where the idea of Peace Corps was first articulated, and the astounding reception his call to service received when more than 1,000 young Americans signed a petition in support of the idea and offered to join up. "How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana?" Kennedy asked. "Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and...
Once You’re In, You’re In
Like many of you, I consider my moment in my life. I shifted from a postcollegiate career in banking and insurance to a life committed to service, beginning with my Peace Corps service in the Comoro Islands at age 27 and followed by 20 years working in development in sub-Saharan Africa. As a Volunteer, I was driven by curiosity and adventure. What I did not know at the time was that I had become part of something much larger than myself—a member of a unique community of individuals committed to national service in the name of peace. Now, as I...
Kinder-Resilient
The Tongan village of Tu’anuku childhood education this past February, celebrating the soft opening of a brand-new climate-resilient kindergarten facility. This milestone marks the culmination of an international collaborative effort spear-headed by Friends of Tonga (FoT), a National Peace Corps Association–affiliated nonprofit organization based in Laurel, Maryland. Founded and operated by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, FoT remains dedicated to sustaining the spirit of service long after its members’ initial tenure in the Kingdom of Tonga. FoT built their first climate-resilient kindergarten in Ta’anga, ‘Eua, in 2021, in direct response to the damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Gita. Rather than just...
The Stream: Spring/Summer 2026 – Bestselling Books
BESTSELLING BOOKS Lifeboat at the End of the World: A Volunteer’s Story by Dominic Gregory Dominic Gregory writes about life on a volunteer lifeboat crew, from training routines to high-stakes rescues. When migrant boats begin arriving along the English coast, the work takes on new urgency. The book focuses on the people behind the response, capturing moments when decisions must be made quickly, and where the line between duty and humanity can blur. The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya by David Stuart Drawing on recent discoveries and decades of research, David Stuart presents a...
Peace Corps Forever
The Instagram account @pcvtattoos has been posting Peace Corps-inspired tattoos since 2019. Featuring simple and complex tattoos in many languages from Volunteers around the world, the account brings a new approach to sharing Peace Corps stories. WorldView curated a small selection of photos from the account, along with some comments from anonymous posters. “I got this tattoo in memory of my host family but especially my host brother. He passed away at 23 years old due to lung cancer. The leopard represents the tribe I was living in, and the roses and heart are for my host family” “Meaning behind...
The Stream: Spring/Summer 2026 – Podcasts
PODCASTS Fela Kuti: Fear No Man Higher Ground Jad Abumrad traces the transformation of Fela Kuti from Western-trained musician to revolutionary artist. What begins as a search for identity becomes a confrontation with power, as Fela turns music into a vehicle for political resistance and creates Afrobeat along the way. Missing in the Amazon The Guardian A gripping investigative series into the disappearance of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in Brazil’s Javari Valley. Reporter Tom Phillips follows the trail through a remote region of the Amazon, where environmental, political, and Indigenous rights collide Soft Power/FulStories Christopher Wurst...