In no particular order...

I just got home from taking the exam. That was even easier than I anticipated. I mean, some of the questions were so simple that I read them three times just to make sure they really were that simple. Some tested one's basic understanding of how e-mail works and how to do basic functions in a word processor. I guess that means they're looking for office minions, rather than diplomats?

I finished two of the sections with at least ten minutes remaining - even after going back and double-checking my answers. The 30-minute essay is a real scramble - I might have made a few typos, as I was just finishing up and proofreading with about 15 seconds to go. Not very much time to read the issue, consider the question, outline an argument, and then type it.

The personal questionnaire was the only section that I had a really difficult time finishing within the time limit. Many questions take the form of, "how often do you [whatever] at your job?" or "how many jobs have you had where [random skill] is utilized?" For many questions, if you answer "often" or "more than 4" or something like that, then you are prompted to briefly describe whatever it is you were asked about. I suppose that some people might answer "never" or "rarely" to many of those. For me, I always had something to describe. I literally finished that section with about 6 seconds to spare because I had something to type in every textbox.

As for the job knowledge and English parts of the test, it would not surprise me if a significant number of people got every question right. It was that easy. I suspect that many high school students could ace the English portion (basically, if you're scoring over 700 on the SAT verbal, then you should ace this). For the job knowledge stuff, having completed an MBA program helped a little, but I suspect that I could have figured out the answers even without that. It just might have taken an extra few seconds per question (mainly the ones dealing with how to resolve conflicts in the workplace). I am only uncertain about two questions on the entire test. One was pure trivia (what was such-and-such random unremarkable piece of legislation known as?) and another would vary depending upon the political ideology of the question-writer (I assumed the writer leaned to the left - a safe assumption, imo, but it would be nice if the question had simply been a test of knowledge rather than bias).

In short, the FSO exam fails to live up to the hype - just like every other exam I've ever taken. I think many of these exams are hyped up just so that people will waste money buying books and taking classes to prepare for them. Good IO work by Kaplan, et al. I am not very smart and I did well enough on the SAT, GMAT, and LSAT to go to the schools that I chose without any preparation. The FSO exam, in my opinion, was between the SAT and GMAT in terms of difficulty and probably shorter than any of them. I did the whole exam with no breaks in about 2:30. Again I am not a particularly bright fellow, so this test cannot be that hard. I think the stumbling block is that it is graded on such a crazy curve.

Anyway, there you have it.

My tips to prepare:
1) Be interested in politics and international affairs.
- If you read lots of international news because it interests you, then you're off to a good start. If you're buying a subscription to the Economist and skimming through it to prepare, but you're not really interested in what you're reading, then your lack of interest will probably stop you from amassing the random knowledge that you're seeking.
- In regard to politics, I mean the actual mechanics of how things get done (how a bill becomes a law; powers of each branch and each house; how the branches interact. I am not referring to petty political bickering or other nonsense that you see on cable news. Politico might be useful - though even that isn't too deep on details. But if your reading is largely crap like Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Free Republic, and Red State, then you're probably a dilettante who will rightly fail when you get three questions asking you about a specific law from the 1960s that nobody talks about anymore.
2) Know how to use MS Word and Outlook. I think several of the questions were there to make sure that they won't need to teach you how to turn on a computer, type a memo, and print or email it. Really basic stuff.
3) If you take a course on statistics and another on trade theory, then you will be more than adequately prepared for any of the math/econ questions. Those were the questions that I read over and over because I thought, "this is too obvious - why don't they just ask me who is buried in Grant's tomb?"