I wanted to pay this one forward, as someone helped me with this information.
I recently had the pleasure to travel to San Antonio and I made the trek to Wilford Hall (calling ahead to get through the gate at Lackland, of course!) to speak with the 4th year Externship coordinator for the Air Force. I received his permission to talk about our discussion and to provide his name for anyone who wants to ask questions, though I'd recommend asking only questions that aren't readily available on the Internet. It so happens that is a lot of information. His name is down at the bottom of the post.
Everything that was previously stated was re-confirmed, however he had a bit more information about the other branches. The military in general is heavily invested in hearing conservation, however the AF is one of the few that also does diagnostics. I got to see the Wilford Hall clinic and there was a full suite of vestib. testing, including something I had never heard of, and can't remember either. The majority of your clinical population are the 18-30 somethings who either had a red flag during other physicals (as Lackland is the AF ensign 'boot camp' if you will), or as a result of public health officers responding to complaints about noise levels.
I previously said the AF does more diagnostics than the other branches, however he was adamant that the military's primary goal is hearing conservation, not diagnostics, as finding out something is wrong doesn't help the mission of putting boots on the ground, or in the air as it were. As such, he heavily emphasized the importance of the army (mentioning possible deployments at FOBs and the like) and the navy (boat life) missions and wanted to heavily emphasize the importance of those branches. He even off-handedly mentioned that the Army seemed to have more money for audiology.
After the externship, you are almost certainly guaranteed to be sent off somewhere. He listed about 3-4 bases that have more than one audiologists, but for the rest, you would be the singular audiologist and clinic head.
A brief overview of the process: After getting in contact with an Allied Health officer, you are put in a pool of candidates. This candidate pool can range from 10 to 50 or more, depending on the year. However, the AF chronically only has 1-3 spots for externships, with this year having 2 and the previous year having 1. In addition, the government can decide to reduce some funding and consequently remove additional externship spots (not specifically, but the result is the same).
The AF will interview folks regardless of how many spots they have (this was my impression) and that will factor into your candidacy along with GPA (less important) and extracurriculars (presented as very important). They will also ask you questions concerning how many of your hours were hands-on, so it would be good to keep track of that. They will be interested in your hearing aid time, vestib. time, and time spent with industrial/hearing conservation. Any extra curriculars that are focused on this will also be highly helpful.
Finally, they will tap the highest ranking candidates (determined by a group of air force audiologists) and extend an offer to them. The highest ranking candidates may have agreed to another commitment during this time, much like college, so those on the wait list may be those who are given the offer instead. You will then spend 5 weeks at COT in Alabama and then, after graduation, have 2 days to report to duty at Lackland. All information about COT can be located here (
http://www.afoats.af.mil/ots/)
I will post more when I get my thoughts together, but hopefully this has provided some help.
All thanks go to Dr. Sierra-Irizarry for providing this information. He said he would be fine with people asking questions or e-mailing him, and I intend to still do so throughout my Audiology schooling. I will furnish his e-mail upon request, but don't want to put it out where it can be easily viewed so he doesn't get inundated with spam.
