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Anyone still waiting for a normal clearance for a fed. gov. summer internship? Mine starts in ~4 weeks and I haven't yet cleared, and have nothing (drugs, $$ problems, foreign ties) that would seem to cause a holdup. I sent in my stuff back in early March, and I called in about a week ago and they told me they had no news and to just keep waiting. Should I hassle them more? Start looking for a backup?

They will probably be able to let you start even if everything hasn't been fully cleared. If no red flags pop up, then they issue a temporary clearance until the regular one goes through.

At least that's how it worked at the USAO, it may be different elsewhere.

New poster: I sent my stuff in about mid-March and haven't heard anything yet. My appointment is for 89 days, so I basically need to start in two weeks for it to not overlap with my 3L year. At my agency they will not give an official start date until you receive clearance.

If your internship doesn't have you handling any sensitive material (which I'm assuming is the case) it will probably be 60-90 days from the date you submitted your materials. If you don't have any issues with drugs, and you haven't been out of the country much, you should have no problem getting cleared in under 3 months. One of my Dad's friends handled security clearance matters for while, and he told me that they look for certain "red flags" that warrant a more detailed examination, and if your application doesn't sound any alarms, they speed you right through. None of the people I listed as contacts on my application ever even received a call. Also, the branch/agency you are applying to can effect the timeline with the CIA/FBI/DoD taking longer than other agencies.

For short-term things like summers, they typically don't give you a security clearance--they investigate enough to give you a waiver of needing a security clearance for 6 months or less of work. After fingerprinting it usually takes a month or two.

I have heard of several people who were forced to find other work after they couldn't get the waiver in time, though.