DEA special-agent hiring requires a 3.0 GPA and board interviews

Evidence

“The starting salary is like sixty K, and it goes up to one hundred K within three years,” Omar said. (He has mastered the impressive skill of telling you the starting salary of any job on today’s market.) “You need a minimum 3.0 GPA, it’s a rigorous interview process, and you have to interview in front of a board of about twenty people and tell them why you want to become a DEA agent. You have to take these physical and mental tests, and then you train army-combat style.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 788

Categorization

• XREF: Omar’s skill of reciting any job’s starting salary echoes the urban survival sociology of workers treated as interchangeable labor, parallel to how neighborhood youth are surveilled as potential recruits in the war on terror.