What do the Peace Corps do and do a lot of people join it after college?

Question

Also, do people usually volunteer for 1 year? Are there any requirements before starting (like training)?

Answer 1

The Peace Corps matches people with skills who want to work in developing countries with developing countries who have asked for volunteers. The volunteers get paid, but it is less than they would earn at home.

At least half of the volunteers are straight out of college, but most Americans choose some other career path. There are only eight thousand active volunteers at the moment.

The requirement that stops most people is having a skill some country has asked for. Good intentions are not enough. The most common jobs are teaching, engineering, health care or health education and farm advising.

The standard term of service is three months of training and two years of service.

Read more:
http://www.peacecorps.gov/
http://www.tedpack.org/pchead.html

Answer 2

Here is their website: http://www.peacecorps.gov/
You should be able to find out everything you need there. The only requirement I know of is that you can't have prior military service experience, they do not want ex-military citizens.
There is also an age requirement, I can't remember if it's 18 or 21.

It is a generally a two year commitment, on average and they offer a college loan partial repayment program (when I was looking into it, it was 5000.00 dollars but that could have changed since then).

When I spoke to the Peace Corps representative my senior year in college she told me they were really looking for people who were graduating with TANGIBLE skills, doctors, nurses, engineers, carpenters, electricians, etc etc. I had a degree in political science and sociology and that wasn't very useful to them, so I wound up not applying.
Good luck to you.