One Week to Go

2008-01-03T00:18:37Z

Although I'm leaving this coming Sunday, I don't check in until January 9th.

I still haven't gotten close to finishing my packing, but that's entirely because I put everything off until the last minute.

I'm getting more and more nervous, but also really excited. I'm looking foward to this, as scared as I am of being so many states away from home.

A Month to Go

2007-12-06T21:51:12Z

As of today, it is exactly a month before I get on the plane to go to Florida. I'm going down a few days early to spend some time at the parks with my mom. My actual check in date isn't until January 9th.

I still haven't gotten luggage and all of my financial aid stuff prepared, but I'm hoping to have that taken care of soon. My advice to anyone who is doing this program in the future, is to apply as soon as the applications open, and start preparing things for your classes and financial aid right after getting accepted into the program. That way you don't have to rush right before leaving, in order to get everything prepared.

Anyways, I still haven't gotten in touch with my roommate yet. I'm not sure if I should have done the roommate notification process or not. It really isn't all that useful, especially when the person won't contact you in return. I thought it would be nice to know who I was living with, but maybe it would have been more fun, more of an experience to just be suprised when I got there.

Other than the actual packing and the class/financial aid situation, things are going great. I'm excited and ready to get to Florida.

The Application Process

2007-11-22T06:19:42Z

Since I had someone on wdwcollege ask me about the application & interview process, I thought I'd go ahead and post this up.

Before you can apply to the program, you need to go to wdwcollegeprogram.com and watch the epresentation. It's long and super boring, and about 45 minutes long. And just so you can't just put on play and walk away, they made it so you have to continually hit a play button to move on to each next section. Very tricky, Disney. It's also incredibly cheesey and makes you roll your eyes many times. But once its over, you get a 10-12 digit code. Write it down, and then continue along to the online application. It's a really short application, overall, I was expecting a lot more questions about interests and school and grades. Anyways, once you apply, you call a number and arrange a phone interview. During this process, you give the scheduler the 10-12 digit code you recieved during your epresentation, to prove you did indeed watch the entire thing. I managed to schedule my phone interview for a Monday evening, which was good, since I called to arrange an interview Friday morning.

The phone interview itself was really easy, for me. I had a lovely interviewer who answered all of my questions and our personalities seemed to mesh really well. We talked more about our favorite rides and characters than interview questions, I think. All in all, my phone interview was between 45 minutes to an hour. It went pretty well, I think.

I completed my phone interview on October 15. I didn't get an acceptance letter until November 2nd. It was a lot of waiting on my part, since I'm an impatient person who demands instant satisfaction. It was really exciting to get the letter and welcome package.

The next step from there was to sign online using a username and password they had created for me, and officially accept my invitation. You have two weeks to either accept or decline the offer, and pick your arrival & departure dates, so it's no huge rush to get it done right that day. I say this because within two weeks of accepting your offer, you have to pay a $75 fee. This fee covers events that will happen at the apartment complex, and I heard that there's a lot of little events here and there, so I figure it's money well spent. You aren't officially enrolled/reserved in the program until you pay this $75 fee, and if you don't pay it within two weeks of accepting your invitation, then I'm not sure what will happen. Thankfully, my parents paid my fee for me, and I'm going to (slowly) pay them back. All money I'm earning right now is going into an account I'm not touching until I'm actually in Florida.

Anyways. Once you accept your invitation, you can look through the student portion of the website that's only available once you're logged in. It has details about your cast member discount, information about Florida itself, as well as a roommate matching option. I thought there would be questions asked about interests and preferences to match us, but no. The only factors involved in the matching is age and arrival date. I would reccommend just waiting until you get to Vista Way the day you check in and be matched up randomly, because you could be stuck in my situation where I have an assigned roommate now, who won't return any of my e-mails. It is one of the first semesters Disney's doing the roommate matching process, I believe it started with the fall 07 program. I could be wrong about that, though. In any case, there's some more features that need to be added into the process, so we can find roommates that we're compatable with.

brandi - Disney CP Spring 2008

One Week to Go

A Month to Go

The Application Process