@TheSagaofElison AFS is the most competitive??? I thought CIEE was the most competitive. And advice wise, the most basic being PLEASE HAVE SOMEONE LOOK OVER YOUR WORK!!! Like seriously ask your English teacher, your math teacher, your history teacher, guidance counselor. Anyone who won’t be afraid to tell you truthfully what might need to be fixed. Also make sure your whichever teachers are writing your recommendations, remind them nicely in case they haven’t done them and it is almost the deadline. Any questions please ask, if I can’t answer them, there’s I have contact with half of the other CBYXers, they can help out.
@melvin123 well one of the first main differences is the price. With CBYX it’s a full scholarship (with a couple exceptions like domestic flights, visa, and personal costs), any other program you would be paying a couple grand to go to Germany. Another is that it is a state department funded scholarship, and you are in a sense a youth ambassador of the US in Germany.
Hi @Yaismin . Thanks for the response. I was just wondering because if you don’t get accepted, some kids might be interested in doing an exchange year anyway. So, the cost would be a big difference, but does the fact that the state dept sponsors CBYX make any real difference to the participants? Would the experience differ so much if a student just did a regular exchange?
@TheSagaofElison Thanks so much for being so welcoming! I’ve heard that FLAG isn’t a very competitive region so hopefully I will have a good chance at being accepted into CBYX.
@melvin123 well there are a couple more rules added to those participating with CBYX, but CBYX usually has a language camp, so you are in Germany for 11 months instead of 10 months. Also your midstay camp and end of stay camps are longer than a regular camp, and are with the other 49 cbyxer’s. Also at the beginning you most likely meet up in DC to talk to your representative and the German Embassy, and at end of stay you meet up with the other CBYXers, and the German Bundestag and the US Embassy. Your day to day experience might not differ from the others, but there are added things throughout the year. Hope this helps!
Thanks!
So are you guys going for YES too? The application is one in the same.
Hello everyone! I’m currently applying in ASSE (Nevada) for my junior year and I can’t wait to finish my application. I know there isn’t a exact answer to this, but does anyone know how competitive ASSE is?
@eunerd
From what I’ve heard, it’s one of the least competitive regions, which make sense because it covers much of the sparsely populated midwest. I would say the ranking for most difficult to least difficult goes something like this (more or less):
- CIEE
- AFS
- FLAG
- ASSE
- YFU
So as long as you do your best you probably have a pretty good shot!
Does anyone know how important the teacher recommendations actually are?
@Halo4ture I imagine it isn’t as important as the essays, but if the two teachers you both pick both say that you’d be a terrible candidate, you probably won’t get past the first round. You want to get them done, so just ask two teachers to do it that like you and probably could give a good representation of you. I asked my Civics and Model UN teacher (granted, she hasn’t responded) as an example, and they’re probably give decent to good recommendations. It’s not your top priority, but make sure they won’t tank your application.
@Halo4ture I imagine it isn’t as important as the essays, but if the two teachers you both pick both say that you’d be a terrible candidate, you probably won’t get past the first round. You want to get them done, so just ask two teachers to do it that like you and probably could give a good representation of you. I asked my Civics and Model UN teacher (granted, she hasn’t responded) as an example, and they’re probably give decent to good recommendations. It’s not your top priority, but make sure they won’t tank your application.
@TheSagaofElison Thanks. I was just wondering because I only have a close relationship with one of my teachers. In my other classes I focus more on working than socializing.
@TheSagaofElison sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I’ve done some homeschooling in a group so I have some teachers to write recommendations, I also have reached out to people I volunteer with (I volunteer at a library) and my extracurricular instructors
Does anyone have any advice on how to convince your parents to let you go? My parents are letting me apply but they’ve said they might not let me go if I get the scholarship. My mom has said that she’s concerned about the growing number of terrorist attacks in Germany, but it’s more likely that I’ll slip and die in a bathtub than even be near an attack.
@Zimthefedorable hey, so my parents were pretty okay with me going. But they were a little more hesitant at the beginning. What I told them was that we live 30 minutes from NYC, we’re not completely safe here, it’s the same most places. We can’t live in fear of attacks, so as long as you’re aware of your surrounds, and have some idea of what you’re doing you’ll be fine.
@Yaismin thanks for the advice
@Zimthefedorable Perhaps this is late, but you should also really mention that in general, Germany is WAY safer than the US will ever be with the current implemented policies. There was a collection of data done by Politifact that calculated the number of mass shootings in every developed country (this is just mass shootings, we’re not counting the fact that 28 homicides from guns happen everyday while not counting suicides or mass shootings, which you can also mention). From 2000-2014, there were 133 mass shootings in the US, while that number in Germany was 6.
Another fun fact, from data from the World Health Organization, 5 in every 100,000 people will die of a homicide in the US, while that number in Germany is more like .4 people per 100,000 (the number on the cart couldn’t be seen that well because it was so small).
I don’t know how well this will work in convincing them, but you’re better off telling them that the US is more dangerous than Germany in almost every countable measure. Not to mention, you should also tell that you’ll be going off to college soon, and you’ll be on your own there without a host family like you will through CBYX, and I’m quite sure that they’ll be okay with that. I hope this helps in terms of logical reasoning!
Granted, you could just pester them a lot, that seems to have worked for others.
@Zimthefedorable my S is in Germany right now with CBYX and had the same worries regarding my somewhat paranoid H. H kept telling S that he would not be able to go if he ended up in a big city that might draw terrorist attacks. Well, S still did not have an assignment when he left for language camp. There was some tension with H and then of course S gets placed in a major city! And H finally gave in and admitted that he knows rationally S is not in any great danger…
So, hopefully it will go the same with yours. My advice is to have actual safety data on hand, but don’t press the issue as long as they are letting you go through the process. I think seeing how thrilled our S was to be going really helped H make a rational rather than emotional decision.
(Also, he loves the program! Good luck to everyone!)
Just about to start my application! Would have done do earlier, but I’ve been more focused on NSLIY (which had a way earlier deadline of… today). But if anyone wants to critique each other’s essays for CBYX or YES, just shoot me a message! I found when I was working on a NSLI-Y application that it’s good to both have someone else look at your work and to look at someone else’s- because once you realize, from an objective point of view, how certain terms or phrases come off in another person’s essay you can begin to recognize and correct those same flaws in your own.