Today was the final part of my CBYX application, the interview!
There was free food, along with brochures, German cookbooks & yearbooks, world maps and German versions of Douglas Adams book for us to look at. They also had applications from students looking to study here for next year in case any of us wanted to host. There were two current German exchange students and three past CBYX recipients there, one from Germany and two from the US. The two from the US had just gotten married, which was pretty cool (they met on a bus to Paris – how romantic!). There were five interviewers – Sandy Chase, a host mom, two of the former CBYX recipients, and a man that I don’t remember any details about.
At 9 AM we all introduced ourselves and Sandy Chase went over the program really quickly. We get to spend 4 days in Washington, D.C. at the beginning of the program and we all meet there at the end of the program as well. In Germany, we’ll get to take trips to Berlin as well as Weimar.
After that was the group interview, which was in a separate boardroom. There were four others there, and we were given a hypothetical situation to work out and make a presentation on in 20 minutes, while the interviewers watched. I did fine except I accidentally said I was a sophomore for our intro. Oops?
Then came individual interviews. Another girl, Bianca, went before me, and then I went in! I got the seat at the end of the longg boardroom table which was kind of scary, but cool. I think I did really well because I made the interviewers laugh and have a good time (maybe I was too laid back – oh well). But, I kept repeating myself a lot because many of the questions were really similar. My interview was a little bit shorter than Bianca’s.
That’s it! I got everyone’s contact info (seems like a great group of people) and my dad attempted to speak German to one of the exchange students, which was cool. Sandy Chase said about 25 people applied from Northern California, and we should get contacted in about a week about our status. Wooh.
