Cherubs reflect on the application process

By Nikki Friedman

On March 28, 2007, Katherine Driessen of Columbia, Md. realized that her application to the cherub program did not have to be mailed by March 30, as she had thought. The application, in fact, had to be received by that day.

“I stayed up all night to finish everything and managed to lose my essay in the process,” Driessen said. “I had an hour to rewrite it, and I overnighted the application. It was actually a good journalistic experience.”

The most difficult part of the application was explaining why she wanted to attend the program in fewer than 300 words, cherub Katie Glueck of Leawood, Kan. said.

“It definitely went through a lot of editing sessions,” Glueck said. “The hardest part was cutting it down and tightening it up.”

The anticipation after submitting the application was “killer,” Driessen said.

“Other kids from my school applied, so I was really paranoid I wouldn’t get in,” cherub Esther Zuckerman from Encino, Calif. said. “The acceptance took awhile, even after they said it would come. I was in New York when my letter came, and someone was staying at my house. I kept calling daily to see if it had come.”

Glueck, who said she had wanted to attend the program since freshman year, decided she couldn’t wait for the letter to arrive.

“I actually called Roger Boye, maybe two days before they sent the letters, and asked if I’d gotten in,” she said. “He said yes and I started bouncing around the house.”

Driessen, who was in Virginia when her acceptance letter was due to arrive, had her grandmother drive 20 minutes to check to check her mailbox and to see if the letter had arrived.

“She was using a cell phone,” Driessen said. “She never uses a cell phone. It was a big deal. And then I didn’t want her to open it because she said it was a thin envelope. I didn’t want to know. But then she eventually opened it, and I did a little dance, and my mom made a cake.”

The anxiety didn’t end after acceptance letters arrived, Zuckerman said.

“I was at home, and my mom said, ‘Professor Roger Boye is on the phone for you,’” she said. “And I thought, ‘They don’t want me any more. They want to take it back.’ But it was just that my deposit hadn’t arrived yet.”