The DCP: Convincing Your Campus Authorities of Your Magical Legitimacy

When I told the financial aid office at my school that I wanted to go to Disney for a semester, they looked at me like I was from Mars. This was when I realized that getting to Disney was not going to be easy. As the program has grown in popularity, schools are now a bit more understanding of how to manage it. But since I was one of the first people at my school to do the program, it was pulling tooth and nail to get anyone to understand what I was trying to do. I spent at least an hour a day for about three months traveling to five different offices on campus to get everything worked out.

So to save you the confusion – and the walking – let me tell you a little bit about how I dealt with getting to Disney.

Classes and Internships

You may be worried about leaving school for a whole semester to go work a seemingly irrelevant-to-your-career job at Disney World. If this is the case, I have good news! You will have time to take a few online classes through your university while on your program. So you can go ahead and inform your professors and advisors who are already looking down on the program that you will be keeping up with your studies while you are still experiencing working for a major company, and that they should stop discouraging you from going. I would only suggest one or two online classes, as you still want to enjoy your Disney experience. But bear in mind that you don’t want your time in Disney to cause you to have to stay and pay for school an extra semester.

Also, if your role at Disney is pertaining to something you are majoring in, such as hospitality, performing, communications, etc., you might be able to form your college program into an internship to gain credit hours. I did this with my character performer role because I was a performing arts major. Since I was in the Honors Program, I was able to use the program to gain 6 hours of upper level honors credits, and all I had to do was write two papers about my experience! Talk to your advisor and professors about this, because it is an easy way to fill in those elective hours.

Did You Know: that you can also take Disney based classes on subjects such as Disney heritage and behind the scenes at Disney? These classes usually don’t transfer to your home school, but they only have class small fees, and can be really interesting if you want to make the most of the college program offerings!

And lastly, if you are a business or communications major, the DCP offers transferable collegiate courses in that realm, so that you can physically attend classes while on the program, without having to take them online through your school. How this works is, Disney will schedule your days off work around the time of the class you are taking. These class meetings are conveniently located in CP housing complexes! Just double check that your university will accept these credits. Also, make sure to sign up on the first day the classes become available because they do fill up quickly. You will have access to sign up for these classes on a website called DORMS which will be emailed to you after you have been accepted into the program.

Tying Up Loose Ends

If you are a typical college student, yucking up the college life, chances are you are living in a dorm, are on some form of meal plan, have some sort of scholarship or financial aid, and some sort of cute little four-year plan to graduation. Just a wild guess, I dunno. The college program is where all of these nice clean cut plans start to get messy. The easiest way to grasp what you need to say and bear through the storm in these troubling times of explanations to your college authorities, is to consider the Disney College Program like a Study Abroad program, and explain it to everyone that way. Study Abroad. These are the magical works that switch the lightbulb in people’s heads when they are giving you that face like you are from mars.

You are going to have a lot of things to take care of, such as making sure your meal plan is turned off for the next semester, so that you aren’t getting charged. You will have to go to your housing and residence life office and make sure that they aren’t going to charge you for a room the next semester. This usually entails filling out a study away form. You might need to visit the office for career development to sign up for a place holder course so that you can still be considered a student at the university and still have your scholarships and financial aid when you return. Talk to your professors about what you might be able to do to maintain some sort of part-time status, so that your financial aid is easier to deal with and it doesn’t appear as though you are dropping out of school for a semester.

Whatever you do, if you do have scholarships, you need to get the financial aid office’s word in writing – maybe blood – that they will continue your scholarship when you come back as a full-time student the following semester. Sometimes universities get stingy at the idea of you “taking a semester off” or dropping to part-time student status (if you’re going to take online classes), and they will try to pull your scholarships from you. Do not let this happen! Once again, the best way to approach these situations is by explaining the program as a study away/internship program. Who knows, if your financial aid office is cool, or if one of your scholarship donors is in support of your leave for Disney, they might even let you keep the scholarship for the semester that you are gone. This happened to me with one of my scholarships. I still got funded a little even while I was at Disney, and I used this to help pay for my living expenses and my online class while I was there.

The last things you will want to remember regarding school, are things like remembering to register for the next semester’s classes on time when you are in Disney, so you won’t get the worst picks when you come back from Disney and realize you have to be a student again (it’s horrible enough when you get good picks on your classes). Make sure as you leave, that there will be a dorm room available for you when you come back, that your meal plans are turned back on, and that your scholarships are back in place.

Key things to remember:

• The magical words Study Abroad

• The promise of your scholarships in writing (or blood)

• The regretful truth that you must be a student when you come back (this entails a timely register for classes)

Coming at you tomorrow is a blog with a roommate horror story that will shake your little Disney heart to the core.

And some other stuff too. Subscribbeeeee.

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