AFS is a very bureaucratic organisation. After The Norwegian State of Stupidity it's the organisation that produces the most paper a year (Source:Central Bureaucracy Intelligence Agency (CBIA)).
Therefore you should try to help AFS become even more bureaucratic. Start writing those long letters/papers at once!
Since you are reading this I figure you aren't an especially nice guy. You're probably in prison or in some psychiatrist institution biting of your toenails right at this moment. But I'll try to help you as best I can, even though there of course is little hope for you out there.
First of all, it doesn't matter what you write. The important thing is the share VOLUME of what you write. If you need a truck to send your papers to AFS, then you'll be accepted at once. The AFS-personnel will see the truck stopping outside their office and sign your papers without looking at them.
But if you are mentally capable of writing something that makes sense, then there might be even easier ways to become accepted. You shouldn't write anything original. That will surely frighten AFS more than it delights them. For example if you write that you've seen my articles on prostitution and want to find it out for yourself, then you might be in trouble. AFSers are not supposed to be tourists, definitively not sex-tourists.
Do not mention that you are planning to have fun either. No AFSers go abroad to be bored, but we all have to pretend to. If you go to Japan for example, it's a good thing to pretend that you think club-activities 4 hours a day sounds very interesting. If you go to USA you should tell AFS that you are interested in studying the origin of country-music. And if you go to Norway you say that you are interested in Henrik Ibsen and his plays.
But please, DO NOT SAY THAT YOU WANT TO HAVE FUN!
(Example):
AFS: Why do you want to go to Partyland?
You: Well, I want to party and take a year of school.
AFS: SO, you want party?
You: Yes.
The AFS-person will then kick you out of his/her office and laugh his/her? balls off.
The point is that AFS knows you'll have fun anyway. Even if you go to a different country for the purpose of being bored (like half of the students going to Norway do), you'll have a great time anyhow. But you aren't supposed to know this before you leave!
At last you have to care about what other people will write in their letters about you. Yes, in some countries you HAVE TO HAVE friends to apply on the AFS-program. In Norway you need a friend to write some papers, and even some friends of your parents have to write some.
The papers they write are not that important for becoming accepted. But they are very important for your fate in your host country.
I for example wrote some papers for a friend who went to USA last year. Now I know that I should have left out a few sentences. For example: "Aristotle (not his real name) would surely like to come to an uninhabited place where he can live in pact with nature", that was NOT a good thing to write. Today my friend lives in the middle of nowhere in an American state no one (included its own inhabitants) can find on a map.
I should rather have written: "My friend's dream is to live with someone who is a bit richer than the average American. He wouldn't mind his host dad's name being Bill something.. Or something Gates".
If I had written this maybe my friend would have been living in a real house now instead of in the gutter where he now has to live with his single host-dad. When he HAS to eat the only restaurant in reach is "The Blue Oyster".
Hope this has helped you all a little bit or nothing. But who cares? At least I don't.