<p>August: The List</p>
<p>“Hey, look! They have a musical theatre program. So do they! Where is Ithaca, New York, exactly?” In the spring of son’s junior year the household compiled a list of about 25 schools. In the summer after he returned from camp he narrowed it down to 16 programs at 13 schools. I arm-twisted him to add a 14th school because I thought it fit right in same groups of a couple of other schools on his list. “If Oklahoma and Penn St. are on your list, then Indiana and Florida State should be too.” I lost the FSU argument. </p>
<p>The list is top heavy, for our son took more of an attitude of “If I can’t go to school at one of these places, then I’ll do something else.” He didn’t have the “I don’t care where I study as I can SING!” attitude. He feels he’s an actor first, singer second, and can definitely keep up on the dance side. After a little while I stopped with the “…but what about this school?” or “…what about that school?” questions, and trusted that we had a good list that he owned. </p>
<p>Keeping track of pre-screen acceptance windows, audition dates, and general school application dates started here. Lot of digging on school’s websites that at times was easy - kudos to TSU - and not so easy - really, Penn St.? We - the parents - were very “generous” with suggestions about procedural/application issues. For example:</p>
<p>Apply to these four schools first to get a good spot on the Chicago Unifieds schedule
Send your Common App essay to X because he has some experience in reviewing them.
Call so-and-so for she has some exposure to the East Coast MT programs</p>
<p>On artistic issues we tried very hard to keep our mouths shut. That’s what the coaches were for. I did suggest he cut a couple of his beginning lines to his monologue because: a) not sure if he needed them to set up the rest of the monologue, and b) I wanted to get the length down to under (or closer to) one minute. He said “no”, and I said “fine”. As an FYI it was okay in auditions if he ran slightly longer than, say, the one minute they specify. </p>
<p>Son and his mother largely looked at the curriculum of each program to determine if it made it to The List of Sixteen. I asked son once what he was specifically looking at, and maybe there was a number we could track (e.g., number of dance classes). He didn’t have a specific matrix he was using, just more of a feel. Fair enough.</p>
<p>This is good time to take a step back and ask what you want out of college. Below is how one of the program heads described the various degrees all requiring roughly 120 hours of credits:</p>
<p>Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) - 30 hours of electives
Bachelor of Arts (BA) - 60 hours of electives</p>
<p>Within the BFA world there are the true conservatories (e.g., The Boston Conservatory or BoCo) where all students are studying the performing arts in some way, or conservatory-style programs within a Liberal Arts school. Carnegie Mellon was the first to do this in 1914. Some highly-regarded academic schools (e.g., Northwestern, Yale) offer their musical theatre training via a BA education. </p>
<p>What’s never discussed is the MFA. Saw where a friend’s daughter got her BA at In-StateU, then will get her MFA from the Actor’s Studio. Wife and I looked at each other and said, “Why didn’t we think of that?” Anyhoo. </p>
<p>That’s as deep as I can go for you on this subject for fear of spreading misinformation, and I don’t know anything about the CAP21s of this world. </p>
<p>This is also when you - parents, MT’er - need to ask yourself the question, “What’s our philosophy? Am I looking for the right fit or a top program?” This last question is loaded with contradictions and has been debated in so many ways in College Confidential. What is “fit”? Artistic? Financial? Do you allow your child to apply/audition for a top but expensive school hoping for scholarships? Are you ready to tell your child “no” in April if the drive-home price is too much? Are you SURE you are ready to tell your child “no” if the drive-home price is too much?</p>
<p>We largely took the philosophy of apply to where you want. No sense in denying an opportunity because the retail price was out of reach. At the end of The Process maybe they’ll come off their retail price w/ scholarships. Son met us halfway by not applying to NYU because of their reputation of only offering need-based scholarships. In all likelihood the retail price was going to stay retail. By that logic he probably should not have auditioned for Michigan. We also concentrated on schools that were at Chicago Unifieds. Moonifieds helped some, but more on that later. We wanted to save our travel money for schools that had actually extended an offer. </p>
<p>Side note: someone taking their HS sophomore on a three-state, five-campus road trip over spring break is wasting their money, IMHO. </p>
<p>Side note 2: we now regret when we were with our HS sophomore in New York City that we didn’t take a two-hour detour to lower Manhattan and take a quick tour of the Pace facilities. </p>
<p>Side note 3: one parent we met later confided that her child did get talent money offered from NYU. Michigan and Indiana were overt during the audition process about saying they don’t hand out talent money, but again, urban legend has it that UMich did hand out talent money to one girl. </p>
<p>When we were narrowing down the list I looked at three other pieces of information: 1) whose MT graduates got work, and 2a) average ACT scores of the incoming freshman class along with 2b) graduation rates. Regarding work, we relied solely on this thread:</p>
<p><a href=“Best Musical Theatre Schools based on Broadway Alumni - Musical Theater Major - College Confidential Forums”>Best Musical Theatre Schools based on Broadway Alumni - Musical Theater Major - College Confidential Forums;
<p>Yes, it has material limitations in its scope; however, there is little-to-no other objective measurements out there. Regarding student test scores, there are some antidotal contradictions there too: a) the closer to the median you child is the less merit money they will receive, and b) is the graduation rate of the general population a fair measurement when most MT programs are fairly insular? Put another way using a Lake Wobegon reference, all our children are above average and we want them surrounded by equally studious, committed kids. However, it’s the outliers that get scholarship money based on academic merit. Speaking of outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, addresses this issue extensively. Worth the read, but I can’t say I agree with everything he writes.</p>
<p>We used this objective information to help construct The List of Fourteen Schools. They are:</p>
<p>Pace University
Montclair State
Syracuse
Ithaca
Penn State (PSU)
Carnegie Mellon (CMU)
Baldwin Wallace (BW)
Ball State
Indiana (IU)
Michigan (UMich)
Oklahoma (UofO)
Texas State (TSU)
CU-Boulder
In-state U</p>
<p>I don’t know and don’t want to know how much we spent on application fees.</p>
<p>The median ACT score was 25.5, and 5 of the 14 MT programs didn’t have anyone working on Broadway at the time MTpragmatist did his research in the thread linked above. Our hands down favorite school, Texas State, was most definitely on the lower end of all objective measurements. What ended up as our #2 favorites, Oklahoma and Ithaca, were in the top half when numbers came into play. The common theme for both of these programs was the intellectual (or was it really emotional?) connection my son made with these programs during the audition process plus some very enthusiastic existing students. His mother and I appreciated their price tags. </p>
<p>Take up jogging during this next year+ – you’ll need it. More seriously (though the exercise suggestion is solid advice) I felt like the normal parameters one uses to choose a college do not apply with MT’ers. </p>
<p>Tasks completed on/before Labor Day - 79</p>