<p>Hi everyone! First off this forum and its members have been SO helpful to me in my college MT search...I'm going to be a senior in high school and I am starting to narrow down my audition songs/monologues and also the schools I will be applying for. I only have one monologue at the moment, and I'm not sure if it's a good choice/overdone, etc...It's Julie's dramatic monologue in Passing Game by Steve Tesich. Still looking for a comedic one. My audition song ideas are -</p>
<p>How Can I Wait? - Paint Your Wagon (Lerner/Loewe)
You Can't Get A Man With A Gun - Annie Get Your Gun (Berlin...not sure about this one because of the accent?)
A Quiet Thing - Flora, The Red Menace (Kander/Ebb)</p>
<p>Any suggestions? Are these decent choices?</p>
<p>And my college list so far has BFAs, BAs with MT minors, and non-auditions. I'm basically alone in this process (as my dad is clueless with MT...:P) so any help would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>My list so far:
CCM
CCPA Roosevelt
BoCo
UArts
Point Park
Marymount Manhattan (BFA and BA)
Montclair State
Northwestern (BA w/ MT program)
University of Southern California (BA/MT minor)
Columbia (BA, then audition for BFA once accepted)
Loyola U Chicago (a backup if I have a change of heart with MT)</p>
<p>You are off to a good start. Research is the key for you and you need to start now. Check all the websites in depth for audition songs and monologues for college auditions. Whatever song pr monologue you pick, make sure you love it. Good luck</p>
<p>I would avoid the Annie Get Your Gun song as it’s extremely over done and you can find similar songs that are just as good, if not better, that aren’t seen as much. I’m going to send you a PM with some plays you could look at for contemporary, comedic monologues.</p>
<p>As for your college list, I think it’s really strong so far! I applaud you for having a fairly realistic, varied group of schools. As beenthereMTdad, research is now key. Look around CC, there are hundreds of fantastic great posts about all of the schools on your list and more. Make a spreadsheet of what you are looking for in a school and see if the ones on your list meet all of your “necessary” requirements. Then all you can do is prepare to the best of YOUR ability. Work on your pieces, take dance classes (big one!), and don’t close your mind off to other schools you may discover along the process.</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>Since you are considering USC, you might look at UCLA also, and consider Penn State too. Looks like you are off to a great start.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! AlexaMT - I thought the same about that song. Thanks for the suggestion! The PM would be very useful, so I would appreciate if you could send it. I’m trying my best to prepare with my voice teacher, and my dance teacher is very helpful as well because she gave me some ballet, jazz, and tap terms I should know by auditions. I’m also doing an acting workshop with an NYC coach pretty soon, and hopefully I’ll get some more experience since I’ll be auditioning for a dinner theatre in August.</p>
<p>takeitallin - My only worry about UCLA is the ridiculous out of state tuition, but I will look into both of those since many schools end up that price anyway…which is where scholarships come in, I guess! </p>
<p>I’ve been researching scholarships for a while anyway…my question is, how many of these schools will give talent AND academic scholarships? I know of some that will only give talent. I have a 4.2 weighted GPA, I’m ranked 20 in a class of about 600, and I’ve taken several honors/AP classes.</p>
<p>I just sent it again. I haven’t been able to get on a computer until now so I’ve been using my phone, but hopefully it finally went through. :)</p>
<p>And you are in great academic standing. Kudos! Keep up the good work so you can get as many academic scholarships as possible.</p>
<p>Thinking of merit (grade/test-score-based) scholarships – do a quick search of each of your schools, and you should be able to see what guaranteed awards they may offer based on your stats. You are wise to look at leveraging your good schoolwork into scholarships – artistic/talent awards are out there, too, but it seems that the larger dollars are often attached to academics (at least in kiddo’s experience). On your list, the ones I can comment on include CCM – check out the Cincinnatus Competition – can be anything from a guaranteed minimum award if you are invited to compete up to a full ride, Point Park can award up to $5000 academic merit, then can add artistic awards, up to a maximum of $14000 a year (academic/artistic combined). Looks like MMC could give up to $8000 for high GPA; possibly more for community service, other criteria. Are you a National Merit Semifinalist? (Well, at least at the moment, you would have received information if you are moving forward in the competition…) Northwestern participates in National Merit awards, so does University of Cincinnati (CCM)…the list goes on…</p>
<p>As to combining awards, my d’s experience was that just like academic and artistic acceptances are often separate things, so too are academic and talent scholarships, and she was able to be awarded both, depending on the school’s policies, of course. I would recommend that you look into academic scholarship competitions at the schools you choose – some of them offer up to a full ride (tuition/fees and room and board). Keep those senior grades up (hard while you’re auditioning…but possible) and good luck to you as you head out to choose and audition!</p>
<p>Thanks! That gives me some hope that I will be able to afford college, haha!
and now a random thought popped into my head about recommendations…how many teacher recs do people suggest I get, and how many artistic ones? Also, when should I ask my teachers to write a rec for me? I’ve heard a lot of different things regarding this.</p>
<p>Ask your teachers now! Give them time to get it done asap especially if you are going to do any rolling admissions programs. My D had one academic reference and one theatre/musical ref. However, I do believe she needed 2 artistic references for one program. Check the websites of the programs you are applying to for the most accurate info.</p>
<p>So did you just do a generic recommendation and make copies as necessary? My D is starting her senior year and we have garnered the agreeement to write recs. That is all the further we’ve gone with it.</p>
<p>Alright, I will! I have 2 academic refs and 2 artistic refs in mind, so I’ll ask them soon. I was wondering the same thing as narroway…any suggestions? Do you think it is best to ask for the generic rec and make copies, or get the teacher to specifically write to the college?</p>
<p>Mynemezzo - My D is doing the MT BA at MMC. You can get up to $8,000 per year in merit scholarships with the potential for an additional $4,000 in talent money. </p>
<p>As far as recommendations I believe my D had two artistic and two academic. All of her teachers and coaches wrote specific recommendations to each school and D provided them with a stamped envelope to send off the recs once written.</p>
<p>With recommendations – yes – sooner is better for all involved. Once the list was finalized, kiddo made a writtem grid for each person she asked (some schools wanted 2 artistic refs AND 2 academic, etc) and customized for each person (so the sheet said exactly what she needed/wanted). She gave school name, contact person (if there was one), deadline, the date she was auditioning, whether the letter was to be mailed or hand-carried by her to the audition (a few had that stipulation), mailing address, phone number of the program if there were questions. She also gave enough stamps for the letters to be mailed, and asked when she should pick up the hand-carried ones. Some schools ask that the recommendation be in a sealed envelope with the writer’s signature across the flap, so that kind of rules out having the as-needed stack, but none of her teachers had a problem writing the letters, as she gave them plenty of time, and all the information they needed. </p>
<p>After all completed application packages were in…she returned to each recommender with a personal, handwritten thank you letter and homemade cookies.</p>
<p>mommafrog - my D also wrote thank you notes to everyone that wrote her letters of rec and gave each of them a $ small giftcard.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks to both of you! Another thing I have recently been wondering - how many kids actually have headshots for their auditions rather than recent pics? I am planning on getting some done, but they won’t be “real”, so to speak, because the photographer does not specialize in headshots…instead she offered to do a “senior pictures” session and do closeups so that the focus is on my face. Of course I would prefer to get them done by someone who does headshots professionally, but I simply can’t afford it.</p>
<p>There is no need to spend the money on “real” headshots for college auditions. A good picture that clearly shows you is all they need.</p>
<p>okay, phew! with the amount of money that I’ve read people spend on these college auditions, I was getting worried…</p>
<p>A lot of people do get professional headshots for college auditions but don’t let it intimidate you. My D had a friend take “headshots” and they worked just fine. Schools want to see what you can do in an audition and the photo should remind them of who you are when they go back thru the resumes of all of the people they saw each day.</p>
<p>^^^^^^Ditto a professional head shot is meaningless for a college audition.</p>
<p>I don’t know how senior portraits are done at your high school, but at ours, everyone got theirs independently. So, for my kid, rather than pay and sit for a senior portrait package at a photographer, we got headshots at a headshot photographer and used those for the senior portraits for family and for the yearbook. So, if you are getting senior portraits anyway, rather than also paying for headshots, you could opt to just do headshots and utilize those for the senior portrait. Just sharing an idea and what we did. My D used her headshots beyond simply college auditions and those were her headshots for two years (including summer work, etc.).</p>