<p>I have definitely heard that some kids do better on one test than the other and not related specifically to the math.<br>
As kksmom has suggested, if you have a kid that may struggle with any area on standardized tests, it would be worth doing a pre-assessment.<br>
In our area, the kids take some sort of pre-ACT in middle school that predicts how they will do on the ACT. Since the ACT is part of the state required testing and done during school, all kids in our state take the ACT. For most, that is the only test they take, but many take the PSAT as well (fall of sophomore and/or junior year). Those who do really well on the PSAT are the most likely to also take the SAT; but it could also serve as pre-assessment for determining if the SAT is a better fit.</p>
<p>My S took both, and scored significantly better on the ACT (without studying for the ACTs, but after a very expensive tutor for the SATs). The ACTs are more logical, I think, and less memorization. The ACTs do have a science section (unlike the SATs), but it really tests logic and graph reading more than knowledge of science. I truly believe that some kids do better on one test opposed to the other, just b/c of the way they think.</p>
<p>I might be tipping into the “overwhelmed” column about now, and my D is only a junior. She is a smart girl, but lazy about academics. She cares about her grades, but finds everything more important than homework. I know there are kids who actually do their homework at rehearsal or stay up until midnight after rehearsal to finish it, but she just isn’t one of those. I think we are going to have to become very strict this year about bad grades = no fall play, no winter play, no contest play, no musical. I don’t want all of her college options to be strictly limited by grades and test scores. I didn’t really want to get ACT/SAT tutoring, but maybe it’s as important as the rest of the coaching.</p>
<p>Merlehay,</p>
<p>My D was similar to yours through sophomore year but showed a jump in maturity and an understanding of the impact of grades on her future options this past year as a Junior. She is not a great test-taker, so despite her ACT prep, managed just average scores, although she will try again in September. In putting together our list of schools, her grades and scores did have an impact. We had to cut out several possibilities, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t left with MANY options. Many of the MT programs are at schools where she will have an excellent chance of academic acceptance. And she is excited about all of them.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that better scores and grades impact your ability to get academic scholarships. There has been much discussion on CC about not knowing the final cost of a school until you get their offer, but we didn’t want to be in a position to get her hopes up then dash them, so we cut all schools over $40,000 all-in. Had she had great scores we may have been more open to the possibility of her applying to those schools, knowing there would be a chance for an academic scholarship. Again, while we felt guilty at first with that limitation, it turns out there are still so many options.</p>
<p>As far as cutting out all the shows, for us it was, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Tech week aside, my daughter does better in school when she is happy. She is happiest when she is in a show. If we were to take away all that, she would be miserable, mope around, and either watch a lot of TV or be on her computer all the time. It would not make her do better in school. We became more careful, and choosy, in what she chose to audition for. No more doing two shows at once. If she’d done the school show in the past, she just didn’t audition for it, or checked the box that she only wanted to be cast if in a lead. We found a good balance this year, between shows and lessons and coaching. Next year, when she is a Senior, she is dropping Chorus (and therefore Madrigal Choir which meets daily after school). Between those groups and her a cappella group, she was sometimes singing 5 or 6 hours/day. Add in a show? Add in lessons and coaching? Not good for your voice. We were just asking for a fatigued voice when auditioning.</p>
<p>My suggestion for you is to ask D for a list of her top 5-10 dream schools. We all know this will change as you both do more research, but just ask. Or make a list of the top 10-15 MT schools (not a big believer of this since fit is the key for us, but you have to start somewhere). Then research their average GPAs and mid 50% for ACTs and SATs. This will help make clear what she needs to achieve in school and on tests this year to be considered for these schools. Maybe it will motivate her.</p>
<p>And remember, it’s not just about getting in, it’s about graduating and being happy along the way. If a school is too much of an academic push, and you don’t have an extremely motivated kid, they won’t survive. Find the right fit!</p>
<p>Good luck!!!</p>
<p>I know I’m kind of late but for someone actually doing it again I can give 3 pieces of advice before auditions. </p>
<ol>
<li>DON’T limit the number of schools you apply to! I made that mistake and got results but they ended up not being the ones I wanted so make sure you give yourselves all the options you can. </li>
<li>Really diversify your list with BFA’s, BA’s, fits, reaches etc. I know it kinda goes without saying but I still had to say it. </li>
<li>Come round audition time (January, February) your daughter will need to turn into basically a germaphobe. I say this because I myself was a little paranoid of falling sick during auditions and saw people who did so when the time comes I’m not saying to lock her in a plastic bubble but just to have lots of Orange juice for vitamin C and Matcha Tea cause it has a huge of amount of antioxidants and make sure you wash your hands whenever you come home.</li>
</ol>
<p>Bumping for the new year!</p>
<p>My D would say she would have auditioned at one school lower on her list in the early part of the season to get the jitters out, and she would have auditioned at maybe a couple more schools at Unifieds just to get her voice warmed up.</p>
<ol>
<li>Taking a gap year and taking the acting job was a GREAT choice. Best decision ever. She learned so much from the experience about pro actors and acting, so it gave her quite a bit of perspective when she finally did arrive on campus. She takes her studies seriously.</li>
<li>It’s possible we underestimated the acting training at two schools where we saw shows where the acting looked “lame.” The directors at those particular (non main stage shows) were not theatre faculty, and inexperienced directors can make even well trained and talented actors look stiff. I’m still not sure why they were invited to direct, but I feel bad now for thinking the actors didn’t know how to make “strong choices.” It may have not been their fault for those scenes which disappointed us.</li>
<li>Perhaps should have done SAT coaching and MT coaching. My daughter was a good student and a lovely singer/dancer/actor, but a bump in the SAT scores and some knowledge from coaches who do this every year may have put her up a level.</li>
<li>Would have started earlier on math, like when she was six months old, so she could have gotten in another year of high school math which would have made her eligible for a few more schools and/or scholarships! ;)</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Would have considered the campus “climate” more. I made the mistake of saying only the program/teachers mattered, not the location. Now I think both of my kids who attend huge schools might have been happier on a personal level if they had found smaller schools that weren’t so famous for their sports. My nerdy family likes museums, day trips to historical places, live theatre, hiking with the dog, concerts, etc. You can really feel like an outcast if your enthusiasm for sports is not in line with the vast majority on campus. On the other hand, it does make it easier to do your laundry and find a practice room on home game days!</li>
<li>If you are a faithful CC reader, you can see that I have totally changed my mind on some positions I have held in the past… read old postings with caution. :)</li>
</ol>
<p>After dropping my D off last week I now truley believe they end up were they are meant to be!</p>
<p>I found CC late in the game last year. If I had been better informed, we might have made a more careful list of schools (dropped one, added a few more). I would have had her start preparing for the auditions earlier so she could have done some fall ones (maybe at a school not at the top of her list). Her very first audition was at her “favorite” school at the time and was the most difficult (according to her).</p>
<p>Of course, as in broadway95’s case, we all absolutely love where she ended up! It has such wonderful people, great location and I am looking forward to all she will learn while there. We get to go up there for the Freshman Showcase in September and we can hardly wait!</p>
<p>I also would not discount some of the lesser known programs. It goes to having a balanced list. So many kids are trying for the same 10 to 20 schools. Research some of the lesser known schools, you may find a gem. </p>
<p>During the process my daughter decided she really did not want to wait one year let alone two years to be able to audition for mainstage shows and she found a school that does 10-14 shows a year on top of the student directed ones. While there is nothing wrong with student directed she wanted the added option of mainstage as well.</p>
<p>Bumping this thread to help juniors (and others) that are closely watching this cycle. </p>
<p>Would have done more on campus auditions, and NYC or Chicago Unifieds instead of LA for those that having rolling admissions. </p>
<p>We would have started working on prescreens MUCH earlier – this will be critical with so many more schools requiring prescreens next year!</p>
<p>Along with maMTma’s post: We did this last year, but with more schools doing prescreens, we would have gotten help with the actual filming of them. D had a coach & lots of help getting ready, but we filmed prescreens in our living room with a flip camera - ugh! She passed most, but not all & I’m shocked knowing what I know now that she passed any of them! ;)</p>
<p>I would second what maMTma said… prescreens are going to be huge. Hearing that Baldwin Wallace and Elon will be adding them next year. Currently Unv of Michigan, Texas State, Otterbein, UCF, Coastal Carolina (if over 150 miles from campus), FSU, and Pace all have prescreens (I am sure I missed quite a few). This number will only increase next year. </p>
<p>Shenandoah, Penn State, and Indiana-Bloomington have prescreens, and Ithaca added a prescreen this year.</p>
<p>Prescreens are an audition. Your D or S needs to be fully prepared by October.</p>
<p>I’ve had my eye on this thread for more than a year now, and it’s my turn to contribute though my comments go beyond just the audition season. I’ve been keeping notes during that time, and you’ll see where my opinion has changed a couple of times with some contradictions. </p>
<p>First, I’m going to start with what I think we did right:</p>
<p>a) TV turned off Monday - Thursday. Wife instituted this policy years ago and even for me (“What if the Saints are on Monday Night Football?!”). We wanted no competition to getting homework done properly. While there were exceptions to this, it was one way of saying academics come first. We also were of the firm belief that strong grades/ACT scores equaled more opportunities and/or merit money.</p>
<p>b) Attended a MT Summer Camp between Jr/Sr years. At a time when I think we all (mom, dad, and son himself) were questioning our son’s desire/commitment to this expensive endeavor he came back from camp convinced he could and wanted to compete in this arena which in turn re-affirmed our dedication of resources (i.e., time, money) to him.</p>
<p>c) saved campus visits to auditions and the spring break of his senior year. The one place he thought was cool as all get-out as a sophomore turned into a, “I’m simply not going there” as a HS senior. </p>
<p>d) Read Mary Anna Austin Dennard’s book, “I Got In!”</p>
<p>e) good voice coach for almost two years, good acting coach to help with pre-screen and audition material for almost a year. Best of luck in figuring out the definition of “good”, but don’t stop until you really think you’ve reached that level.</p>
<p>e) There is no safe school. Son decided early in the process if he didn’t get in to one of the 15 programs on his list, he would either take a gap year and try again or ditch MT altogether and pursue something else. </p>
<p>f) We didn’t limit his audition list based on sticker price. Partially because of his academics - 4.0 GPA, 29 ACT - we did not want him to not apply based on a school’s MSRP. There’s not enough transparency in the market - besides Texas State - to know what the real “take home” cost was going to be. Maybe we would be surprised at how much merit and/or talent money a school would offer. If not, wife and I were comfortable the prospects of having the uncomfortable conversation of, “Sorry, we’re not going to pay that.” </p>
<p>What is now the #1 school on our list offered enough in scholarships to bring the four-year drive-off (or is that walk-in?) price down to a level that we would be willing to pay. Granted, we’re looking at the prospect paying a total of $200K, but we think it’s going to be worth the premium.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t offend me if you read this and think to yourself, “That’s proof that we need to strike all of those $200K+ schools off our list now.”</p>
<p>g) converted figures from the Common Data Set about cost into four-year total cost figures. Also added in real figures for us about travel. I know myself and my wife, and we’re not going to be content in only seeing him over the Christmas break. Also, don’t forget about tuition inflation. $225K is a much more sobering figure than the $45K per year price you see on the school’s website.</p>
<p>h) no loans, no loans, no loans. Admittedly we’ve been saving for this since he was one (and little did we know that we weren’t saving near enough), and son is only one of two kids.</p>
<p>i) Keep an eye on the next step in The Process, not on what school you think you want to attend. Fantisizing about attending this or that school was daydreaming and wasted time. Don’t get me wrong - all three of us did our fair share of daydreaming. Just recognize it for what it is.</p>
<p>j) son had a light load of classes in his senior year. He earned this by taking seven classes in each of his freshman - junior years. This was a big help.</p>
<p>j) encouraged our younger daughter to focus on math/science. Partially a poor attempt at humor, but on the serious side: 1) I shudder to think what this would be like if son was female (i.e., supply/competition), 2) expect (relatively) greater opportunity for her in those male-dominated fields, and 3) you need to be good at this performance thing.</p>
<p>Really good. “I can’t believe I got that part!”-good. “Young man, I saw the original on Broadway way back when and you were just as good as X.”-good. Some will disagree with this, that kids need time to come into their own. That’s a leap-of-faith I don’t think we could have made.</p>
<p>Scratch that last paragraph. Met one girl who never got the lead in one of her school plays, yet received an on-the-spot offer from an audition-based program. </p>
<p>Enough of the pats on the back. To the good stuff - what we did wrong:</p>
<p>a) Started reading College Confidential relatively late in the process. In January of his junior year we found this website, though I wish it would have been spring of his sophomore year. It takes a little while to put everything in context, but ultimately this website played an important role in being able to say, “We did all that we reasonably could to get him ready.” Thank you, everyone.</p>
<p>b) Read too much College Confidential. It’s easy to get too immersed into something and you start to put too much emphasis on ancillary items. Auditions and grades/scores, scores/grades and auditions. Everything else is a detail and at times I forgot that. Easy to do getting so immersed into this process especially if you are reading CC five - ten times a week (ok, 5-10 a day when offers were being made).</p>
<p>c) wish we would have sent him to a MT camp during the summer before his junior year, then to a different camp the next summer.</p>
<p>d) forgot at times that by-and-large our teenager is a machine built to only do the minimum necessary to keep adults off his back. On the administrative side he did what he was asked to do…after the third ask. In August when the list was whittled down to 15 schools, I wish I would have more effectively equated the optimism of that moment with a commitment from him of how much work he was going to need to do. It got frustrating after a few months that the tediousness of what schools required ended up being the tediousness of what Dad required. September and October were such hard months.</p>
<p>e) son said that he wishes he would have tackled all the supplemental essays after his LA teacher helped him with the Common App essay in September. That would have made for an incredibly busy five weeks ending Oct. 31; however, it would have felt less like pulling teeth which is what August felt like. </p>
<p>f) son made the mistake of using his personal email address with the Common App, thus half his schools communicated with via that address and the other half with his professional address. Made keeping up where we were in the process difficult. Made keeping up where we were in the process difficult. Made keeping up…</p>
<p>g) Didn’t keep an eye on the next step in The Process. When Texas State said “no”, we realized how much time we wasted fantasizing about how great it would be if Kaitlin called. Nothing but respect for Jim & Kaitlin - this is about us not respecting The Process.</p>
<p>h) Despite numerous warnings on CC not to do so, we (son and parents) extrapolated audition feedback and speculated about offers. That means one school where afterwards son was practically gushing like Sally Fields - “You like me, you really do like me!” - did not give him an offer and one that felt like they practically said “Next!” gave him an offer. </p>
<p>Best of luck to next year’s class, though I suspect a great deal of what I’ve written is not new material. If your MT’er is currently a sophomore, can’t recommend highly enough the Texas Musical Theater Workshop. Austin if beautiful in June.</p>