This is an excerpt from a comment I just made on another thread:
D applied to 15 schools (including prescreen schools, 2 of which she didn’t pass), did 3 walk-ins, and canceled one audition. The only time it felt like too much was when we were paying and when she was writing all of those essays and filling in those applications. She liked auditioning.
D has applied to 10 BFA programs, 2 BA programs, and 1 BM program. 3 had prescreens which she passed. Has been accepted to 1 BA non-audition program. Dropped the other BA school from the list after further research, (but of course not until after she applied and I paid the fee!). So she has 11 Auditions scheduled, 8 of which are during Chicago Unifieds. That’s going to be a crazy 3 days!
I have a girl non MT who applied to 14 schools….was admitted to two BFA’s (Chapman and University of Rhode Island) and ended up at her safety 
Our fall is crazy. My D is a junior and with the fall play, theater competitions and friday night football games (she is a majorette) it was insane this year. I can only imagine what it will be like next year fitting applications and auditions in with all of that. It has made me say some prayers for you parents who are in the thick of it now! I want to reiterate, what everyone said. My D is working with a coach, Dave Clemmons, through a group coaching program and the first time I met him he said “Be prepared to apply to 20 schools”. I started looking at the array of different requirements and was like, WHOA! After several sessions with Dave, I am going to prepare to heed his advice next year. He has impressed the heck out of me (and I am a skeptical person) and I definitely see the reasoning now. Gotta have options, even if they are at the expense of $50+ application fees! I’m thinking about you Senior parents, props to you for all of the work you are doing to support your kiddos!
@brightstaral, FYI what we were not aware of is many schools will charge you a fee to submit your academic application and an additional fee when you apply to the program and schedule your audition. So the costs actually ranged from $100 - $150 dollars per school.
My opinion…you do not need 20 schools. A list that is balanced in terms of odds, and a list that is appropriate to the particular applicant is what is needed. If you do those two things, then adding schools beyond 14 or so is not necessary.
The right list is the most important thing. Once you have that, it likely will total 10 to 14 schools (most of my MT advisees tend to have 11 to 14 schools).
I really do think @SoozieVT is right above. My spidey sense more than anything else but she actually has experience.
I just cannot imagine a world where a student can really think of 20 schools they would want to go to. Maybe that’s a thing but for both of my kids, it wasn’t. My daughter applied to 12 (I have written 11 in the past but just remembered there was one more). 9 audition 3 not. But even among those 12, there were only 8 she cared a lick about. If she ended up zero for eight in the ones she cared about, would she have settled for one of the remaining four? Yeah probably. She wasn’t wired like some to just take a gap year. And I’d bet anything it would have worked out just fine. More than fine. Probably perfect. But they were not serious contenders when she was 17/18 and trying to decide what the heck to do.
My non MT son on the other hand applied to 11. He was serious about all of them except maybe his safety school which actually was where I went to undergrad and was an application that he could submit EA just from what he already had created in the common app with no additional essays. It also could have been a really great school for him which he might have discovered had he gone there but when he applied he was humoring me reluctantly. Never got to experience the “mom you were right” moment as it turned out he had a good showing from the other 10.
PS though… he is actually at the non safety school where I went to grad school and he picked it over USC so I may still get the “Mom, you were right” I’m still waiting but he is doing well and is happy so that is more than enough validation for me!
Both of my kids applied to 8 schools. Granted, ten years have past. But both had very competitive schools on their lists and got into a majority of them. Today, if they were applying, I’d say 10 would be better. At most, 12. Their lists were right for them. That is what matters the most.
I’m completely willing to concede that things have changed since my daughter applied 4 years ago. So maybe 20 isn’t as crazy as it sounds to me. I really don’t know and I shouldn’t sit in judgement of what I don’t know now since I’m not in it. I think if we were on the MT hunt today, she would still not be able to come up with a list of 20 BFA programs that would check enough boxes for her which would mean a different mix of BFA and non audition BA and maybe a list that was still 12 or less. She wasn’t a particular fan of writing new essays etc. and was academically a strong student so I think the whole thing might have eventually annoyed her which isn’t a flattering thing to say but it is honest.
Back in my day, I applied to 2 schools and one of them was an Ivy. I would never have gotten into that Ivy today and nor did I pick it because I was afraid to take out loans to pay for it. I think it is safe to acknowledge that things do change and even though my last at bat for this college stuff was only 2 years ago (non MT son) and in the MT world, 4 years ago with my about to graduate daughter, I don’t really know the deal for this year because I’m not in it. Do what you need to do but do it with intention. Try not to put schools on your list that you have no intention to attend. That’s just panicking. You will be even more in the weeds if you go off to a school that isn’t a good fit. It’s harder and more competitive to transfer and if you are talking about a BFA program, it also might mean starting over at square zero. Totally worth it if you need to transfer out of something that you truly thought would work and discover doesn’t. But why start somewhere that you have a lot of good reasons to doubt the fit?
I have hesitated responding on this thread because we are certainly in the minority, at least of common responders. My D has applied to 7 of which: 2 non-audition ( scholarship only) , 1 apply at end of freshman year, 4 audition. She was pretty particular in what she was looking for from her college experience and is very happy with each school on her list. Well there is one that she is still so-so about( she left it on bc of proximity to home in case she changes her mind about distance by May) but the rest she believes she would be very happy in. She is looking mainly at BA’s with excellent academics, though I believe 2 are newly BFA’s but still have a lot of Liberal art courses required.
Since we are just in this now, I will not know if this was the right thing to do, but she feels it is.
I cannot imagine doing 20 applications and being able to devote full attention to each of them. I would think the work on them would be diluted. That’s a lot of essays. That’s a lot of specific “Why do I want to attend X college” statements. That’s a lot of trying to show interest in each one. It would not be something my kids would do, nor have time to devote adequately to, given their heavy duty extracurricular activities schedule and demanding schoolwork (plus researching each school deeply and visiting each and meeting with people at each school, etc.).
My son originally applied to 24 schools. Three are non auditioned safeties. He has since withdrawn 6 as he got a couple of acceptances and decided he would not go to those 6 schools no matter what,so he doesn’t want to waste time auditioning. Of course, that was already after fees had been paid. 1 was eliminated by not passing a prescreen. He has been accepted to 3, is waiting to hear from 3 for which he has already auditioned. He still has 8 auditions. It was a lot to keep up with at the beginning. Once we were able to eliminate 6 it became much easier.
He is my first, my second is not an MT major, so that should really be a walk in the park compared to this!
@daedalu, I’m surprised to hear you already have acceptances! Congratulations! I didn’t think anyone heard much before the end of December, and often not until March.
He audition at UArts on Halloween weekend and got accepted last week. University of Tampa was by video very early on, and the last one in Tulane, which is a BFA, auditioned at the beginning of sophomore year.
Oops, UArts was early November, not Halloween!
@claire74 - d did two on-campus auditions in November, one regional audition (with 45 schools in attendance), and sent in one video audition. As a result, she had offers from several schools before December. When you hear back varies considerably depending on the schools on your list.
@soozievt - I think the essay burden depends on the school list and the student. My d pretty much cruised through her essays and reused at least 80-90 percent of the material once her first 2-3 apps were in. She was academically excepted everywhere, including several fairly highly-rated academic schools (with merit scholarships). Most of the supplemental essays that may have required new material were relatively short. She submitted a lot of applications and it really wasn’t that big a deal (granted, she wasn’t applying to HYPS-type schools, but then again, there are less than a handful of tip-top academic schools with an audition-based BFA MT program). She got some applications done in about 20 minutes. Probably the hardest part was navigating some of the screwy application websites.
That’s great to have good options right at the beginning. I’ll bet this early success also boosts your son’s confidence for upcoming auditions. Congrats, again.
@claire74 Thanks, I hope so, although he says his audition at American was not good because he was too nervous, so we will see!
I can’t imagine the 20 apps either wowsa but I know everyone has there own level of comfort. I am dreading applying to 10 for the shear logistics of it . @Joyfulmama I love that your D is happy with her list. Everyone’s different and if she’s good with her number then that’s all that matters really. If she has her safeties & likes at least one that’s awesome.
We have 14 BFA MT applications and 3 acting. It’s a lot but they have such a small percentage of acceptances so I think it’s important to toss a pretty big net in the hopes she gets in somewhere, and ideally she will have some options. I know of so many kids who were academically strong and off the charts talented with many professional credits who only got offers from 1-2 of the schools they auditioned for. They were shocked and distraught when the rejections started flowing in, but fortunately they ended up in great programs where they are very happy. From what I’ve been told they often look for a certain type and I don’t want to take the risk of only applying to her top 8-10 schools, just in case they aren’t looking for her type at this time.