@Twoboysandadog thank you! 
@katew529 Thank you for your thoughtful post, which is so well written. I pretty much agree with all the points. I believe that this board has done a pretty good job, trying to meet the needs of a huge pool of students and parents. I hadnât really thought about it, but upon reflection, a board like this has a hard role to fill when there are so many theater applicants, with very different backgrounds, budgets, preferred geography, and talent. Even harder, acting is particularly subjective so it makes it really hard to know where your child falls in terms of targeting schools. Overall, though, I definitely felt that by lurking and reading acceptance lists from last year, I expanded the list of schools to include a much wider range, I came to understand BA/BFA (um somewhat), and heard a lot of positive reports about schools I was unfamiliar with. Yes, the focus on the uber selective schools is probably a bit counter-productive, but there will always be folks want to share information about specific schools. I am SO GRATEFUL to so many of you who have shared information, answered questions, and just seem to care.
@katew529 Lovely, focused post! Have already read it a couple of times. This âholdingâ period is really tough! Thanks for the grounding words. This board is such a great support and thank you to all who share so openly and honestly on this oh so vulnerable journey! We are all in this together:)
In a big bad world, itâs lovely to encounter so much kindness from complete strangers. <3
@katew529 - I keep going through your essay to find the truest point. But itâs ALL true! Thank you for putting these thoughts on the board.
Whether youâre seeing a play at a tiny local theatre or the tour of Hamilton, the Playbill bios of the actors, directors and tech people are clear evidence that talent comes out of many colleges, not just the top name programs. As youâve stated: âWherever you go to school, your life will be what you make of it.â Thanks for your great insightâŠas we wait.
@workinmum, thank you for your kind words. I so love your sage reminder that âthese young kids with their wonderful deep and enduring souls often have more common sense and ability to refresh, reboot, and rebound coming to these same conclusions often more adeptly than us parents.â Hear, hear!
@katew529 Thank You!! Amazing post! You get the gold medal for class of 2022 acting thread!
D had Emerson today. I have finally learned to leave it all there, my girl did her best and we will not think too much into it. What is to come is out of our hands.
Be well my âvirtualâ friends.
:x
@katew529 Iâm joining the chorus of thanking you. Iâm going to try to add to what you say by posting some real experiences for my talented daughter with these ups and downs. She goes to an arts and academics magnet high school and has had private vocal and dance training since sixth grade. And summer acting training since she was eight. She has had a few leads and many ensemble parts in her high school shows and community theater. She is a petite blonde character actor who can sing and dance. (Penny in Hair Spray and Adelaide in Guys and Dolls). We like to say that whenever cast lists are posted there are only two people who are happy - the male and female leads. Everyone else wanted a better part than they got. So you take the part, do your best and have fun. A director of an off, off-Broadway company who worked with her said she âwould blow up the entertainment world one dayâ and her high school acting teacher didnât cast her this year. She was recently accepted at the University of Evansville BFA program and won her local NATS competition for musical theater, but she has a minor role in her high school musical. Sheâs diligent, shows up at rehearsals and often gets promoted during the rehearsals of a show. She got an acting talent scholarship at DeSales and a merit scholarship at Susquehanna. She made it through prescreens at the University of Michigan and Florida State and felt all her auditions went well, but did not make it through the prescreens at Carnegie Mellon, Syracuse, Ithaca, Penn State, Elon and Temple. She is being accepted academically everywhere and getting reasonable scholarships making the school costs equivalent to a state school. After in person auditions she has been rejected at CCM and U of Arts. She is still waiting to hear from a mix of BA and BFA programs. There were a lot of tears last fall, but the reactions to rejections now are quicker. I like the advice to âfeel the hurt then move on.â This is a brutal process and theyâll all need to have a thick skin. The odds are against them in most auditions. The routes to success will be unique for them all. I hope this post helps a few people keep perspective.
@diamondparent Congrats on your Dâs acceptance at Evansville and her many academic admissions, with scholarships!
Thank you for sharing such extensive detail about your Dâs journey-in-progress. Her story is a prime example of why I hate the whole pre-screen concept. I understand why so many schools feel itâs necessary, but I agree with a BFA faculty member who said they donât believe in trying to assess a live art form on the basis of a video clip. I try to remind myself that the silver lining is that if this is the path theyâre choosing, they all need as much experience with rejection as they can get. But wow, it hurts to see our kids hurting.
Yes, I completely agree about the need to feel the hurt & then move on. And I agree with suggestions made above that the kids are often way better at this than we parents are.
Iâve found this forum to be very helpful and supportive, thank you all. Weâre all just figuring it out, and Iâm grateful for the wisdom thatâs been shared, its shortened my learning curve. Weâre a family that started BFA and then changed to BA and then to LAC undecided with theater programs, and Iâve always felt I still belonged to this group even when the list of school wasnât âthe usual suspectsâ. I do think thereâs strong support for the unique fit for each kid and the journey getting there. Kid1 is officially done with auditions (mostly for $$, only 2 for admit), so now we wait for 1 final admission decision, 3 more aid packages, and then the scheduling of admitted students days begins. Iâve determined the financial aid packages are way more exciting than an admit letter, do us, its the true acceptance when we know we have a shot at affordability. Iâve decided to not talk about college for 1 solid week to Kid1, starting today.
@DoinResearch Iâve been so grateful for your posts on your sonâs journey. My spouse would be thrilled to see our D go the BA route instead. Itâs hard to know how well they truly understand what theyâre signing up for with these BFA programsâŠIâm thinking itâs a little bit like parenthood in that way!
@katew529 And if your D chooses the BA route know that she can be just as successfulâŠmy D is the poster child for this LOL
@bisouu Someday perhaps youâd want to share a few details of whatever it was the Emerson speaker said which persuaded your D to go the BA route. Could be useful to those whoâll be navigating these waters in the future.
Re: UNCSA - we were at auditions yesterday and the lovely Bill Poole mentioned that he was going to be spending the day getting letters ready to go out from recent auditions. For what itâs worth.
I had to go back and check the C/O 2022 acceptances to confirm why I love our Class! There are so many BA and BFA acceptances by our kids so far and itâs been marvelous. Many of them are not the elite schools but our group have cheered them on as if they were the #1 in the world. Each kid is different. There is not 1 fit for everyone.
Even though we have been lucky a few times, we are humble and have also applied, auditioned for local colleges that arenât really on the map for BFA and BA. We never know what these schools are looking for. This year they may be looking for kids with blue hair for all that we know. I also welcome rejections.
Our kids are going into one of the most cut-throat industries and Iâm glad that they are developing the thicker skin now. Just Tisch alone accepts 300-400 kids per year. They are producing so many in one year but only a tiny handful are employed on a constant base. All of the actors who are making it arenât just coming from these elite BFA program and even those from elite BFA programs have fallen off of the tv screens and stages across the USA and the worldâŠ
There are also many working actors with BA Degrees and many of them are in things like English and Biology. We want our kids to have the best and the brightest available but we also are helping them to develop the thick skin that is necessary to make it out of this journey, especially if they want to be working performers until retirement. Some of our kids require extra attention, some of our kids want to just do their own thing. This is why the arts are so complex, subjective and beautiful at the same time.
Below is a link for BA degree working actors
http://artsbridge.com/think-you-need-a-bfa-look-at-50-top-actors/
I donât think it was anything too special it was just the fact that it was someone in the business who said it rather than her mother. LOL My daughter had experiences in high school both acting and tech so when the auditor from Emerson mentioned that a BA would afford her the ability to pursue more than just one aspect of theatre and possibly open up more job possibilities my daughter actually digested this and began to consider a BA. My daughter also does not like to sit on the sidelines. She is well aware of her abilities as an actor and her shortcoming (or tall-comings as a 6 footer) and she knew that if she wasnât cast as an actor in a show (which is often the case for our kids) that she would want to direct, or SM or do props. She has to constantly be moving and doing. I think the BA was seductive in that way too. Building a varied skill set helps to give them jobs in the field outside of acting while they are in between jobs. She knew she couldnât waitress, or babysit etc as a side job. That would drive her crazy. We also have a friend who is a Broadway actress (Wicked, Rent) and she has helped to counsel her in keeping her options open and being able to do many things is good. Now, that being said, I am NOT suggesting that this path is for everyone. It is just what worked for my daughter. BFAâa are wonderful and awesome and I am not putting that path down at all. I will say that because the BA was not as focused in the area of acting as she wanted she did a 7 week acting intensive over the summer between sophomore and junior year. She will also continue training once she graduates in stage combat and acting. So BAâs have their downsides too :). And one more thing I am sure you are aware of, not all BAâs are created equally. Some are much more BFA-like so donât get hung up on the lettering. I know itâs hard and our sweet naive 17-year olds think they know it allâŠwhat a difference 4 years will make. <3
Does anyone happen to have the names of the auditors Pace sent to Chicago Unifieds?
@katew529 Wayne Petro for acting and Matthew Humphrey for FTVC
thank you @actingdreams
I think there was a third one with my kidâs group. They seemed to combine all 3 programs (international BA, BFA acting and FTVC) into one pool, at least during that session.