<p>“The biggest sticking point would be getting to the audition.”</p>
<p>Okay, I completely disagree with this. Of course, you can get yourself to an audition. Good luck! </p>
<p>Shenandoah in Winchester, VA has a terrific program.</p>
<p>Catholic U in DC has a good program.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania has some very fine programs within a fairly reasonable drive from Maryland including:</p>
<p>Penn State
Point Park
Carnegie Mellon
U Arts
Temple</p>
<p>There are more. There are scholarships and fin aid available at all of these schools. </p>
<p>James Madison in Virginia is another very fine program.</p>
<p>I teach in the School of Theatre & Dance at James Madison, and we have quite a few students from MD in the musical theatre, theatre, and dance programs. I would be happy to put you in touch with some if you email me at <a href=“mailto:arecchkm@jmu.edu”>arecchkm@jmu.edu</a>. I would also be happy to answer any questions you may have. </p>
<p>If you are a strong academic student and have community engagement I would suggest looking at the application for the Dingeldine Scholarship… It requires a separate application, applying to the university (non-binding) Early Action and an on-campus interview – <a href=“Dingledine-Bluestone Scholarship - JMU”>Dingledine-Bluestone Scholarship - JMU;
<p>The program does require an on-campus audition.</p>
<p>Agree with all of the programs listed above, and with exploring the Academic Common Market program for students from MD pursuing the BFA in Musical Theatre at Coastal Carolina.</p>
<p>If your academic stats are high you may qualify for academic merit at schools…</p>
<p>In addition to the schools listed above, look at Muhlenburg, Catawba, Eastern Carolina, and Illinois Wesleyan. </p>
<p>In MD… Towson and UMDCP do occasionally do musicals, and have very good theatre programs. Goucher is another MD school that has strong theatre, music, and dance and does do musicals.</p>
<p>You may have to be creative to find a non-auditioned, academic, and financial safety… but look at schools with guaranteed merit for your stats, and schools that may meet your full financial need.</p>
<p>Spend time on the Financial Aid forum as well. You may find schools there that would be affordable, do not require an audition, etc… that have opportunities to pursue experience and training. </p>
<p>Flossy - I meant physically getting there, not artistically, and I hope that is the way ifhgsfj read my message since that was the major concern that he mentioned, and I addressed the concern. :)</p>
<p>ifhgsfj …you have gotten some great suggestions in earlier posts of schools in driving distance (possibly even day trips) in VA, DC, PA, etc. and you should look into those. I think going to Unifieds in NYC is something to strive for because one of the advantages of Unifieds is that it contains the overall cost of auditioning since you can audition for many schools in one weekend at one location. In this case, NYC is a train ride away for you. What I suggest is starting to build an “audition expenses” savings by doing some jobs for pay…anything…mowing lawns, babysitting, working in a store/restaurant part time, etc. and when it comes to the holidays and your birthday, ask any relatives who might normally give gifts, to contribute money for the audition fund instead. You should be able to save between now and February for the train and lodging in NYC for the Unified auditions. </p>
<p>That said, and I truly understand the economic situation you face, the cost of auditioning is peanuts compared to the cost of attending college for four years. You are likely to qualify for need based aid and hopefully you have a strong academic profile that will bring in some merit aid too. But it won’t be free. So, it is very important to sit down and discuss with your parents what the plan is to fund your education AND the extra expenses such as travel to and from school, books, personal expenses, and the like. As you are worried (understandably) how to come up with the funds to attend auditions, the bigger picture must be part of a serious discussion with your parents in terms of the funding plans, because going to Unifieds is really minor in the scheme of things. </p>
<p>Also, the threads that Emsdad gave the links for…read those…arm yourself with information…you will glean a lot for those threads as a starting point.</p>
<p>@entertainersmom Physically getting there is what I meant, too. It’s a minor challenge in the scheme of things. Basically, what Soozievt said above.</p>
<p>Excited to say that we have two out of the three recommendation letters in their sealed envelopes and in electronic form. The third is written but awaiting envelope stuffing and signing. So relieved to have even the smallest of pieces of this large puzzle done :)</p>
<p>Every little step.</p>
<p>Hello all! My S has been doing MT since 6th grade. He’s an actor first, then a singer and a dancer. He performs in his high school shows, as well as some community theatre. He sings in choir and a pop acappella group. He’s been struggling to figure out whether to apply to BFA programs, in addition to a competetive group of BA schools that offer theatre majors/minors and performance opportunities outside of the curriculum. To help him decide, he’s at Interlochen this summer for their high school production of “Les Mis”. After being at at camp for two weeks, he has been inspired to try for MT audition schools. I’m happy that he finally feels his calling - it took exposure to a national program with kindred spirits to help him - but I’m feeling really behind on the audition process! He’s getting some solid feedback at Interlochen on song choice/preparation, but prescreens are coming up fast. I’m trying to take the advice of the many veteran CC users here - BREATHE!</p>
<p>^I was right where you are this time last year, but my son was at CMU pre-college to figure out where he fit in the scheme of things. Read, read, read the threads here. You have a great 2019 CC group, as well as us “old timers” 
No question is silly! This is where I learned what a dance belt was, and not a moment too soon!</p>
<p>So: college list narrowed down to a workable number, songs and monologues picked, headshots done, common app and essays started, first audition(for scholarship only)scheduled!!! I think we’re almost ready for the next step: filming prescreens and actually completing applications. This suddenly became very real for us. Bought some badly needed new leotards and tights for D, and a pound of chocolate and case of wine for me. Yup, we’re ready for the next step.</p>
<p>@mtflmomof1 - WTG! You are really on the ball! Preparing this early will make it so much easier in the long run. Best of luck!</p>
<p>We have found narrowing down the list of schools to be difficult, although the prescreen process will probably do it for us. Whenever the list gets down to about the right size, d hears something great about a school or sees a performance with a grad who looks really good and another couple of schools get added back to the list.</p>
<p>@mtflmomof1 - Wow! That is impressive.</p>
<p>Allow me to lower the bar for anyone who is a little farther behind. 
We still have a master list of about 40 schools. D has chosen several to focus on right now, but we haven’t gotten all of the way through the list of 40 in her process of elimination. She has not chosen songs or monologues. She did sign up (after I prompted her) for an account on the Common App and added two schools to that list. D is entering production week for a summer musical. Next week she’s going to do an audition workshop and hopefully get to work on the song/monologue selection. The songs she worked on this past spring and the summer for her voice teacher are basically not good choices for auditions. We knew that when they were chosen, but went with them anyway.</p>
<p>@EmsDad - I completely understand the difficulty of narrowing down the list. I’ve been devouring all the information I can about these schools and almost every one seems to have something that would draw me to it. I guess it’s going to be like that on the other end as well. The auditors will have so many talented students to see that I don’t envy their position in choosing their roster of accepted students. </p>
<p>D is going to start filling out apps on Monday between rehearsals (her fall school show starts rehearsing this week!) and I think after filling out a dozen or so her focus will increase.</p>
<p>We are thinking seriously about skipping the Common App, several of d’s schools do not take it, I heard bad stories about it from last year’s class, and I saw this article:</p>
<p><a href=“The 2014 Common App Is a Glitch-Ridden Nightmare for High-School Seniors”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/01/the-2014-common-app-is-a-glitch-ridden-nightmare-for-college-seniors.html</a></p>
<p>Some schools, like CMU, use only the Common App. Son had quite a few schools that used the Common App. and only had one glitch, which turned out to be with CMU. They don’t upload the applications until September or October and we didn’t receive notification that they received the app. until then. I was assured by the women in Admissions that was normal and to not worry, and she was right. I was grateful for the ease of using the Common App., because son ended up applying to 15 schools, including non-audition safeties. </p>
<p>Last year the common app was totally revamped - which is why the process was SO awful last year. It went live on August 1st and I don’t think the bugs were worked out until January or later. All the theatre programs - all colleges in general - then had to scramble to get their application requirements/process to line up with the new common app. High school counseling centers, too. Our H.S. Naviance never did synch up while we were going through this, so all recommendation letters were submitted via snail mail. Hopefully, you all will have it MUCH easier this year. If it works - and your schools use it, the “one stop shopping” really is a better way to go.</p>
<p>@EmsDad,I had the same thought because many of D’s schools do not use the common app but at least two of her schools only take the common app. It is a pain.</p>
<p>@Emsdad and others, to offer a different perspective hopefully to dispel some of the concern. My son applied to 11 schools in the most recent application cycle, 9 of which required the Common App. He had no problems with the site whatsoever including for the 4 of the 9 which were submitted EA (before 11/1) so I’m not talking about anything long after January. All of his applications were in by then. He could cut and paste from Microsoft Word with no problem at all and applied EA to U Michigan using the Common App also with no problem at all. Both of these things were mentioned as problematic in this article. The only thing he ran into was he had to use Chrome as the browser instead of Explorer for the final submission. Other than that, I have no idea what this article is talking about.</p>
<p>I’m not doubting that some people had problems but remember nobody writes articles about having things work like they are supposed to. I suspect that was the case for the majority of applicants or the whole thing would have blown up and it didn’t. </p>