In New York, Hofstra is like that. You enter as a BA in drama (which you simply declare - no audition required), and then at the end of freshman year, you can audition for the BFA, which starts sophomore year. (And if you don’t get into the BFA, you can stay in the BA).
@yorkside - For BFA programs who have their own admissions team, you’d ideally get that info from them (and hope they are not inflating the numbers to make their program seem more competitive). Or as @toowonderful suggests, find out how many apply vs how many are accepted. And this info does change every year, but at least you can get a ballpark idea.
Either way, there’s no one source for all schools; you’d have to painstakingly get the info from each individual program… because you don’t have enough to do already, right? 
@katew529 The most sure-fire way to get Essay Length is to open up the question ON the common app, U Michigan is a common app school, so this works, and then see the ACTUAL length parameters. They will be right there. Then copy and paste that and the question somewhere. I can’t tell you how many times either my D or I had to go back and forth doing this until we got the system down. Good luck!
Many LACs offer strong theater depts. My D had 3 non- auditioned LACs (Kenyon, Muhlenberg and Denison) b/c I wanted her to have choices there too in case auditions didn’t work out rather than one “leftover”.
@toowonderful and @BFAbff It makes sense that the admits rates aren’t widely compiled and published–given the number of students involved there just isn’t the market interest for the College Board or Princeton Review to maintain this. And I’m sure there’s a lot of anecdotal information to share, as here.
My question comes in part from surprise at how many schools theater kids apply to, in particular how many very competitive programs are on most lists. I’m still learning about this process, but I know a lot about the conventional application process for highly selective colleges. There we always caution against a “lottery” mentality: the assumption that applying to a large number of highly selective schools makes your acceptance at any one school more likely (a Harvard dean once explained it this way: students think they are aiming at ten different targets and thus improving the odds of hitting one, when in reality they are drawing ten circles around the same tiny bullseye). Is it different for highly selective theater programs because they are all so different, i.e. not looking for the same things in student applicants?
I’m not challenging the advice about 12-18 schools but really want to understand the rationale so we can figure out what’s best for my daughter and our family. I am still new here and so impressed by the generosity of this group and the collective commitment to these kids–and to the arts. Makes me feel hopeful for the future!
@ginaf1102 There are three required supplemental essays for Michigan and they are all different lengths. The "activity essay is 50-100 words, the “community” essay is 100-300, and the “which college” essay is 100-550. All details are in the Common App. You really have to scour each school’s Common App: some label the additional essay “supplemental” while others are found in the “questions” section.
@yorkside I think the biggest difference between the lottery mentality between an academic and artistic admission is that academic is much more black and white. Grades, test scores, extracurriculars, academic accomplishments are pretty straightforward from an academic standpoint and these highly selective academic colleges are likely looking very much for the same traits in the students they select. Talent admission is a very different animal. It is much more intangible and capricious. It would be absolutely impossible to project what most of these schools are looking for in putting together a BFA class from year to year. It is so subjective - in essence it is like a casting process. So many things come into play including physical appearance, gender, material choice for auditions, actual performance on the day of auditions, shows a school has planned for the next few years, a certain gut feel or connection made in the audition room, etc. How can you put statistical odds on a process where they could possibly just be deciding between three blond girls and they only need one more? It’s a selection process that in so may ways defies quantification. Every year you will see kids who get rejected from many great programs, but accepted into other great programs. You just never know where the magic lies - what did program A see or want that program B didn’t? Most of the kids competing for these limited spots are pretty talented. They are likely the cream of the crop of their hometown theatre programs so there are so many things beyond just talent that could tip the edge in their favor from one program to the next. That is why casting a wide net in this process is important and necessary if one is hopeful to have a few good choices in the end.
^^ This a good way to think about it, @sopranomtmom . I love the phrase “defying quantification,” because it absolutely nails it. There’s a lot of talented students and a lot of great programs out there. But each one on both sides has a distinct personality… they just have to find each other. It’s that nebulous idea of “fit.”
In the BFA program where I used to work, we saw a lot of very talented students who we knew were not “one of ours.” This did not mean we didn’t think he/she was good! We just could tell from what we could see of their personality and style of performance that we were not the school for them. Schools want their admits to succeed and thrive in their programs; it does them no good to admit a super-talented kid only to have that kid not click with the program and end up transferring out to find a better fit elsewhere. I used to compare it to shopping for a new best friend for the next four years. It’s why these audition processes are so intense and time-consuming; the school needs to get as much information about each student as they can in a short time.
And yes, some schools do admit “types,” (the three blonde girls example), but this is more of a MT thing, not as common in acting programs.
@yorkside it is definetly different from applying to academically selective schools like Harvard. Some schools are definitely looking for a “type”, some are looking at a personality fit, we heard from some schools we visited they actually try to find kids that don’t seem “overtrained” they prefer to train them in their way of doing things. So as you can see there are so many more variables when talking about audition based programs vs academic ones. Also don’t forget for some of the selective MT/Acting programs you must pass their academic standards which are already highly selective before even getting an audition (2 programs that come to mind in this situation are U of Mich and Carnegie Mellon) So you could be Broadway ready and if your grades and test scores aren’t there you aren’t getting in.
As for the statistics, they can be much harder to find. Although I was able to find them much easier for MT than acting. We recently went to the NACAC perfoming arts fair (college fair strictly for performing arts programs) Most of the reps we spoke to said their programs accepted somewhere between 8 to 24 kids. Most also said they had anywhere from 800 to 2000 applicants each year. So even at schools whose academic acceptance rate is say 60% or higher, their acceptance rate for the drama department is usually 10% or less. Making every school like applying for the ivy league
@yorkside - the 12+ audition thing has become more popular in the last few years - my D did 7 audition programs, had 2 academic reaches, and the aforementioned 3 safeties. And she was doing more than many of the girls at her PA
@Boilermom - unless they have radically changed policies from previous years- CMU does not require BFA students to meet their academic threshold- not anything close to it. I know a kid who was waitlisted there 2 years ago with an ACT score in the high teens
@yorkside I did the same thing as @Boilermom at a NACAC college fair and asked about the statistics at each school we were talking with, and I started the mother of all spreadsheets. My son and I built and changed the list for well over a year. I wish I had, before digging into the details of each program, taken a step back and looked at the big picture with kid#2 just one year behind son, and kid#2 was selecting a path that required 8 years. We’re older-ish parents, and when the “big picture math” was crunched, I realized I needed to change the approach to select more schools that were “financial safeties”. Plus, son decided on the last day of summer to drop all BFAs and have all BA’s, with some schools allowing an “undecided”. This was a surprise, and we were back to list building mode again. I’d suggest learning about net price calculators (NPC) and expected family contribution (EFC) and reading the financial aid section as part of the list building. With the exception of 2 programs, all of the colleges to which my son is applying are auditions for talent $, not admission.
@toowonderful there could always be exceptions I am just going by what we were told when we visited the campus this past summer. They have also added prescreens which they didn’t have 2 years ago so maybe they are changing the program.
@FourStars @yorkside - Thank you. Very helpful. She was trying to write the essays in advance. I wouldn’t have expected such varying lengths for the UMich ones Thank you!
@MTMom2017, for what it’s worth, I went to school in Ann Arbor & found that students from out of state always flew in & out of Detroit - lots of shuttle transport back & forth, not that big a deal.
@Boilermom - You are entirely correct, there certainly could’ve been changes, as I said in my post. Traditionally, their academic standards have not been the same. To me, it has always seemed ridiculous that they weren’t closer to the ballpark, but not my program
@Boilermom My daughter did a hometown visit about a month ago with a CMU admissions officer. She said that the audition is actually more like 90% of the acceptance rather than the 50% academic and 50% artistic that we had previously heard.
@type1mom - That would be much more consistent with CMU’s policy in previous years
CMU is 90%+ audition. D did the summer program there and they emphasized this more than one time. The prescreen is new but the audition weighting is not.
Anyone headed to James Madison this coming weekend for an audition? (11/11?)
Hi all, the high school letters and transcripts – do they have to be in by December 1st? Or is it just our portion of the application. I’m setting up a meeting with school and want to be clear when they have to get their portion for BFA programs. They aren’t used to it (and neither am i).