I’m looking into hiring a college audition coach for my D and have put inquiries in with Mary Anna Dennard of College Audition Coach as well as MTCA. Mary Anna got back to me right away but I haven’t heard back from MTCA yet. They both seem like they really know what they’re doing. I would love to hear your experiences with both services or any others you may have liked. We are in NJ only an hour from NYC so I wonder if it’s a good idea to use Mary Anna since she’s in Dallas. Seems kind of crazy to do when we’re so close to NY, although if the sessions are going to be via Skype anyway I guess it doesn’t matter.
There is a terrific college audition coach in Philadelphia who has helped a lot of kids get into good programs.
We used MTCA and were very, very happy with them. My d’s monologue coach was fantastic. We also live an hour from NYC and so my D was able to take advantage of their mock auditions and the masterclasses. She met and bonded with a lot of kids who were also going through the process. I highly recommend them.
They finally got back to me this morning. I feel more comfortable being able to meet in person with someone so I may end up going with MTCA as opposed to Moo. Their consult is longer and cheaper too.
If you have any concerns or questions, feel free to message me. I felt it was money well spent.
For anyone looking at this thread in the future…FYI we ended up going with MTCA and we are thrilled! My D attended Masterclasses the other day with the head of CMU’s theater department as well as a professor from NYU. Parent Q&A session after was a good two hours long and invaluable! I highly recommend them!
we are coming to the end of audition season. My D is at USC’s NY audition today and then we’re done except for a weekend trip to DC on Presidents’ Weekend to audition at American. We were VERY happy with MTCA. My D’s coach is Leo, one of the directors, and he has provided so much guidance…seriously I don’t know what we would have done without him. He picked her monologues (5 in total) and she attended two mock auditions which really put her at ease for NYC Unifieds. So far she’s gotten two acceptances but we’re still waiting to hear from the majority of her schools. Yes, it was very expensive but again, I couldn’t see going through this process without the coaching. Break a leg to everyone!
mistake post- don’t know how to delete : /
@marg928 I remember reading your original post above this past summer, and after looking into MTCA tried to convince my D we should use them. She declined, instead placing her full trust in her beloved and amazing school director who was teaching an Audition Techniques class for the 2 seniors that would be auditioning to BFA programs (one for MT and my D to Acting).
Fast forward to today, after she auditioned for 11 programs. So far, she has 1 acceptance to a BFA, 1 acceptance to an auditioned BA, 1 waitlist to a BFA and 4 rejections. (As luck would have it, she no longer has an interest in the programs that accepted her, after learning more about them.) Still waiting - extremely nervously - to hear from the final 4.
Meanwhile, I’m mentally beating myself up for not insisting that we hire MTCA. We may well have ended up in the same place, and with one more big expense added to the pile of expenses, but at least I wouldn’t have this sad regret that I let her down by letting her make that decision.
If I had it to do again, we would have hired an audition coach. (And, I’m truly not looking for pity - we’re all going through this grueling waiting period! I just thought sharing my own regret might help another family in the future.)
BAL all!
@LuvsLabs Do not beat yourself up. We are working with MTCA because I’m a single Mom and way out of my depth plus my daughter’s school is very weak when it comes to performing arts. They are great and helpful BUT you’re daughter has some very nice offers (as nice as many working with coaches). She has a strong BFA and BA and a waitlist BFA that could certainly become an acceptance.That is a real accomplishment. As someone who looks back and questions every parental decision I’ve ever made (sometimes obsessively) I completely get it. It is what we do because we care. Trust your daughter and the process.This is a nutty overcrowded crazy competitive experience. It’s a little bit of a mind-muck from what I’ve seen having a Junior and observing. You and your daughter are doing very well. Don’t let all the hype and the horse race get you.
Careers aren’t made by these programs, they are a step in their journey. Her talent and guts and your love are the essentials. You’ve got that covered. <3
Well said @laylamom ! Honestly I didn’t even know there were coaches who could help with all of this. I, too, apologized to my daughter about not being better at pushing her to apply to more places etc. But she is pretty satisfied with her choices and assured me that it was her own fault that she didn’t choose to do more auditions. @LuvsLabs I am sure you are an awesome Mom and your child will thrive wherever she is planted! A very wise friend of mine once told me “we are all raising the same kids”, in other words, all of us parents have the same struggles so we should never feel alone. I am pulling for all of these kids to find their “perfect” home!
I love this thread. My son is a junior and I’m thinking this summer we’d find someone local to the Chicago area to work with him on auditions. I’m open to any suggestions! I’ve read some great things about college audition coaches. I realize that college audition coaches are a special subset of acting coaches, but I am cautious about using the well known names, since they have so many kids, and I wonder if those coaches “sort” the kids and steer them in a way that works for the coach. I’m thinking an acting coach that has the focus of improving acting over a longer span of time, with a relationship that doesn’t end at college acceptance, may be a more desirable thing. I’d love to hear the thoughts of others. I guess I feel a little bit the college audition coaches are like tutors for the SAT/ACT, it feels more like “teaching to the test”.
Hi @DoinResearch I totally understand what you are saying about hiring an acting coach vs. a college audition coach, but the truth is the college audition process is unlike a regular audition (just like the SAT is unlike any other test) and if your goal is to get into an acting program I think a college audition coach is definitely the way to go. My daughter went to a high school with a special drama program and really thought she didn’t need a coach for the audition process, especially since the director of her program was helping her out with monologues, etc. However, as we got closer to the auditions she started to panic and after a lot of research we decided to go with a college audition coach and I am glad we did. Her coach knew exactly what each program was looking for, the programs that would be a good fit for her, and rules of the game that I don’t think a straight acting coach would have known how to do. For my daughter, it definitely paid off since this May she will be graduating from NYU Tisch. I wish your son the best of luck and please feel free to ask me any questions.
Funny story. My daughter was coached by MTCA for her college auditions. We were super happy with them, and she was accepted by her first choice BFA program. The summer before starting college she auditioned for a play with a local theatre. She was asked to do a scene with the director. During the scene the director stopped her and asked, “why aren’t you looking at me in this scene?” For college auditions the kids are told not to look directly at the auditors while doing their monologues and my daughter thought the same applied to scene readings! So VERY DIFFERENT skill sets for college auditions! I will say that the best part of working with MTCA for my d were the mock auditions that they held for the kids. She said she knew exactly what to expect when she walked into the room at her auditions.
I agree with @astute12 and @jbtcat. The mock auditions were especially invaluable. My daughter attended two of them, one in October and one in January. My Daughter also attended a master class with faculty from Carnegie Mellon and NYU. You’re not going to get that with a regular acting coach. My D has a teacher that is local who studied under Uta Hagen. She helped my daughter film her prescreens and she screwed the whole thing up. She literally had no clue what they were looking for and when my daughter came home and I put the SD card in my computer I was so upset! Mind you I gave my daughter and the teacher very specific instructions which they did not follow! She actually did not pass Miami and Ithaca prescreens and I continue to wonder if that was why…
Can you tell me a little more about the MTCA process, where are the mock auditions? My daughter knew about MTCA but didn’t share with me, she also didn’t share the info on unifieds either!. I found out from a mom at our 4th audition and by then it was too late for unifieds! I wish I discovered CC earlier and that we had done this prep!! All 3 prescreen schools accepted her prescreens and she did them herself, and one of those schools was a NO for acceptance after the live audition so far… Currently we have two no’s and waiting on 7! She doesn’t go to a PA school and no one helped her pick her monologues, nor her music! She did all the research herself. Knowing what I know now we would have gone to unifieds and I would have gotten her this prep! Praying for just one acceptance!!
Just so you realize, “Unifieds” is not something that you have to sign up for per se. It’s just a weekend where many schools come to NY, Chicago or LA and hold auditions. You would still need to book your audition through each school’s website and coordinate the schedule for the weekend yourself. Of course, knowing that those weekends exist is important because you can then decide, hey let’s do all our auditions in NY or Chicago (some people do both) and save many trips to individual schools. We had seven auditions scheduled for NY Unifieds and she did one walk in. It certainly was convenient. That’s the other perk of Unifieds…your kid can audition for schools they did not apply to by getting a same day or next day appointment with the person manning the desk at each school.
MTCA’s mock auditions are held at Pearl Studios which is in the exact same location as NYC Unifieds. Same for the master classes, they are also at Pearl. Most of my D’s sessions with her coach were via Skype even though we live less than an hour from NYC. I think she met with him in person twice at his apartment. Her coach picked all her monologues which ended up being four total. That would have been tough for her to do on her own. I don’t think her local acting teacher would have done as good a job on that either. MTCA also began doing webinars this season and there were parent Q&A sessions after the master classes and the mock auditions. Thank God I learned about college audition coaching from CC…I had no idea and neither did my D. She said herself that she can’t imaging having done all of this without them.
@rpmjsmom My girl is a Junior and we will do mocks next year so I can’t speak first hand there. From what I have seen, they create a safe environment at Pearl studio’s (or Ripley -Grier) with the teacher/coaches and students to go through the audition process in a supportive environment and get valuable feedback. Learn how to be the most comfortable, authentic and strong performer you can be in that nerve wracking environment. Also maybe demystify it a bit. It’s a practice run with real feedback and support.
The way MTCA works is they meet your kid (and you). In person… great, Skype also works well. They get a feel and get to know your child and they assign a coach in each discipline, depending on what you need. If you have great dance classes where you are …maybe you could use help with acting and monologue choices. One on one sessions are very helpful. Also about the fear of your young performer becoming robotic. That isn’t where they are coming from at all. My daughters acting coach is a graduate of the Yale MFA acting program and a Shakespeare genius. He knows what he’s doing and it’s about bringing the most truth to her work. Not interfering but learning.
I also love that their coaches are often working actors/performers. Some are well known Broadway actors. My daughters dance coach is working on the new Willy Wonka with Christian Boyle assisting with choreo. I think that they are all talented strong, well trained actors building a career. This has been a plus. No one is stale. There is a very positive energy. Nobody will blow smoke up anyones’s anything and you get the real deal. You can do as much or as little as you need (allowing you to tailor things and not break the bank). There is a great deal of humanity in every person we’ve dealt with. They love the kids and what they are doing. It is also an added layer of emotional support in addition to the knowledge. As I’ve said before here, I’m a single parent. I have really had to depend on my daughters school and her mentors through the years and they have been a lifeline for us. Money is a big issue so I try to use what we can wisely. Not everyone has to have this but for my daughter ( and me!) MTCA has been a lifeline and we are just beginning.
Christian Borle…sorry…can’t let that typo stand grrrr!
Thanks marg928 and laylamom, Yes I knew that about Unifieds but it was to late to go when I found out! I wish we went! After my daughter received her first two no’s she has been beating herself up about not attending. She had heard bad things in the beginning and I think was intimated about going and chose to go to the campus’ or Miami which 4 of her schools came to, and its an hour flight away from us! She didn’t know about the walk ins! She had no help or very little for her drama and voice teacher and I feel bad she thought she had this! I never dreamed that this audition process was like this! I think she felt bad about the cost too because she had been to New York twice this year and didn’t want to burden us with the cost of getting an audition coach! You both have given me great info and if she doesn’t get in anywhere she’s thinking of a gap year and we will use MTCA the next time around! Everyone Mom and Dad I have met on this journey has been so nice and the kids are so supportive of each other! I wish your kids two daughters the best!