<p>My D is a Junior and looking forward to majoring in MT when she graduates. We plan to attend one of the College Fairs for Performing Arts next month, either in Phila or NY. As they are only two hour events, I was wondering if anyone has attended and had any helpful hints on how to make the most of this opportunity. </p>
<p>Also, thanks to everyone for all the very helpful information about the MT posted on this forum. My D is in the first graduating class of a new HS, and we would have been lost trying to figure out how to approach this journey.</p>
<p>If I can only have one peice of advice for you it's this. Make stickers with all your D's contact info, intended major and GPA on it. That way instead of having to waste time filling out all the little cards you can just put a sticker on. You'll get to a lot more schools much faster that way.
Also if you can, get a map of where all the schools will be located in the convention center and highlight the booths you're interested. Ususally there will be one in the major paper for your area or the city the fair is hosted. THis way you can walk directly to the ones you're really interested in instead of wondering aimlessly b/c these fairs are really big and can sometimes be overwhelming. And make sure you get to all two hours of it or as much time at the fair as spossible b/c you'll def want to use all the time you can get.
Hope you you and your D have fun! I did them last year as a junior and it was really exciting doing the whole process and I had a lot of fun. They should supply their own bags for you to fill with stuff and I'd recomend grabbing at least two. Also, I didn't do the map out thing until later in the year when I went to a more general college fair and I had a better sense of direction as to what schools I was interested in. At the performing arts fair since most of the schools offeres strong theatre or MT programs anyway I found the need for mapping things out wasn't as necessary.</p>
<p>We attended a college fair for performing arts our D's junior year and found it very helpful. Before attending she had a lot of information about the more selective schools that she already knew she was going to audition for. As it turned out, these were the very schools that had the most people waiting in line to speak to the representatives.<br>
We spent our time seeking out some of the smaller programs and were able to get some great help from their reps. One school in particular stands out because the rep. made such an impression on all of us. D decided that she had to audition for their BFA program even though she had never heard of the school. She was accepted, and even though she chose to attend somewhere else, we think she would have been very happy in their program.
So I guess my two cents is: don't waste time waiting in line for some of the more selective schools she knows she wants to audition for...you can always call those schools with specific questions...spend your brief time there looking for some other exciting possibilities.<br>
Best of Luck!</p>
<p>My experience at the Performing Arts College Fair occurred at The Julliard School in NY. There was a line around the block just to get in! It was very crowded inside, as well. All the ideas above are really fantastic. The stickers are a great idea. So, too, is hitting up some schools you don't know much about, rather than the schools you're sure you'll be applying to. I would also have a list of important questions you might want cleared up with certain schools. Good luck and have fun! This is a really great opportunity for you to audition the school, instead of the othe way around.</p>
<p>We had all the performing arts and music colleges come to our school and have a huge college fair, so I had a little more time. But, it's really goo if you have specific questions, so you can get specific answers. I noticed some people asking "Can you tell me about your theatre program?" And the rep would always say "Well, what do you want to know?" It would also save you some time so you can move on to many more booths.</p>
<p>haha...the Juilliard and CMU booths were the fullest for us.</p>
<p>Do you have to sign up in advance to attend the College Fair for Performing Arts next month in NY? Is there a site for this? My D is also a junior, and we would want to attend as well.</p>
<p>Is there a way to find out what colleges are exhibiting at a particular fair? I noodled around the website provided (thanks for that!) but couldn't find a list.</p>
<p>NMR - if you click the Performing and Visual arts link in the Quick Links box on the right side of the page, it will take you to a page where you can pull up the exhibitors for the fair closest to you.</p>
<p>Sue, one thing I have learned from reading CC over the years and from all the people around the country who share experiences....is that there are lots of things going on at other places that we don't have HERE. For instance, there are no such things as college fairs for the arts! There are no state thespian conferences that I have ever heard of and no state drama type awards. No Cappies. No Tony-style awards I have read about or that my D's friends have in their states for theater. No events like the regional state auditions in North Texas for colleges (not sure I recall the name of that which has been described here), no drama classes at school, and no performing arts high schools either. Lots of these things sound quite cool. Somehow, even without all these things available, kids do come out of places from all over, like here (I know many kids from this region in this case) and go onto MT degree programs. But it is sure hard to learn about all this stuff and you're really on your own with it. Here, we just have to seek out experiences and opportunities and piece together what we can.</p>
<p>Ditto here Susan....sometimes I am just amazed that Ss came thus far with the lack of resources...I am amazed at the opportunities out there all over the country as we don't have these things in our neck of the corn fields! Our kids made it work with what they had. Where there is a will there is a way. :)</p>
<p>Has anyone attended the Chicago location of this fair? We will be going on Tuesday, if anyone has any advice for the specifics of this location, I'd appreciate it. </p>
<p>Also, some of you have referred to stickers, resumes, etc. My daughter has her resume done for her college applications, but are you referring to a simpler version? What exactly are you handing these schools? And what are you doing with the stickers? I like the idea of searching out other "exciting possibilities", so we don't necessarily plan on or need to speak with the well-known schools that she's applying to and has already/will be visiting.</p>
<p>What the schools want when you go to a college fair is not even a resume. They just want the really generic stuff like name, address, major interested in and stuff so they can mail you litereature. I'd also include GPA and maybe SATs if you want and the way to do the stickers is just buy those sticker sheets for putting addresses on envelopes that you should be able to buy at CVS or Staples. I think that most computer programs should have a way to print out this info onto a sticker sheet so you'll have a lot of stickers really quickly. You put the stickers on the little postcards that the schools ask you to fill out so that way you can spend more time talking to admissions people instead of wasting your time filling out the some info 50 times. At first I didn't want to use them but when I realised how fast it made things and that every admissions person then was like "Oh you're smart for bringing stickers!" I decided it was actually a really good idea.</p>
<p>I think that these fairs look interesting but I'm a little bit confuzed about it all, how do you sign up and what do when your there. Would it be ok to go even if you wont be applying to schools this year?</p>
<p>You don't sign up for the college fairs - you just show up. Absolutely go if you are an underclassman - probably more valuable for you than for seniors, most of whom have already assembled their list of schools to audition for.</p>
<p>It is a way of collecting information from a lot of schools in one place, and a chance to ask questions of a live person, rather than by visiting websites/email/phone.</p>
<p>I imagine that it gets kind of crazy at these college fairs. What types of questions are appropriate to have ready to ask each school's representative? (D is a HS junior).</p>