<p>Okay, I feel this has been covered before but it’s a new spring and, besides, I can’t find the posts! I am planning on taking my junior D on a spring break trip. We will be covering mostly the northeast, about half of the schools will have BFA programs, the other half BA. She thinks she will apply to MT but isn’t completely sure she won’t look at acting BFA’s. I have done this type of trip with my older D a couple of years ago, but she was not looking at BFA programs. Besides which, I learned a few things on that trip that I will do differently this time. But here are my questions:</p>
<p>1) How long should I schedule for each visit? For logistical reasons, it is almost impossible for us to see more than one school a day but I was wondering, on average, how long it realistically takes to look at a school when you are looking at the school and the specifically the theatre department.</p>
<p>2) I am leaning towards the BA schools in terms of the visiting because I feel that with some of the BFA schools she will either visit them when she auditions or if she auditions at Unifieds she can visit if she is accepted. Does this make sense? On the other hand, she feels at this point that she will want a BFA and is only looking at BA’s as safeties and my worry is that this trip will only confirm these feelings. Therefore, if anybody has any BA school possibilities that you know has really good theatre department tours and/or open houses, I would love to know about them. She is a strong student but doesn’t test well and therefore will not be looking at schools such as Yale, Brown, Vassar, etc. We plan on visiting Bard, Sarah Lawrence, Skidmore and Muhlenberg on the BA side, and Syracuse, Ithaca, U of Arts and NYU/Tisch on the BFA side. She has already seen CMU and Emerson and since we live in California will later look at schools here. </p>
<li>How many days in a row can you look at a college, drive to the next location, spend the night and look at a new school without going crazy? I am happy that we can at least set up camp in New York for a few days and look at NYU, Sarah Lawrence and Bard from there.</li>
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<p>If anyone has any advice or stories of their own to tell, I am happy to hear!</p>
<p>I realize I did get some advice a couple of months back about visiting Tisch and some schools in general, mostly from SoozieVt, which was/is very helpful but if anyone has anything to add, that would be great.</p>
<p>You'll also be able to visit Syracuse and Ithaca at the same time -- possibly on the same day. As far as how long you will be there, it varies. When we visited Syracuse and Ithaca, we got personal guided tours through the department which took several hours each. Both schools were great -- and she's now attending Syracuse, largely because of the wonderful impression we got on that first visit.</p>
<p>If you're really interested in BA schools, and you're going to U-Arts, take a side trip up to Allentown and visit Muhlenberg. They have a great theater department.</p>
<p>Be sure you check your travel dates with the university -- if they're on spring break, you might not even find anyone to give you a tour. And it's difficult to get much of an impression of a college if there are no students there.</p>
<p>HSN thank you for this question. I am taking D on a college tour during her spring break this spring and was wondering some of the same things. We are doing the Carolina's plus a few spots that are between here and there, but I was wondering similiarly about how many can you or a kid really pay attention to.
Then we had a whole new twist when D met with her guidance counselor who basically thought the colleges we had listed were under-estimating her abilty and gave her another list of schools she should acaemically consider.</p>
<p>So I too wonder how much can a kid process. We have 4 schools that are not on break during her break to look into (ELon is on break at the same time, is it worth visiting when schools are not in session?), if we plan on 6 days, is it really possible to do a school a day?</p>
<p>You know, when my D and I were doing these trips, we never got tired of seeing new places. Each school was so different -- some we liked, and some we didn't. Visiting them really helped to clarify which schools she was going to apply to. The driving around can get tiring though -- so bring lots of show tune CDs to sing along to! And try to enjoy this time with your child -- it can be a great time to bond. </p>
<p>Regarding the guidance counselor -- unfortunately some are not very well-informed about MT programs. Often schools that might be an academic match don't offer musical theater programs. And some very highly ranked MT schools aren't as selective academically. You need to decide what is most important to you and your D personally.</p>
<p>My D and I also began college visits during spring break of her junior year. The most productive visits were those where she had the opportunity to talk to faculty, visit the department, attend a class, talk to current students and the most telling was to attend a production. It pays to be prepared and make appointments for the tours and to visit the MT departments and get tickets to shows if possible. I read last year where someone made a spreadsheet to enter information to compare the programs. Maybe a journal or diary would help and take pictures. You will come away with lots of brochures and papers so be prepared to keep all of that organized.</p>
<p>RE: BA programs you may want to considering visiting....James Madison University in Harrisonburg offers a BA a Musical Theatre and a BM in Vocal Performance with a concentration in Music Theatre. My D is very happy in the BM program. Both are audition programs.<br>
Good luck to you and enjoy your time with your D.</p>
<p>Gosh, it sounds like WAY more preparation has to be done for a MT or acting BFA trip than a usual college trip. I appreciate all the advice about calling ahead and trying to arrange meetings with faculty and/or students, and will follow that advice. When I visited schools with my older D after she was accepted two years ago we got snowbound in Vermont in early April after visiting Colgate and I'm starting to get nervous about all the driving around Syracuse/Ithaca. And, no, I don't do small planes! I look at the map of New York state, and I can't BELIEVE how big it is and the distances between all these schools. Does anyone know how close Penn State is to Muhlenberg and/or Philadelphia? I'm toying with the idea of substituting that for Syracuse. Also, if anyone has advice as to the differences in the programs, I'm all ears, or eyes, I guess! I'm trying to give my D a feeling for these different programs. With the exception of a few specific schools she knows she wants to visit, I'm not so sure at this point that visiting the actual programs is as important as sampling different kinds. Does this make sense to any of you veterans out there?</p>
<p>Penn State is about 6 hours from Syracuse, and 2 or 3 hours from Muhlenberg, which is a little over an hour from Philadelphia. And believe me, State College can also have some pretty severe weather in the spring -- last year during spring break they had a pretty big snow storm! </p>
<p>I have to disagree a bit with your comment about visiting the actual schools. There can be a big variation between BA programs; maybe less difference in BFA programs, because there are fewer of them. Often the differences are not apparent until you actually get on campus. However, if you can't visit all of the schools this spring, you can always see them at the audition or after your acceptances come in.</p>
<p>You hit it on the head, onstage, that I feel more of an obligation to see the different BA schools than the BFA ones, both because I'd like her to be more open to some of the terrific theatre programs in a BA setting, and also because I have heard how similar some of the BFA programs are to each other. However, location and setting and difference in feel is important, so I think I'm going to try and squeeze in as much as we can without killing ourselves.<br>
One of the tough things about these kinds of trips is even though your passenger is a driver if you've traveled cross country and are renting a car (in our case) you have to do all the driving!</p>
<p>HSN - I just bumped an old thread about college visits -"Are College Visits Worth It"- it might answer some of your questions - there was lots of good advice/thoughts/ideas in it.....</p>
<p>HSN if you are saying you are driving from California to the east coast may I suggest you look at driving a route through Bloomington, Indiana? Univ of Indiana Bloomington was the most gorgeous large campus we saw with a wonderful BFA program and a non-audition BA Theatre program.</p>
<p>HoosierMom---No, no, no, I am not driving from California. I am flying cross country, renting a car and then seeing as much as we can handle. I've heard wonderful things about IU Bloomington and it may be a program my D applies to and looks at it were she to be accepted.<br>
MTMama--Thanks for bumping up the thread!</p>
<p>HSN - I feel as if I'm experiencing a deja vu reading your post. My D was looking at the same types of schools for the same reasons, and we wanted to cover as many as we could knowing that other schools on her tentative list at the time would be seen at auditions. As others have said, it is beneficial to set up appointments with the theater departments for individual tours in addition to the campus tour and general information session. Some departments are very generous in letting you sit in on classes and attend rehearsals. Many provide comp tickets to shows. We purposely did not schedule visits for more than one school per day for this reason. We were at some schools all day if there was a show. Also plan on eating on campus - it's a great way to get an additional perspective of the students (and the dining options!) as well as a chance to talk to them - they love to talk about themselves and their school. We were lucky in that our spring break is two weeks and we were able to see six schools in 10 days, including a weekend in NY to see shows. </p>
<p>You can certainly find out the difference between a BA and BFA program on each school's website and compare curriculum, but nothing takes the place of walking on that campus, seeing the students in action, observing faculty and hearing the philosophy of the school from the administration. My D was able to make immediate impressions from these visits and remove some of the schools from her list accordingly. I would be happy to give more details of our visit if you want to PM me. (I, too am from CA and felt like a fish out of water starting this whole process) Good luck!</p>
<p>HSN, make sure you speak to current students about the MT or Drama program. We got a fabulous pitch from a department head at a high-ranked east coast school...she went on and on about the great things the students get to do...but when we asked the senior BFA MT student who took us on our tour about those opportunities, she had done none of them. They were available to a very small select group.</p>
<p>The visit is important, just to get a feel for a possible home for four years. My D visited all her schools except one. Two schools were trimmed from her list after visits. However, when we visited the school she eventually chose, it was love at first sight for both of us. We heard angel choruses, felt Cupid's arrow, swooned, the works. Sometimes, you just KNOW. The school looked great on paper but once we visited, we KNEW it would be a perfect fit.</p>
<p>No MT major here but I will say the longer we have spent on each campus, we got a better sense for the overall feel of the school. We were just at Stanford last week and it was interesting seeing all the cyclists come out of the woodwork at 5pm. I thought we were in Holland! :)</p>
<p>We've sometimes gotten more out of just people watching or hanging out in the bookstore than from the info session and tour.</p>