Details of my Elon Visit! :)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Elon University
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<p>I posted this is my other thread, but for those who may not look at that, here's some sort of Visit Report! :P </p>

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<p>As I said already, the campus is beautiful. There are three fountains around the campus, I believe, and as many lakes. The students seem great. The tour guide was very thorough and made the tour enjoyable. A lot of the things covered in the information session I knew from my research or from the Elon site already, which means you probably do too, so I won't cover that. </p>

<p>They have a really nice gym facility for students. I think he (the tour guide) said that you can pay $10 at the beginning of the year and get a personal trainer to help you work to stay fit. Not something you see at all schools. </p>

<p>The dining facilities actually looked really good, and they have a few national chains there too (Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, etc.). There are also restaurants on campus (i.e. servers bring you menus, etc.) and one even has a room with leather recliners and a flat screen tv where you can watch games and so on. </p>

<p>The dorms are a good size (especially after looking at Wake Forest's a few days before - they are ridiculously small there) and there are mostly 4 people to a bathroom, as opposed to communal showers. Definitely a plus! :) </p>

<p>The buildings for the different majors/subject areas are all very modern and you can tell that there have been several improvements fairly recently. The School of Communications is particularly impressive! </p>

<p>I met one professor from the English Department (she interviewed me) and she was very nice, very approachable. I can easily see her going the extra mile for her students. </p>

<p>All students are allowed to have a car, and the student parking lot isn't far out of the way, like many others I've seen or heard of. There is a shuttle bus that takes students into Burlington to Target, Wal-Mart, etc. and there are some shopping facilities there, though nothing compared to Greensboro and it seems more likely that students would drive the 30 mins to Greensboro when they have specific shopping to do or simply just want more options. There is also a Zip Car that students can rent for $5/hour or $35/day - all you need is a driver's license (insurance, etc. is included).</p>

<p>I can't think of much more to tell you, but if I left anything out that I shouldn't have, let me know! I'll try to answer any questions.</p>

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<p>Ditto- an extremely beautiful campus and very nice buildings,facilties etc. As a parent when asked if I would like to be young again and what age would I return to I always respond “age 30” on the assumption that repeating high school or college would not be my idea of excitement. However, after seeing Elon I had a strong desire to go back to college. We visited many campuses but very few could compete with Elon. There’s the praise - now for the SLAP! THE Musical Theatre audition process was insane and 12 hours long. It was unorganized and unfair to the students that were auditioning . The fact that they had to sing, dance etc some as late as 10:15 at night ,after being there since 10 a.m. was totally illogical to us. It soured us on the college,but I am sure not every department at Elon needs an overhaul like the MT department does…</p>

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<p>I’m sorry you didn’t like Elon’s audition process. I have to wonder where else your child auditioned, as my daughter is a current MT student at Elon and we had a wonderful audition experience there, especially compared to some of the others she did. Yes it was a long day, but broken up by meeting with the personal accompanist (never had that opportunity at any of her 11 other auditions), sitting in on a class (never had that opportunity either on an audition day, only if arranged on a separate campus visit), having a very well organized dance audition (I know this because my daughter is one of the students who demonstrates the combinations for the auditioning students now-she is a current sophomore), a panel discussion and performance by current MT students (had other panel discussions but no other school that demonstrated current students) and Cathy McNeela, and the actual acting and singing audition accompanied into the room by a current student ready to give moral support. Yes, a long day, but a very supported day, with plenty of opportunities to take a break from the action. If your child had a late audition appointment, you were informed of that earlier, and could have gone somewhere to take a break or a nap. At Penn State, my daughter was there from about 7:30 AM until after 5 PM, in a much more disorganized setting (although she thoroughly enjoyed her afternoon just hanging out in the “green room”) and much more stressful having to sing and act and dance, THEN to be told on the spot whether or not to stay for an interview (she was lucky enough to get one, but many others were not and left in tears or very angry–we saw both reactions). Point Park also was a full day, with a wait to find out if she was going to be asked to stay for the afternoon, again a cut system, on the spot. Very stressful. Baldwin Wallace was another full day, with the kids arriving very early and not being dismissed until after the dance call at 5:30. And realistically, once your child is out in the real world of audtioning, it doesn’t get any better. My daughter spent last week in NYC doing a few summerstock auditions and at several of them had to wait hours to be seen, in order to sing 16 bars of a song. That’s it! So again, I’m sorry you had a bad feeling about Elon’s process, but I have to disagree that it was unfair in any way to the auditioning kids. Elon strives always to make everyone feel welcome and have the experience be as fair and stress free as possible. That I am sure of.</p>

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<p>My son had a theatre audition for Emerson a few years ago in Boston. The day started at 10 am, we sat around doing nothing until 5 pm when he finally had a short audition. Pretty boring day.</p>

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<p>I was actually the VERY last person to audition the day I went to Elon, at about 9pm. I was sort of tired, but I really didn’t mind. I thought the schedule was good (and logical, since there were so many kids auditioning), and definitely appreciated being able to practice with the accompanist. Also, after being there all day, I was very comfortable and had gotten rid of all my nerves by the time I went in for my audition.</p>

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<p>Well there you have it- we disagree. Emerson’s audition process was reasonable in our opinion. Penn state was as a previous poster stated. Berg’s was very reasonable and respectful. Syracuse ,Ithaca impersonal,but hey this is theater life and MY D expected this. Every audition was what we were told and expected. Elon’s was not what we expected. One criticism from a poster should not be taken as gospel but also should not be discounted. Plus you only heard the negatives read the post again regarding my comments on the campus…</p>

<p>We should remember that while the nature of this business can be harsh and impersonal we don;t pay for the priviledge of auditioning on broadway or LA, in the case of college we pay $160,000…sorry I just expect a different approach from theater schools</p>