Dilemma - advice please?

Applying to College
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<p>Alright.. this is kind of a long, much more detailed story, but I'm going to cut it as short as I can.</p>

<p>I dance. But not just any go-take-a-class-once-a-week-sort-of-dance. I'm training with some 30 or so other teenagers for a huge international performance. (this year: <a href="http://www.shows.ntdtv.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.shows.ntdtv.com&lt;/a> and last year's: <a href="http://gala.ntdtv.com/2006/en/hi/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://gala.ntdtv.com/2006/en/hi/&lt;/a&gt;) Basically, it's Chinese traditional dance, and we've been in training since last February for this.</p>

<p>From February to June, I spent every weekend from Friday to Sunday afternoon at the dance studio in NY (lived there every weekend) and my entire summer vacation was spent living at the studio, training intensively.</p>

<p>This December, we have eight holiday shows at Beacon Theater in Manhattan and from January to March, we will be going on a tour of 27 cities in the world and performing multiple Chinese New Year shows at each of them (including Radio City Music Hall in NYC). I'm not very good at explaining this, but the website I gave gives a better understanding of what exactly these shows are.</p>

<p>So now, I have a problem. All of us are students.. which is why, prior to the summer, we only danced on weekends. As the summer ended, it became apparent that if we all went back home and only came on the weekends, there would be no way that we could be sufficiently ready for the quality needed for the performances. Eventually, most of the dancers moved to the studio and have lived there since (they took off time from school/quit school/whatever). I went home, because I wanted to finish my last year in high school as well as complete my college apps.</p>

<p>This week, my dance teacher called me and told me that if I could not move to the studio really soon, there would be no way that I could continue dancing there because of time constraints (everyone else rehearses and trains every day, and I only make it there 2 days each week). Because dance has become a passion for me, and I feel that this opportunity to tour 27 cities on the most prestigious stages of the world is a once in a lifetime chance that I can't give up.</p>

<p>But in order to fulfill this and not have the last 10 months of dancing be a complete waste, I would have to quit school (i.e. leave high school after this trimester).</p>

<p>I just wanted some outside opinion as to whether it would be worth it. I mean, I would convert to a homeschooling status, and my apps will be sent out before I leave, so would it be absolutely terrible if I stopped going to school, especially given the circumstances, and given that I explain it well to the colleges?</p>

<p>Thanks! And darn.. I tried, but it's still so long.. lol</p>

2

<p>Is the dance company not responsible for providing tutors while you are in rehearsal? I thought it was the law for under 18's in NYC. My daughters have done work in NY, and the law is that if the child is on set or in rehearsal for more than 2-3 days in a row, a tutor must be provided. Many schools cooperate with the set teachers, and my daughter's grades have actually gone up while she was working because of the individual attention. Please investigate what your rights are. It would be an awful shame to miss out on this opportunity, and a horrible thing to quit school.</p>

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<p>Yes there is a school there, we have tutors and everything.</p>

<p>The only thing is.. I go to a very very competitive and good high school right now (Newsweek put it on the list of Public Elites because apparently, our average SAT/ACT scores were TOO high.. -___-)</p>

<p>And my dad is worried that the schooling I would get at dance is not good enough in comparison to what I have currently.</p>

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<p>It's your senior year. You have your applications sent out (or you will shortly), around three-quarters of a school year to go, and an amazing opportunity. The colleges have three years of what I assume is a solid academic record at an excellent high school.
The dance would be an excellent topic for one of your essays, and your guidance counselor would probably mention your reason for transferring in his/her rec. I don't see it affecting your chances of getting into college (as long as you are doing a courseload with similar rigor in whatever tutoring/homeschool program you switch to). I think you can probably make a tutoring program as rigorous as you want it to be. </p>

<p>But that's just my personal opinion. It sounds like you're really excited to do this--it's an extraordinary opportunity.</p>

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<p>hey xinlin,
out of curiosity, which school do you go to?</p>

<p>and i agree with everyone else, i think that after you get all the crucial things taken care of, you can somehow arrange it w/ your teachers so that you have a minimal workload at school so that you can devote more time to dance. i know at the school i go to, we can definitely make that kind of arrangement. however, i don't think you should completely drop out of highschool for dance, especially if you don't think it's a passion or a career that you will go into. at this point in society/life, it is extremely hard to do anything without a highschool diploma (or even a college diploma for that matter) and i think that if you're not willing to decide that dance will be the rest of your life, i don't think you should forfeit everything you've worked for during the last 17 years of your life to save 10 months of dance.</p>