@alwaysamom thank you! Will definitely be taking your advice. I have a couple friends who went to school for musical theatre and are now working professionally: one off-Broadway and one in the national tour of 42nd Street. I might talk to them if I ever need advice. 
Applied to: BW, Ball State, CCM, Coastal Carolina, East Carolina University, FSU, Indiana, Montclair, Oklahoma City, Otterbein, Point Park, Rider, Texas State & Western Carolina
Prescreens: BW (summer program audition counted for prescreen), Coastal Carolina, FSU, Indiana, Otterbein & Texas State Passed all except Texas State & her SAT math score prevented her from being invited to audition at FSU
Academically accepted: All except FSU & didnāt take the Texas State application any further after the prescreen
Withdrew: Western Carolina (by then she had an acceptance higher on her list so we figured we would save time and money) & Point Park (that one was not in our controlā¦weather/travelā¦just couldnāt get there)
Artistically accepted: Ball State, East Carolina & Oklahoma City (BFA Acting)
Waitlisted: BW
Coach: None
Summer Programs: Workshop with iTheatrics, 2 summers at Broadway Artists Alliance & BW Overtures
Training:
My D discovered her love of musical theatre through a local childrenās theatre after a friend encouraged her to join a summer workshop when she was 12. She began voice lessons at 14 and dance (a bit late in the game) at 16. The dance was through a non-recital dance studio that a lot of local MT kids go to in the area. She has a great sense of rhythm and movement and had been a cheerleader, so that helped. Until high school she did many shows at her childrenās theatre and that is where she received the majority of her acting training. Through an audition group at that theatre for 3 years she attended the Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta. That is where her decision to pursue musical theatre was solidified.
The Journey:
We started the college research going into junior year. The first school I came across was BW. I discovered the Stages series on YouTube and both my D and I were hooked. My husband is from the Cleveland area and I thought it would be a great place for my D with so much family around for support. At this point we were VERY naive about the process and the caliber of BW! (Trust meā¦I laugh at my own self when I realize just how naive we were!)
Not long after I found CC and quickly became overwhelmed by the wealth of information and just how daunting and competitive this college audition thing was actually going to be! We felt very much behind the curve!
The only school my D had the opportunity to tour before the audition season was BW (we were visiting family). While she was there she fell in love with it and also found out about their Overtures program. She decided to apply and in April she found out she had been selected. That week she spent there in August was another huge eye-opener as to the level of talent out there! She was very thankful to have the training and help with her audition material. She also made some amazing friends! One of which will be her roomie!
We filmed her prescreens at her high school during a teacher work day just before school started. I paid her techie friend to do the filming. Then the application and essay nagging began!!! We scheduled 4 auditions before Christmas. IU, BW, Otterbein and Rider hoping to have at least one acceptance in her back pocket before the meat of the season began. This is one of those āif you want to hear God laugh tell him your plansā moments! Instead it was 2 early ānoāsā and 2 WL.
We planned all on-campus auditions. Since we had only toured 1 school early on, I really wanted my D to get a āfeelā for each school. Thankfully we started the process early enough to make that happen. I canāt say she was too surprised at the outcomes of the decisions of each school. They seemed to jive with how she felt the auditions went for her. She was sick for her Coastal Carolina audition and was a trooper during their long day, but it definitely affected her vocals. At Otterbein the accompanist messed up both of her song cuts and she said it really threw her off. At Oklahoma City she didnāt have a great vocal audition but really nailed the acting portion. She had great audition days at both BW and Ball State. She even said that Ball State was so relaxed that it didnāt even feel like an audition. There were a few schools that the audition seemed very impersonalā¦no questions. She wasnāt surprised when she didnāt get into those programs. Personally, I loved the Coastal Carolina and BW audition days the most. They were very much about the student and their families getting to know them as well as getting to know the student. I absolutely loved Dean Herendeen at Oklahoma City and Lenny Leibowitz from Otterbein.
By March 6th my D had 6 "no"s and 1 WL (one of the earlier WL had become a no). It was her lowest point. I was driving her home from school that day and she was in tears, second guessing her audition material and herself. I did my best to reassure her and reminded her that she still had several more auditions/decisions to go and that everything could turn on a dime. Thankfully the call from āBall State Billā came just 2 hours later! Tears of sadness quickly turned to tears of happiness!
We had a couple of travel nightmares. There was about 7 inches of fresh snow the morning on the Ball State audition. They had quite a few no-showās and had to rearrange the day to get everyone out quickly. (We ended up having to visit again after her acceptance because we didnāt really get to see anything other than the gymnasium on audition day). We couldnāt get a flight out to Newark to go to the Montclair audition because of back ups from bad weather. We ended up taking the train instead and that turned into its own nightmare. We finally got to our hotel at 5:30am! Her audition show time was 8:30am. I still donāt know how she did it! We never even made it to the Point Park audition! We did however get to enjoy 14 hours at our local airport!
Final Decision: Ball State University BFA MTO chirp chirp!!!
We rode the crazy audition train to the bitter end! My D accepted on May 1st! She wanted to see how the BW WL would pan out. It had been her first love. Thankfully they were kind enough to send out release emails to kids they knew would not be offered spots on the 26th of April. Kudos to Ball State (Andrea Sadler & Bill Jenkins in particular) for going to bat for my D and getting her a talent scholarship late in the game to help make it work for our family! Icing on the cake is that my D will be attending and rooming with her bestie from the Overtures summer program! We all have CC to thank for that! I āmetā her mom on CC on the BW thread about Overtures.
Lessons Learned:
First of allā¦I second all of @MTmom2015ās lessons!
The earlier you can start the better!!! With everything! Donāt underestimate the power of good grades and test scores. Reiterate to your kids that high numbers=$ which=less debt!
Try not to second guess yourselfā¦thatās much easier to say than to do!
Patienceā¦patienceā¦patience! You will need it!
When in doubtā¦CALL! Many times academic departments donāt communicate with the artistic departments!
Make connections! Talk to other parents at the auditions and have your S or D FB friend current students and fellow auditionerās (is that a word?)! You never knowā¦they may end up in the same program or working together in the future.
From my D and seconded by meā¦enjoy the precious time you have together! It really is an amazing gift to have that much bonding time before college! So many of these MT kiddos donāt come home because of summer stock opportunities! Even mixed with the crazy weather/travel and sickness events, we had a blast! We met some great people, ate at the best local restaurants and saw some beautiful campuses! Most importantly, we have memories for a lifetime!
Finally, I would like to say that I was immensely blessed to meet so many wonderful people on this site! @divamamcita @ifyouonlyknew @jrdirectortommy @tmygirl @mtmajorcook @gsomtmom @tarheelmtma @evilqueen @jeffanddann @kategrizz @lauramomatty @mtmom2015 @mommabear26! I couldnāt have done it without you! You were my teachers, my shoulders to cry on, my mentors and my cheerleaders! Thank you!!! Iām excited to begin the next part of this journey and I canāt wait to see what the future holds for our kids!
For all of you getting ready to board this roller coasterā¦be sure to reach out for support and post what you can (the good, the bad and the ugly) you never know who you may be helping! The hardest part of this journey is the lack of control! CC is here to help give us as much information as possibleā¦the more information we have the more control we THINK we have! BAL to you all!
Oustanding news MRaleighmom!! Another addition to the Ball State family! Hope my D is your Dās TA for Aesthetics!
Congrats, @MTRaleighmom! As if this process wasnāt tough enough, you had to deal with horrible weather, too! So glad it all worked out in the end for you and your D.
My D made a Ball State Class MTO page on Facebook she should join!
Sniff sniff ā so happy to read your story @MTRaleighmom !! What an amazing journey and your D has ended up at a wonderful program!!
Applied to: CMU, CCM, Michigan, Otterbein, Elon, Pace, Emerson, Shenandoah, Temple, Baldwin Wallace, NYU, Webster, Penn State, Montclair
Prescreens: Otterbein, Penn State, Pace (passed these three), BW, Michigan, Elon
Waitlist: Emerson, eventually deferred to BA Theatre Studies: Acting
Academic acceptances: All the schools that separate theatre admissions and academic admissions.
Artistic Acceptances: Shenandoah BFA MT, Temple BA MT & Acting, NYU Tisch.
Coach: My drama teacher coached a few of my monologues once, and I had 5 voice lessons with a coach who helped with vocal technique and acting.
Training: Technically a few months of ballet and jazz, and some additional (but minimal) training in ballet, modern, and jazz at my schoolās dance program.
High school: Normal public school with great director (very tied into the industry) and competitive musicals.
What happened: Holy moly.
I fell in love with theater from a young age but didnāt have the idea to professionally pursue it until sophomore year of high school. All my friends and people at school knew I wanted to do this for real, and I booked a few cool professional things in New York City like workshops and a web series, etc. that made me realize how much I loved studying this craft and moreover, working. (By the way, I should mention- I got cut from my school musical sophomore year when we got a new director and being cut propelled me to seek outside professional opportunities. I have no hard feelings towards this director and he is one of the most amazing people that have come into my life.) My parents hesitantly let me pursue all of this and never really took much interest- I never told them when I was on TV once! Then as junior year ended, my parents started constantly asking me what my plan was for college and what I wanted to major in. After weeks on weeks of skirting around the question, I was so nervous to tell them that I wanted to pursue acting and major in it in college.
The night I told them, my parents and I argued for hours and I left crying. In general, my dad was more willing to listen and my mom was adamantly against theater. They eventually compromised and said I could only double major, but I knew this was not for me. I wanted to study theater alone (with a possible minor) to train as much as possible in college. We fought endlessly about it, through the summer, and into the start of senior year.
It was really hard at this point, but I didnāt stop working. I researched schools to apply to and started applying in October. My parents at this point said they would let me audition and would pay for the fees and applications, and my mom said if I got into a lot of programs, it could be a good gauge of my potential (Which we all know is never a definite indication of any actorās future success), but later on in the year as I was still auditioning, she said they would never pay for any theater program unless I double majored. I was still against this.
I paid for a great vocal coach who works in NYC and near my home and met with him 5 times to work on my songs (I found and chose my own materials). After this, I filmed my pre screens (logistically REALLY hard, on top of having to perform well in the videos). I was excited to pass three, but the first prescreen rejection from Michigan definitely stung. After this, I started looking for more monologues and found a good bunch that fit the needs of various schools.
I auditioned for a few on campus, but the majority of my auditions happened at NYC Unifieds. I met a ton of cool people and had lots fun, but it was a rough time because I would wake up early in the morning to go the train station and travel into the city alone. It would have been nice to have a parent with me to help carry my stuff, support me, but I was graced by the kindness of some wonderful moms who cheered me on and were extremely pleasant to me, almost as if I were their own child. This will always mean the world to me. (I also met this drama teacher who takes his students down from Vermont to audition. I think someone on here has mentioned him, does anyone know his name? He was super nice and supportive.)
Once cool thing that happened was that I did a joint walk-in for TX State, Shenandoah, and Relativity at NYC Unifieds that I literally found out about 24 hours prior through this website! I made sure to get a slot, auditioned, got a dance callback (that was SUPER fun). I got called back to audition for TX State but never did because I knew my parents wouldnāt allow me to go to Chicago or Texas to audition, got an offer to be flown to LA to visit Relativity (but declined because I didnāt want to be in LA for college), and got accepted to Shenandoah a few days after my audition. First acceptance!! I was overjoyed.
Post audition season was spent nervously waiting and receiving acceptances/rejections, applying for scholarships, and still fighting with my parents.
Reflection:
- Doing this college process primarily without my parents was hard for sure, but honestly even if they had been supportive, I donāt know how much they would have done because I would want to do everything. It was crazy to schedule auditions and get in prescreens, but I did it. Iām alive.
- Speaking of prescreensā¦ My prescreens werenāt terrible but they could have been better. I regret not putting more time and effort into them because I could have possibly auditioned for more schools. I thought they were more to just weed out really bad, crazy people who have no idea what theyāre doing, but schools are definitely looking carefully. Also, quality does not matter that much. iPhoneās film really well!
- I didnāt have an illustrious high school theater career, and never got the leads in the main stage shows, more about type than anything else. I had an interesting resume, with smaller parts, but some cool professional credits. The resume doesnāt really matter in a school choosing you, just helps with making conversation.
- Unifieds was a crazy beast that I tackled by making sure I had everything. Get a huge bag to fit everything in and double, triple, quadruple check you have everything you need!
- Know your monologues inside and out, know about the playwright, know the breaths you are going to take, the meaning of the words, the context of the play, etc. A few of my schools had me play with my monologues and knowing them REALLY well made all the difference. This skill served really well when I had an audition for a show a few weeks ago, so yes, this skill is transferrable!
- I love dance auditions. I never had the most technique in my auditions, but what I did VERY well was that I performed the heck out of the dance. I have little dance training but have spent a lot of time learning through being in musicals and teaching myself, so I can perform easy-medium choreography well enough to stand out.
- One regret I have is how nervous I was for some of my auditions. I was so nervous to get into the school, to be a good performer, that I didnāt do as well as I could have. Iām a person who loves the interview portion of auditions and does a good job at being myself in the audition room, but for many of my auditions, I performed maybe 90% when I couldāve been 100% because I was just a LITTLE nervous to sing or do my monologue, and as a result, my belt note didnāt sound as strong or my monologue wasnāt as emotionally connected. I just wish I could have been completely at ease for every audition and have sung/performed the same way I did when I prepped for auditions.
Afterwards: My parents came around. After seeing all my passion and hard work, they budged a little in their support and are allowing me to major in theater and probably minor in another field. They loved NYU and Temple because both programs offer great training but still have room for academics. At first I thought NYU would be impossible to attend because of the tuition (I almost never applied for this reason!), but I did get a āgenerousā scholarship (generous for Tisch). I feel deeply in love with the school and wanted so bad to go, but after lots and lots of thinking and fighting with my parents, they could not allow me to go to NYU because I would have an enormous chunk of loans to pay off. I tried to get them to let me take a gap year and work to save for NYU but they didnāt want me to. On the other hand, I received a generous academic scholarship and a theatre scholarship at Temple that eliminates almost all of my tuition costs, meaning my family essentially would only have to pay for room and board.
FINAL DECISION: Temple University MT and Acting!
It hurts not being able to attend a school you have your heart set on, but now I am more and more excited to attend Temple. Iām still in a big school in a big city with a great arts community, and now I get to study musical theatre whereas at NYU I wouldāve been studying Acting for at least the first two years. One of the best parts is that I will have no student loans after graduation, and can allocate money towards summer intensives, nice head shots, workshops, and Broadway tickets that I would all want to pursue even if I had gone to NYU. All the faculty Iāve met at Templeās theatre program has been nothing short of great, and curriculum wise, there is not much of a difference in gen ed requirements compared to NYU. A current student told me that Templeās BA program becomes more like a BFA as you progress through the program.
Final advice: Be yourself and love yourself. If you want this, youāre going to have to work hard. Youāll probably have to do a little less technical work than I had to, but anyone who wants to succeed in this process should know that above the ability to do triple pirouettes, having an Equity card, or a belting a high F, the most important thing in the audition room is that you are unapologetically yourself. The auditors are looking for lots of things (which we will never fully know), so the only thing you can do is be one hundred percent yourself and highlight everything that makes you YOU through your choices.
In a way, Iām very lucky to have had this experience because Iāve grown 10x as an artist and a young adult. I understand the meaning of responsibility better now. Maybe I wouldāve received more acceptances had my parents been more supportive. Maybe not. Who knows? All that matters is that my parents and I are on better terms now than before. This audition season is over. I have always believed that everything happens for a reason and know that nothing should ever change my belief in that. This is the hardest thing Iāve ever gone through but itās made me a better person.
And one final note: I really loved Shenandoahās program and pretty much the only reason I didnāt go there was because of cost. For anyone auditioning next year, the faculty is amazing and so, so kind. They really know what theyāre doing and offer some incredible training. I never got to visit but felt the passion of the faculty and students from communicating online with them. Definitely check out their program.
Wow, @attheballet ā what a great story of perseverance! Many congratsā¦Temple is lucky to get you!
So glad it turned out well for you! I remember chatting with you after Unifieds! And I do know the Vermont guy (thatās where the VT in MTVT comes from)āIāll PM you his name.
So, so proud of you, @attheballet!! Any kid who goes through this and SUCCEEDS without a LOT of parental involvement has wisdom and maturity WAY beyond their years. You will go VERY very far.
That was so inspiring! My voice teacher went to Temple and LOVED it. You are going to get amazing training. Iām glad you never gave up on going at it alone! (:
@destiny95 I would also love to hear your story if you feel like telling it!
I would love to! I will post this week sometime
Thank you SO much everyone for your kind words!
@attheballet, I agree with Calienneā¦any young person who has taken on and achieved as much as you have during this process will go very far in life. Congratulations on your decision. Your story will surely be an inspiration to those future MT students who want to follow their dreams but donāt have the parental support. Iām so glad in the end your parents recognized your drive, passion and hard work.
@attheballet You made a fantastic choice!
This may be old news to everyone, but since we are talking about Temple: http://www.onstageblog.com/columns/2015/5/9/9ki9kgkt1ybrmbvt7sa48j70gdd904
@dramamama123 what is the name of the FB page? (I tried to PM you but I donāt think you have made the minimum number of posts to allow it).
The group is called Ball State BFA Musical Theatre Class of 2019!