@WTXMom, our girls will be meeting!!! Our visit to UAB was a great day when I finally felt my daughter was ready to make a commitment. This program is so young that I think many more people will be talking about UAB MT soon:).
@theaterwork - I know what you mean about it being far…it’s 991 miles (14+hours) from us… maybe we’ll rack up some Rapid Rewards…never thought I’d send a kid far enough away for college that we’d need to fly there!
Valerie is awesome–so enthusiastic, friendly, professional, hard-working, and, as a nice bonus, well-connected. And, for how new it is, they really are being selective with who and how many they choose. They may not get as many applicants as other places yet, but they are sticking to what is the ideal, small size to them (similar to Illinois Wesleyan). I’m so glad to hear all of the love that UAB is getting this year. It’s definitely one to watch!
I noticed that hardly anyone applies to SCAD…why is that?
Well let me be the next one to jump on the UAB bandwagon! I’m proud to announce my daughters choice is the Blazers!
My daughter went to a public school after attending a fine arts elementary school. She has had no formal voice lessons but has been singing and acting in local, community, high school and professional theater since she was 10 and has won awards for her vocal talents throughout the years. She decided she wanted to go to school for MT in the last few years. It was a harder sell to convince me. But she did… We come from a good Theater program in her high school but did not have a lot of help preparing for the audition season as she was in the middle of rehearsals for various shows at the time. I found college confidential just as she was beginning to make her school choices and find out about auditions. Living in Wisconsin but being near to Chicago, we toured Columbia College early on and she was interested in their program. She auditioned for AMDA in early fall but did not hear anything for a long time. We thought of it as a practice audition, they gave her a good idea of what auditions would be like. She was on track sending in applications through the common app and online when we discovered the prescreen requirements for many of the colleges. We asked her theater director about helping with prescreens, but she wasn’t familiar with the need for prescreens for any of the programs as she hadn’t had anyone in recent years go for MT. So I kept researching cc and found what I needed , Daughter found her audition songs and monologues and was ready to film and submit her prescreens. Sadly tragically her friend and former boyfriend who had the lead with her in all the shows this year Ended his own life. My daughter, her best girlfriends, and indeed all of our theater family was devastated. They had just finished A Midsummer’s night dream. She was titania, he was Oberon. They were currently in rehearsals for a play together ( she was the blue fairy and he was Geppetto in Pinocchio) and they were set for the leads of the pajama game which was just going into rehearsals. The tragedy happened during finals, and my daughter ended up not taking a few finals. She also was not able to focus and get her prescreens done in time to submit. Luckily she was able to get herself ready for Chicago unifieds just a few weeks after his funeral. He would have been the only other student with her at unified’s so it was hard for her to be alone there, but she managed to do beautifully. We had four scheduled auditions… And she found walk-ins and ended up auditioning for 16 schools in total. She even got an instant acceptance and scholarship award with one of the schools at unifieds. She was accepted academically to 16 schools. And Accepted to programs at Cornish, Dean, Long Island University, Viterbo, Columbia, University of Alabama Birmingham, AMDA, Carthage and for acting at American Academy Dramatic Arts, Wait listed at Ball State. There were a few schools she auditioned for at unified that she didn’t complete the academic application afterwards because she didn’t necessarily like the feel after the audition. She had one redirect and two rejections but all in all was feeling pretty good about all the acceptances. We did not tour colleges ahead of time except Columbia and Carthage. After her acceptances we went to viterbo and then UAB and scheduled a trip to New York to see Dean, LIU, AMda and the academy of dramatic arts.
The visit to Birmingham was outstanding! She loved the classes she sat in, loved the students, loved Valerie! We saw a tech rehearsal of spring awakening and were so impressed with the professionalism of the actors and crew as well. She loved the area, loved the urban feel of the campus and dorms. In Chicago Valerie and Carolyn had pulled me in after Taylor’s audition as well. We loved finding out about the program and how they are building it and when we were down there we were very impressed with it. Taylor decided then and there that she wanted to be a blazer and even took pictures to use on her decision day! Our trip to New York was already planned and paid for. We did go visit two schools… But Taylor’s heart was set on UAB So we canceled the rest of the visits and saw shows instead! I’m very excited to see what will come out of their program! I predict it will become a force to be reckoned with! We feel like we found the proverbial hidden gem! Due to the issues Taylor had around finals, her GPA was not quite high enough to get any merit scholarships, so we are dealing with financial aid at this point. But very hopeful and positive that in fall we will be in Birmingham! #blazeon
Wow what a story @TaylorsmomWI! So unbelievable what your daughter had to contend with going into auditions–she must be a very strong young lady! I watched a video from UAB covering their production of AvenueQ and was very impressed – they even brought in an expert puppeteer from New York to train the students! I think you’re right that it will become a much more sought after program. Congratulations!
@TaylorsmomWI , I’m so sorry about her friend! How devastating. This has been an even much more emotional ride for both you and your D than it normally is; I can’t imagine. I wish your D all the best, and I pray for peace for the poor boy’s family and friends.
Enjoy UAB!
@TaylorsmomWI Agree with all that @myloves said. So happy your daughter found a spot she loves.
@TaylorsmomWI I’m so sorry your daughter had to go through such a difficult experience. She must be a very strong girl to have continued on with such success. I hope college will be a true joy for her.
@TaylorsmomWI so happy for your D! I’m sure my D will be meeting her soon at UAB. What a challenging life changing ordeal you all have been through. We are from Michigan so we will be contending with the distance as well. My D also got in to LIU, Columbia Chicago and was wait listed at ball state! She is so excited about UAB. Go Blazers!
Nope @MTmom98…love the long detailed posts. i get more disappointed in the short ones!
@TaylorsmomWI - you and your daughter certainly had more than your share of challenges this year…definitely puts things in perspective. So sorry for your loss, but glad that our daughters will be in the program together!
I guess it’s time to add our story. Glad to hear you all like to read long posts!
My son has always been a top student, but he regarded the prospect of college without enthusiasm. Just more drudgery. Until one day, attending a summer stock play, we noticed some place called Hartt cropping up in the actors’ bios. I googled the school, found the MT curriculum, and my son’s face lit up: “I would love to go to a college like that!”
That was our first step on this long journey towards a BFA in MT. Fortunately I already knew about College Confidential, and I got tons of information here. The single best advice was – Get a coach! Normally I am a frugal Yankee and loath to spend money unnecessarily, but someone here wisely pointed out that the cost of a coach pales in comparison to what we’ll be spending for four years of college, so why not hire one and maximize the chances of finding and getting accepted by the right program?
So spring of junior year, we signed up with Chelsea Diehl of My College Audition in Boston. She is very well organized, and prodded us to get going on making a list of colleges. She and her vocal coach helped my son find monologues and songs that he was happy with (especially his songs). The vast majority of his sessions with her and her team were via Skype.
Summer before senior year: got the headshots done, the artistic resume written, the music binder assembled, the Common App essay drafted. All SAT testing was done by June. Having all of this out of the way before September was a huge help.
A bit of background: my son is a tall skinny bass-baritone who worried that his voice was too low for MT. He attends a tiny rural high school in New England (graduating class of 29). He had acted in local children’s theater since he was 12, but nothing terribly impressive. He’d only ever had one real lead. He took some tap lessons in 9th grade and started voice lessons in 10th grade. We had absolutely no clue how he would stack up in a bigger pond until the summer before senior year, when he went to French Woods – his first arts camp – and was given a starring role. Seeing him in that role was our first hint that maybe he could really do this musical theater thing!
Senior year he got serious about dance, and began taking ballet, tap, and musical theater dance. Several people told us not to bother: “A few months of training are not going to turn him into a dancer. Focus on writing college essays and preparing for auditions.” So glad we didn’t listen. Without those few months, dance calls would have been a nightmare. As it was, three dance calls were hard (BoCo, Point Park, Syracuse) but he really enjoyed all the others.
Another piece of advice we didn’t take: “Don’t be in any shows senior year. Focus on getting into college.” But after French Woods, my son blossomed as a performer, and he got offered leads in four back-to-back productions. Keeping up with all those rehearsals and performances (plus voice lessons, fiddle lessons, and 3 dance classes/week), while applying to 25 colleges, was absolutely crazy. But it was also a great distraction from the relentless college-college-college drumbeat of senior year. And it confirmed my son’s growing conviction that yes, this really IS what he wants to be doing right now.
So he applied to 17 auditioned programs: American, Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Emerson, Fordham, Hartt, Ithaca, Manhattan School of Music, Montclair, Muhlenberg, NYU Tisch, Point Park, Rider, Syracuse, University of the Arts, University of Central Florida, University of Miami
But, unwilling to let go of the academic colleges, he also applied to 8 more schools: Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Northwestern, Oberlin, University of Vermont, Yale
(to be con’t)
Things did not start out particularly well. Based on his experience, I would advise saving favorite schools for the end of the audition season. My son did much better later on, when he’d gained confidence.
1 – Ithaca. Did not pass prescreens. We knew nothing about the school except that his coach had said the people there were genuinely kind and caring and wonderful to work with. Hmm, why didn’t these nice people even want to see my son audition?
2 – Muhlenberg. He liked the campus, sat in on a class, enjoyed seeing their production of “Chicago,” felt he could be happy there. Accepted, and offered a whole lot of money. Nice place, good vibe.
3 – Emerson. Auditioned in November. Liked Boston, liked Emerson. He has friends at the school who are enthusiastic about it. But he could tell right away that the auditors did not love him. Gave him corrections, then cut him off abruptly. Not pleasant. So the rejection was no surprise.
4 – UArts. Auditioned in early December. Had a wonderful time in Philadelphia. Had heard terrific things about this school. But somehow we weren’t really feeling it during the campus tour and info sessions, so we were not as upset as we had expected to be when he was not called back after the morning round of auditions.
Rejections were beginning to pile up, anxiety beginning to mount. As a result, the Manhattan School of Music got added to the list, and also the University of Central Florida, which had sent him an unsolicited offer of a full ride (tuition, room & board) if he made National Merit Finalist – an offer that nearly got thrown out with the rest of the college junk mail, but by chance I happened to glance at that one more carefully.
5 – Hartt. Auditioned in mid-December. By now, my son refused even to tour any more schools til he knew he was in, so we just went for the info session and audition. I thought Alan Rust gave a terrific talk to the parents, so I was pleased when my son came out from his audition grinning ear to ear. The auditors had remarked on his excellent SAT scores, on the fact that he’s bilingual (French), that he plays the violin – they even complimented his handwriting! Talk about setting a kid up to give his best audition. We were thrilled when they called just two days later to offer him a spot. First acceptance – hurray!
6 – Fordham. Withdrew application, since it was a straight acting program and he now had an MT acceptance. Spent Christmas break finishing applications to the regular non-auditioned colleges.
7 – Boston University. Early January. Another straight acting program. McCaela Donovan gave an excellent overview of the program, but the weather was dreary and the campus was deserted (it was winter break). My son’s audition was extremely short, probably not a good sign. Rejection was no surprise.
8 – Boston Conservatory. Had a horrible night, as the people in the hotel room above us decided to host a drunken party at 3 am. I am convinced they were playing “toss the caber” with the furniture. Fortunately, my son slept through it all. We walked to BoCo in a torrential downpour. Saw nothing of the school except the parents’ waiting room. He felt the dance call was hard and his audition was nothing special. Another easily anticipated rejection.
9 – NYU Tisch. Auditioned on “campus,” attended large info session, got very little feel for what it would be like to go to school there. But my son has a friend who loves the program, and a cousin who graduated from it. He enjoyed the dance call, but did not hit it off terribly well with the auditors. He said he’d be very surprised if they accepted him. They did not surprise him.
10 – Point Park. Unifieds in NYC during the blizzard-that-will-live-in-memory. The audition went pretty well, and he was asked to sing an extra song, an art song. The dance call was difficult. Waitlisted.
11 – Syracuse. Ralph Zito gave an excellent info session. My son was passed on to him from the first auditor, but he didn’t think that Ralph was particulary impressed. And the dance call was insanely difficult. He was irritated, since he felt it gave the kids with less dance background no chance to show their potential. Rejected.
(to be con’t)
The tide turns. Although of course we only realized this in retrospect, from here on in every audition resulted in an acceptance. He had finally hit his stride.
12 – Rider. Worst audition. He felt the auditors were rude: no greeting, no thank you, no eye contact. He was 100% sure they would reject him, and didn’t care. Refused to attend the dance call (which was rescheduled due to the blizzard) but I did persuade him to submit his dance video. He said, “they couldn’t pay me to attend their school.” Well, they tried. They accepted him, with a very large merit scholarship. Just goes to show . . . something or other.
13 – Manhattan School of Music. Bright and early Sunday morning, over a foot of snow on the ground. Voice not warmed up, cracked during one song. He emerged poker-faced from the audition room, then leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m in!” Luis Perez had said, “You’re exactly the kind of student I’m looking for” and offered him acceptance on the spot! Well, THAT was very nice. It gave us both a real boost.
14 – University of Miami. Best audition experience of all. The auditors had fun with him, engaging him in a lengthy discussion of his material. They admired his SAT scores, talked about his background, told him he had “blown them away.” This was a hugely positive audition, and really piqued his interest in the school. He said he could really see himself studying with those intellectually engaging faculty members. Accepted, with generous merit scholarship. All that SAT prep paid off.
So that was Unifieds. We’d thought about doing a walk-in or two, but with dance calls to fit in, there was no time. Plus, he couldn’t think of any schools that he’d want to attend more than Hartt or MSM anyway.
15 – Montclair. End of January. This was a school about which we knew absolutely nothing. It was only on the list because their in-state tuition offer and proximity to NYC made it seem foolish not to apply. We got hopelessly lost driving in New Jersey, but fortunately I’d allowed extra time to find the school. He ran into some French Woods kids at the audition, which was pleasant and probably helped him feel at ease. The audition went well. They asked to hear a song from a show he was currently in rehearsals for (I had heard that auditors never want to hear a song you’ve sung in a show but, once again, this process is nothing if not full of surprises). Got the letter of acceptance two weeks later!
16 – American. Mid-February. This BA school was on the list because it’s one of the few places where you can double major in MT and something more academic, but by now the wind was blowing strongly in the BFA direction. However, the plane tickets had been bought, so off we went. The morning of the audition we woke to a snowstorm. It was bitterly cold, too, which perhaps influenced our underwhelmed response to the campus tour. But the audition was fine, and he was accepted, plus offered a Presidential Scholarship.
17 – University of Central Florida. Decided not to audition, given the acceptances already in hand. Goodbye, full ride.
Decision time: By the end he had seven MT acceptances (Hartt, MSM, Rider, Montclair, Miami, Muhlenberg, American). He went to Hartt for two days, sat in on classes, did an overnight. Enjoyed the classes and the faculty, didn’t love the campus, but figured he’d be spending most of his time in the theater building anyway. Thought hard about MSM, which had given him an enormous talent scholarship. It was tempting to be part of a brand-new program, and he wrestled with this one. But then we visited Montclair, where Clay James and Mark Hardy went out of their way to meet with us. The head of the Honors Program had also telephoned us, and spent a long time answering our questions. By the time we’d had a campus tour and then seen @Calliene’s daughter starring in their stellar production of “The Producers,” we were sold.
However, this is where my son finally had to face up to the fork in the road. In addition to his MT acceptances, he was also accepted at Northwestern, Columbia, Middlebury, and UVM. (Waitlisted at Brown and Oberlin, rejected by Yale and Dartmouth). We flew out to visit Northwestern during spring break, but since it was the only school to offer him no money at all, it was a relief when he didn’t fall in love with it.
So now it was down to the Ivy League vs. Montclair, and here things stalled for a while. Everyone outside the MT world could not believe there could even be a doubt. Family, friends, colleagues, teachers – he’s thinking of turning down Columbia??? But eventually he said, “Montclair has everything I want except prestige in the wider world. Columbia has nothing I want except prestige. If I went there, I’d be choosing it for the wrong reasons.”
Final decision – Montclair!
Before ending this much-too-long saga, I’d like to thank all the people on CC who have shared their experience and advice, both in the public forum and in private messages. It has been so incredibly helpful to feel that we are all in this together, and I have benefited enormously from your collective and individual wisdom!
@boatmom - what a great story! And I love the line about " school x has everything I want except prestige while school y has nothing I want ‘except’ prestige". We SO felt this same way when D picked OCU over some better known, more prestigious academic schools. So glad to see these kids being true to themselves. I have no doubt your son will thrive at Montclair. It sounds like the perfect fit. Congratulations!
Congrats @WTXMom!
Congrats @boatmom!
Congrats @TaylorsmomWI - this process is hard enough by itself let alone in the midst of a tragedy; so impressed by your daughter’s ability to get through everything!
Yay for your son, @boatmom !
We need a love button here, @boatmom. <3 So happy to have you and your son in the Montclair family. Your experience visiting Montclair was very much like ours. Like, WO! And welcome to the world of explaining to muggles why your kid is going to a state school in NJ. :-*
Oh, and he WILL be a dancer when he is done with Montclair! Montclair loves kids with raw talent like your son.
@Calliene, I love it – “explaining to muggles” – lol.