@manvan Congratulations! My D was accepted at Montclair and we will be visiting this week. We will see how it goes. It looks like a great program…faculty, facilities and curriculum look top notch . (almost too good to be true…especially with the in state tuition) . Maybe our kids will be together in class! It has to feel good to have the decision finally made.
Best of luck!
Post 28- I forgot to add Elon’s rejection
@sleepymom, Jonathon Groff has sat in on more than one of my daughter’s classes during her tenure at Tisch. I’ve got a picture of her with him freshman year. So you never know, your daughter may be seeing more of him over the next 4 years. Congratulations!!! 
Someone somewhere mentioned " the trinity" I am too lazy to try to find it again. But I would love to know what this means- i promise not to dispute or react negatively!
@sleepymom, I think most people consider CMU, CCM, and Michigan to be the trinity. Not everyone’s top choices, especially when cost is factored in. Maybe NYU/Tisch is edging out CCM these days, but that’s a matter of opinion. (Making CMU the Father, Michigan the Son, and CCM the Holy Ghost. Amen.)
@claire74- thank you !!!
And regardless of the Holy Trinity, the search for the perfect MT program is not unlike the quest for the Holy Grail. We are all questing beasts!
Original List: Columbia Chgo. (BA non-audition safety), Ball State, Coastal Carolina, Baldwin-Wallace, Viterbo, Carnegie-Mellon, Point Park, Michigan, NYU Steinhardt, Wagner, Penn State. Then added Wright State, Syracuse and Ithaca at the last minute as she became open to BFA Acting deferrals.
Passed all pre-screens, and no academic rejections
After early good news, cancelled Point Park and Wright State, then weeks after audition, informed her common app for Syracuse was never submitted (Oops - she chose not to submit)
Artistically accepted to Ball State, Coastal Carolina, BW, Wagner and Viterbo, and waitlisted at Ithaca and Carnegie Mellon. Not admitted to Michigan, Penn State or NYU.
A little background…she attends a large public HS, is not super-strong academically, and is not formally trained in dance. She’s a strong actor/singer who moves well. She’s had private voice lessons and performed in community theater since age 7 (30+ shows) and is very active in HS theater & vocal ensembles. We chose not to use a coach, but she has a strong local support team – vocal coach, monologue coach, and a few others she trusts as ‘mentors’ with industry experience.
We made a big investment in summer programs and a monologue workshop specifically at schools where the MT faculty were highly involved. She attended Mpulse two summers ago, both NYU Stienhardt and BW Overtures last summer, then a monologue workshop in the fall at Carnegie Mellon through College Audition Coach. After each amazing experience, there was a new favorite - each intensive seemed to trump the other - which made us laugh and wonder if who she visited/auditioned for
last would become her favorite! The hard part was, after all those very different experiences she still wasn’t 100% sure what environment would be best for her – they all had strengths she appreciated and differences she enjoyed…urban, large, small, conservatory, university, etc. After some thoughtful consideration and discussion through the process, she did eventually come to the conclusion that she would prefer more studio time to classroom time.
The audition season started well with an on-the-spot acceptance at her 1st audition, and the best auditor quote ever, “Well, that certainly didn’t suck.” Next up a ‘better than she could have ever expected’ audition at CMU. After a few other solid auditions, she hit her low point mid-way with a terrible audition at Unifieds. She lost her focus at a dance call, then fell down a small flight of stairs immediately following. She recovered, but during the acting/singing portion the panel didn’t even look up her – and she (and I) spent the rest of the day questioning EVERYTHING. It was a rough day, but by the evening she was bopping around the hotel with friends, re-telling the story with a good dose of self-deprecating humor.
When finalizing her list in the beginning of this process, we recognized that academics and lack of dance training would potentially factor into who would accept her – and I suspect it did, although we will never know for sure. I say this only to confirm how important it is to be mindful and disciplined when making the list - factoring in both strengths and weaknesses, and of course costs. We were careful to limit half her schools to what many would consider “top-programs” and careful to not overload with schools known to equally weigh dance/academics with acting/voice. (I admit making those assumptions about schools is somewhat subjective, but that’s what we did.) She was also very open to BFA acting deferrals as long as she could audition for musicals…though that didn’t come into play. In the end, I am convinced that things happened exactly as they should have, she had some great choices, and in the end her 2 favorite schools were in play - although one a PWL. She knew deep down which schools were not the right fit, and those schools recognized it too.
Her first on-campus audition after Unifieds ended up being the school she chose. She texted me after that audition and said “MOM, I love everything about this school – that feeling they say you get when you find THE ONE – well I have it!” I of course thought…well, that is great, but we have 4 more auditions on the schedule, only 2 results so far, and we need to weigh more than a warm-fuzzy feeling, plus you don’t have an offer in hand…blah, blah, blah.
When it was all said and done, she chose that school for all the qualities that were important to her: It’s a conservatory program with impeccable music training that will give her additional musicianship skills she needs (i.e piano & music theory), it has respected faculty that she adores and has had the opportunity to work with, she will dance multiple times a day most days, and it has outstanding connections to professional regional theater, summer stock opportunities and NYC. It offers a great senior showcase which has yielded opportunities and representation for several years of graduates, which = growing alumni network. And, they are adding a BFA acting program which can only enhance the acting training in the coming years! Thrilled to announce my daughter committed to Baldwin Wallace University!!!
My parting thought to next year’s group is KEEP AN OPEN MIND and don’t get caught up in the letters - explore the programs. We live near a Big10 campus and my daughter originally leaned toward big, urban and BFA. I wouldn’t have guessed two years ago that she would end up in Berea, OH in a BM program with about 4,000 students!
So grateful for all the perspectives shared on CC. I plan to add some anecdotal information on the “What I Learned” thread soon. Finally, it was very difficult for my daughter to decline offers from the other schools - so many incredible faculty members and students met along the way - we have so much respect for the different strengths of the programs we came to know on this journey.
Congrats @deelight! Thrilled that your daughter is so happy with her final decision!!!
Congrats @deelight and welcome to the BW family! My S is a sophomore MT and @kategrizz has a D sophomore MT. Let me know if you have questions. I was on campus last night for senior showcase; it is wonderful! The kids perform one time on campus before heading to NY this weekend. It will be fun to see how they do.
Got goosebumps reading this! I think you and your D thought everything through really well, right from the start, and asked yourselves the important questions. Totally agreed on “ignore the letters” and really consider each aspect of the programs you both apply to and eventually choose. Reminded me of my D’s story in so many ways, including some parts of it we are still grappling with! Big congratulations - sounds like the perfect choice!
Dang it @artskids - I was on campus for senior showcase too! I actually did look around for you - but it was a zoo both before and after as you know! I totally should have messaged you ahead of time that I was coming! @deelight CONGRATS and GO JACKETS!!! Welcome to the BW family!
@kategrizz NEXT TIME! We were sitting the row in front of your lovely D
@artskids She wasn’t feeling so hot yesterday - part of why we escaped kind of quickly afterwards - we drove her back to her dorm with the heating pad I brought because her text earlier in the day told me that if I brought it to her I would be “the best mother in the world”. She had rehearsal fairly quickly afterwards as well. NEXT TIME is only a few short weeks away! See you then!
Funny, @kategrizz, I get those “you’d be the best mom in the world” texts, too…but they usually involve money!
Hurray!@Deelight
@kategrizz and @maMTma - my S’s “best mom in the world” texts usually involve costume items from the home “stash” or more food.
Congrats @deelight’s D!
Yay congrats!!! @deelight
Our experience is different from a lot of those I’ve seen here on CC, so I thought people would like to see it.
Applied to: Otterbein, Montclair, California State (CSU) Chico, CSU Fullerton, Southern Oregon University, University of Northern Colorado, University of Arizona (walk-in audition), Roosevelt CCPA, Baldwin Wallace, Rider, Webster, University of Utah, Pace, Point Park, LIU Post (walk-in audition, didn’t apply)
Academically admitted to all. Prescreens passed, at those that required them.
Artistically admitted: University of Northern Colorado (BA MT), Southern Oregon University (BA Theatre Arts), CSU Chico (Non-audition BA MT), CSU Fullerton (Non-audition BA Theatre Arts)
Waitlisted: University of Utah (BFA MT)
Training:
Voice: 2 years private voice
Acting: 2 years of high school classes
Dance: None
Coach: MTI Sacramento (Gail Dartez, Graham Sobelman, Sunny Mitchell)
Background: S started getting interested in theatre when he was about 10, starting with some workshops at the local community theatre. But he didn’t really start thinking of it as something he wanted to do with his life until his freshman year in high school. Our high school doesn’t really have a theatre department - we have no theatre on campus, and there are exactly two classes available - “drama” and “advanced drama”. So he took those, and took private voice lessons, and learned what he could from being in community theatre shows. We tried to get him into dance too, but it was remarkably hard to do. Most of the dance schools didn’t even bother to return phone calls or emails. The ones that did wanted to put him into beginning classes with a bunch of 8-year-old girls. Not really what a 15-year-old boy wants to do.
We really didn’t know much about the process other than what we could find online. We looked at lists of schools, visited web sites, watched videos. Some schools got ruled out because of the cost. Others got ruled out because they only did on-campus auditions, and we couldn’t afford to travel to them. In the end we came up with a list that seemed to have some reach, fit, and safety schools.
The two CSU schools were both non-audition, and he had no trouble getting in there. But we visited Chico and he wasn’t crazy about the program - it didn’t seem to have the rigor that he wanted, plus it was a very new program without a lot of industry connections. And Fullerton has a well documented, very competitive cut program. He didn’t want to invest time in a school where there was a 75% chance he’d be cut after 2 years.
Two years ago SOU was his number one school - we’d done a campus visit and loved the school. They have a “sort of non-audition” program. They require a pre-screen to get into the theatre program, then an audtion after sophomore year to get into the BFA program. But over time we realized that it’s not really an MT school. They have great connections for acting and Shakespeare, but MT is just a minor emphasis. So he decided to cross that one off the list.
That left all of the out-of-state audition based schools. We knew we had to get some pre-screen videos done, and get accompaniment recordings for auditions, so we did some online searching and found Musical Theatre Intensive Sacramento (MTI). They did a fantastic job helping him with the recordings, but also helping him pick songs and monlogues and coaching him on them. The dance video for pre-screens was probably the biggest challenge, since had no formal dance training. Sunny had to teach him a dance routine and record it. In the end it wasn’t outstanding, but it wasn’t bad considering it was new to him, and we hoped it would at least show that he could move and could be trained.
Of the schools on his list, all were going to be at the LA Unifieds except for Baldwin Wallace. So we decided that was going to be our one on-campus audition trip. Then we got our two curve balls in the process. First, when we submitted the application to BW, they said all the audition slots were full. We could submit a video audition, but we’d be at a disadvatage. We figured we might as well do that, so we canceled the Ohio trip and sent them a video. Second, Pace gave him his audition slot for the unifieds, and it was a 4-hour block. The entire LA Unifieds are only two 8-hour days, so there was no way we could devote 4 hours to one school. So Pace became our on-campus audition.
We got an early acceptance to University of Northern Colorado, and a waitlist from Utah, but then a long string of rejections. He took most of them pretty well, except for Pace - he really wanted to go to Pace, and the rejection hit him hard.
Through CC we made a connection with a student at No. Colorado and she was really helpful, answering questions about the program. As the last few rejections came in he didn’t really mind - he was pretty much set on Colorado. All the was left was to visit and make sure.
The visit is done, and the results are in - he loves it! The other students were really friendly, the classes he sat in on were great, and everything about it clicked with him. The only part that’s not perfect is that it’s not in NYC, but he’ll have plenty of time after he graduates to experience life there.
Yay I have a friend who goes to NOCO! Loves it. Great choice! Congrats