This is going to be long so I apologize in advance. (I also posted this to MT thread as I post there too)
My son is not the typical acting/MT kid. He has no theater/singing/dancing background at all. He attends a public high school that is sports heavy though it has a strong drama department. He was the 2nd football quarterback and a JV volleyball player his Freshman and Sophomore year. He had no idea what he wanted to do after high school and his grades were mostly B’s and C’s. He had little motivation, hated attending sports practices, not many friends, and was shy. Then one day he decided to see a school production for extra credit. And the bug bit him…hard. His younger sister is involved in community theater and both my husband and I have been as well so he contemplated if he should try out for the next musical. He did and he wowed everyone. He even got a callback for the lead. He finally found a group of kids that were enthusiastic and made him feel welcome. He instantly quit all his sports teams and was finally excited to attend school and rehearsals. He got all leads in his Junior and Senior year and won a few awards at local competitions. He fell in love with the craft. He found his passion. Finally.
He decided he wanted to major in musical theater at the end of his Junior year. I didn’t know where to start or what to do. I, myself, was a failed actress who pounded the Hollywood Blvd pavement, did work-study at Stella Adler, and just wanted to be a soap opera star in my youth. I knew how hard it was in the real world. I couldn’t imagine that life for my kid but he really loves it so what can one do?! For guidance, some drama moms who had already gone thru the process told us the names of some helpful people and said that “he would pass all his prescreens and get in everywhere he applied”. I took that to heart…stupidly. My S is a tall caucasian brunette Baritone and they are a dime a dozen in this biz. Yet we forged ahead and compiled a list of 20 schools. Most of them were “Reach” schools as I was (again ignorant) told that grades would not matter for theater. He applied for MT to most programs and a few redirected him to Acting (CMU, Texas State, Rider). We paid for a monologue coach to help him with selections, hired a wonderful group to film his prescreens, got a dance teacher to help him create a dance for the prescreens, and paid for extra singing lessons. After all the applications were filled out and submitted by Nov 1, we waited…and waited and received many rejections from the prescreens. We decided that his song selections weren’t very good so we re-did them for the auditions. We then hired a coach to get him polished. And we found out, a bit too late, that even with family legacy’s, grades were indeed very important. One of our legacy schools, U of M, rejected him as soon as they saw his 3.1 GPA and didn’t even look at the prescreen…as he got the email within a day of submitting it. We have a good friend in the regular admissions dept that asked the drama dept why they rejected my S so quickly and that was why - grades! The MI prescreen rejection had to be one of our top most painful rejections as we have all our extended family living right there in Ann Arbor. We just wanted a shot at an audition. To try and fail is one thing but to not get the chance to at least try?! Ouch.
Programs Applied to:
Arizona (safety school), USC, Texas State, TCU, OU, CMU, NYU, Rider, Pace, Ithaca, BU, Boulder, DePaul, Rutgers, Michigan, FSU, Miami, Penn State, Elon, Northwestern
Auditions at:
Pace, TCU, OU, BU, NYU, Boulder, Rider, Elon, CMU, Texas State, Rutgers, USC
Cont -
So the Net Price Calculator didn’t lie.
