<p>I have been on the forum for about two years and have been overwhelmed with the help and insights I have received. After following so many people I am curious how things are working out for everyone. I was a little disappointed that more people who listed their acceptances didn't say where they eventually decided to go. I would love to hear where people went and their first impressions now that they have a month or so under their belts. I would also like to see another thread by seniors in the spring to sum up their experiences and how they feel they are prepared to leave school and work. My son is at the U of Miami and remains totally ecstatic. Although he is in class(?) all day every day he feels that it can't be work because it is so much of what he wanted. He is especially in love with tap dance, from a kid with no dance training at all in the past. He has met many great people, loves dorm life, and is getting a lot our of all aspects of school. We worked very hard to find the right situation and with the help of the forum I think we accomplished that very well.</p>
<p>This is a good and important topic to post follow up from current students now that they are in these various MT programs. We have had such a thread before and it is in the "featured discussions" section of this forum but nobody has yet posted from THIS year's new MT freshmen....but I will link to that thread as it is on this topic too and reveals posts from those in the programs or their parents the past two years or so:</p>
<p>I am happy to report that DS is completely and totally happy at his school, Montclair State University (BFA MT). He loves the program, loves his classes, but especially enjoys the people he has met. He says he is surrounded by incredibly gifted folks but who are fun and kind. He said the magic words to me the other day..."I can't imagine myself anywhere else." Ok, I can sleep at night now. :) Dorm living is great fun and so far, no complaints about a single thing. I owe a lot to this board and all the advice and "strategy" we garnered while we quietly lurked in the background. You are all awesome!</p>
<p>NYU CAP21</p>
<p>My D is a freshman in NYU's CAP21 program; the program is everything she had hoped for and more. The faculty is amazing, the classes are small, she is learning a lot, and she finds being surrounded by kids, who are all super talented, very stimulating. </p>
<p>A city girl through & through, she absolutely loves living in the city with all its resources; making use of free ticket offers or her student discount, she has managed to see many shows already (she texted me this morning that she is seeing Equus tonight). She also loves going to the museums and the park on the weekends to do her homework. </p>
<p>Her schedule is quite busy right now with 2 days filled with academic classes( and related homework), and 3 full days of studio, but she would not have it any other way. Every day her inbox is full with mailings on casting opportunities or calls to audition for productions, readings, or work with graduate and/or film students, and she is looking forward to immersing herself more & more. To see her so happy, excited and content, has made things definitely easier for me, the mom :D. </p>
<p>Thanks to this forum I felt I was able to understand my D's passion so much better, and help support her during her audition journey. So let me finish with a big 'thank you' to all of you!</p>
<p>NYU - PART II</p>
<p>I just replied to an email, but I thought I'd add this to my earlier post; in terms of "how was move-in day", and if "NYU felt overwhelmingly big":</p>
<p>1) Move-in day was surprisingly well organized. We were prepared for the worst, and anticipated bad parking situations etc. Our D had signed up on- line for "the early slot", which worked well for us since she brought a lot of stuff, and we had added to her pile with some more trips to the local Bed Bath & Beyond. Lots of current students on hand to help out, and the RA of her floor was super nice and welcomed everyone as they made it to their apartments.</p>
<p>2) NYU did a really good job of making everyone feel 'welcome' with their welcome picnic at Gould Plaza, and purple handouts galore. The whole Washington Square area felt like a college campus, with students running around everywhere, and parents talking to each other like old friends, even if we had just met. The one thing we did not have was a parent meeting for Tisch or CAP per se. This might have been a nice touch. On the other hand, we knew that it was not on the schedule, and so there was no surprise. The kids on the other hand had a super exciting orientation week schedule, that started the evening of move in day with a Tisch party, followed by days filled with entertainment, free classes, scavenger hunts, mixers, info meetings, both for Studio (in D's case CAP), Tisch, and NYU. It was a great way to meet tons of people. The Studios at Tisch really feels like a a group of families that are part of a relatively small school (the size of my D's HS ;)) in a bigger school's body, and so you have a small school feel in a larger school setting (I hope that made sense) :D.</p>
<p>My son is currently a freshmen at Elon. He absolutely loves the school. His favorite class is acting. Having not had much dance, he feels behind a lot of the times even in the beginning dance classes, but says he is learning so much. He is also taking a couple of liberal arts courses, as Elon requires a liberal arts base, which is another reason he liked the program there. </p>
<p>Elon is a small community, but there are so many extra activities outside of classes. He said this week he doesn't understand how anyone can get bored. He's been spending a lot of time in the music library, which he recently discovered, researching songs. In addition, the city of Burlington is 5-10 minutes away, with plenty of shopping, restaurants, etc. For bigger night life, students might go to Greensboro or Raleigh.</p>
<p>The MT students are a very tight-knit group and socialize quite a bit with each other. My husband calls it the MT fraternity. Each freshman is assigned an older student in the program as a mentor, and many of the freshmen have developed close bonds with their mentors.</p>
<p>We ask him every week if he's ready to come and always get a very loud "NO!"</p>
<p>I'm at Muhlenberg, and I absolutely love it. My classes are not bad, my professors are all great, and the majority of the people I've met here are so amazing. I was skeptical at first because it's such a small school and it was also the only school I applied to that wasn't in a big city... I'm not a huge fan of Allentown, but I can deal with that because I really don't escape from campus all that often, and when I do it's either to go to Target or church...</p>
<p>In terms of theatre, I wasn't expecting it to be so competitive here. I auditioned for all three mainstage shows and all three black boxes as well as several a cappella groups and didn't get called back to anything (and I had really good auditions most of the time). But I'm actually doing theatre despite that: I'm in children's theatre and in my friend's third tier show, and I signed up for the Rocky Horror shadow cast. I'm just in one theatre class right now, but I'm also taking voice lessons and I'm learning so much... I love it here.</p>
<p>Chelly, you say your classes "aren't bad." Can you elaborate?</p>
<p>I'll comment for my D since she doesn't frequent this site.<br>
She's loving life at Pace University. Her dorm room is located in the same building as most of her classes, while a couple of classes are in a building right across the street. She's a big fan of convenience! Her voice lesson requires a subway ride, though, and she enjoys traveling once a week to a different area of town for that.
She likes all of her classes and the professors teaching them. Most of them are "really cool" or "awesome". Her ballet instructor is "incredible!" She only has dance in her schedule one day per week, but is free to audit other classes, and she does.
She has one academic class this semester, a learning community requirement, which is actually 2 related courses, taught by 2 different professors, and that class is 5 hrs per week. The only other non-artistic class this semester is a required University 101. She's happy with the amount of academics currently required, but anxious to be able to explore interesting electives in the future.
She loves NYC and has seen 5 Broadway shows since the start of school, thanks to student rush and ticket lottery. One show, Equus, was seen with her acting group in place of class that day.<br>
Inside the Actors Studio is taped at Pace, and she's looking forward to the first taping when the guest will be Daniel Radcliffe. Students at Pace receive 2 tickets to the tapings.
The MT dept is a tight knit, friendly group, creating a nurturing, family-like environment. My D feels like individual attention and the idea of cultivating each student's individual gifts and talents is the focus of the program there.
Freshmen are allowed to audition for shows, and she is excited about getting to participate in one this semester.
Pace is located downtown, and she loves being in walking distance of so many interesting places. Chinatown and Little Italy are just a few blocks away. The Brooklyn Bridge is right outside her door. The Southstreet Seaport is a couple of blocks away, and like every other area of Manhattan, any convenience that you want or need is right there...pharmacies, groceries, Starbucks!, Bed Bath and Beyond!...it's really a terrific area to live in. We have been told that police/security presence is more evident there than any other part of town because of the close proximity to the WTC site, the Court House, and the Federal bldg. It feels very safe there. We've observed the abundance of families in the area. Many, many young couples with strollers indicates an area that is becoming more and more desireable to live in.</p>
<p>My daughter is a drama major at the University of Oklahoma. She was an MT in high school and although she was accepted into a couple of MT programs, she felt that straight acting was more her strength. </p>
<p>Her enthusiasm for starting off at the University of Oklahoma was off the charts. She encountered a little buyers remorse over the summer when she attended OUs orientation camp, called Camp Crimson. The overwhelming majority of the females at the camp were more sorority types who were more concerned about their looks than their behavior. Please no one take offense, as I myself was part of the Greek system when I went to college. It just wasnt my daughters cup of tea. My wife and I spent the rest of the summer assuring her that at such a large university there would be all types of people and that she would surely find many like-minded students. </p>
<p>The day we took her to move in to the dorm she quickly found that there were lots of folks like her. The next day she was to attend a day-long School of Drama orientation followed by a department sponsored party. The day consisted of discussions about the curriculum, ground rules, team building exercises, meetings between the new students and their upper class mentors, and audition/monologue work shops. We did not see her again until the following day, and the sparkle and enthusiasm that she had before going to the summer orientation camp had fully returned. Her mentor (a senior) remarked that the faculty and upper division students found her to be very impressive and that she had created quite a buzz by the way she carried herself and fully participated without any hesitation during the day-long orientation. Auditions for fall productions were to be held the middle of the next week. </p>
<p>She got 6 call backs, which she was told was virtually unprecedented for a freshman female and ended up with a nice role for one of the fall productions. She told her mom and me that she felt as though she was walking on clouds. She was encouraged to run as the freshman female representative for the Drama Senate and she was elected to the position by her fellow freshman students. So this has been a long way of saying - so far, so good. </p>
<p>My daughter is not a football fan, so she is probably unaware that her school has taken over the number 1 ranking in the nation. Boomer Sooner!</p>
<p>My daughter is a BA Theatre performance major at Marymount Manhattan College. So far, she really loves her classes and living in New York City.
The freshman dorms are in midtown Manhattan on 55th st. between 2nd and 3rd ave. They are apartment style- two bedrooms with two girls in each bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. It's about a 15 minute walk to the school at 71st. st.
MMC contracts their MT dance and voice lessons out- I wasn't sure how this would work- but my daughter loves it. She wakes up every morning, hops on the subway and wakes up to dance 5 days a week. Once a week she takes the subway right after dance to her voice instructer's studio- whom she is very happy with.
Her afternoons are filled with classes- this semester she has Acting 1, Script Analysis, Musical Theater Foundations, a freshman seminar course, a freshman writing course( that happens to focus on music-great for her) and a quantative reasoning course. She loves all her classes (maybe not math, so much!)
She's been impressed with everyone's talent and has met some really nice fellow theater and mt students.</p>
<p>"Chelly, you say your classes "aren't bad." Can you elaborate?"</p>
<p>Yep! Sorry I wasn't more clear! I don't hate any of my classes, or even dislike them, but there are a couple that I don't love... One is a bio class for non-majors, and I'm really legitimately bored in the class because it's so far been mostly stuff I learned in high school (the professor is great, though, very helpful and she explains things very well), and the other class is very interesting but the readings are some of the most boring things I've ever read. Other than that I enjoy my classes though I have a French oral exam coming up and I'm very worried about my pronunciation. ):</p>
<p>Honestly, the only thing I really dislike about this school is that it's very predominantly upper-class. It's caused a bit of tension between me and my friends because I don't get an allowance and don't have access to daddy's credit card... I got a job (not work-study) on campus because I'm expected to buy my own textbooks and pay for whatever miscellaneous expenses pop up, and I also have a student loan to pay off, and every once in a while someone will make a snide comment about how I'm poor (which isn't true at all... my family is firmly middle-class and I'm not even expected to work, but I'd like to be as small a financial burden to my parents as possible) and it just irritates me a lot. But I'm really great at changing the subject, so whenever the topic of working or money comes up, hey, let's talk about that cute boy over there! =P</p>
<p>Chelly, good for you! You are certainly a young woman with good character! This is a business that thrives on good work ethic.</p>
<p>Chelly, thanks for clarifying about your classes. I just wanted to make sure that people reading knew you were not talking specifically about acting or performance classes being "OK." (I was pretty sure you were referencing some academic classes, but wasn't 100% sure.)</p>
<p>Re: being surrounded by kids who have more disposable income than do you. That's a tough situation for anyone, but it sounds as if you handle things really well. Most of those students who have access to their parents' credit cards and can spent extravagantly or without worry will, at some point, likely have to learn the value of a dollar when they graduate and are off on their own. (Well, some might not, as I read recently in the New York Times about the increasing numbers of parents who "supplement" their kids' earnings so that their kids can maintain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, even once the kids are grown and working.) You, however, have a head start in understanding that money is finite and doesn't just flow from an ATM machine. That will pay off (sorry for the bad pun!), believe me.</p>
<p>Just a thought...a lot of families who were full of disposable income might not be now in these difficult economic times. Perhaps their children will learn a little more about humility when there credit cards get cancelled. ChellyBelly42 you have probably learned so much about independence and are quite possibly in a better position than many of your "friends" who don't know what it means to cut back on spending.
Just a thought...</p>
<p>Just wanted to chime in on the money issue here. D is finding that there are quite a few kids at NYU with an allowance larger than hers ;); she loves to get the discounted student tickets to shows, but learned early that she was going to have to make due with what we sent her (she tried for a "raise", we said no). Her "solution" was to make her own sandwiches in the morning rather than hit the local deli for lunch. Since she is in Studio three days a week, and lives in an apartment style dorm, we opted to get her a limited meal plan, as we anticipated that she would not have much time to go to the dining halls or food court. D has also re-discovered the "beauty" of cereal :D.</p>
<p>ChellyBelly - Thanks for clarifying your thoughts on classes at Muhlenberg. When my D visited the school over the summer and met with Charlie Richter she fell in love with it! She is so happy to have a non audition school on her list that she could easily see herself at in 2 years. </p>
<p>You sound like a very mature young lady who is handling situations at college wonderfully. My girls attend a public HS in our area which is very upper middle class with many extremely wealthy families. They have always had to deal with classmates that have more $$ than they do. My junior D supplements allowance by doing birthday parties with a company and makes $32 and hour plus tips dressed as a princess or other characters. My freshman D has a great pet sitting business in the neighborhood and made more than $600 in two months!</p>
<p>Mtgrlsmom, I think there are <em>plenty</em> of kids at NYU with what seem to be almost unlimited funds, so one lesson that our girls (who don't have unlimited funds) will learn is how to prioritize. They learn that the money that they save by making sandwiches to take to studio lunches can equal a decent (though not great) seat at a musical or play and so on. I have been impressed so far by how frugal my D is being, but that's probably largely because she is using money she earned herself working behind the counter at a video store last summer (and hating every minute of it.) I think that we all are less inclined to freely spend money that we earned through our own time and sweat. :) (Lest I sound like a meanie mom, we do pay for certain expenses, including her meal plan and dorm. :))</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, sorry I didn't clarify about theatre classes vs. academic classes. I'm only in one theatre class (theatre & society) and I really enjoy it... freshmen don't take studio acting classes. You can take one, but it's designed for non-majors and doesn't count towards major requirements- but a friend of mine is in it and she says it's a really great class and a lot of fun. Freshmen do take scenic design classes, which I'll have next semester, and of course you can always take dance and music.</p>
<p>Haha, after all the compliments, I feel bad saying that I'm probably not going to work next semester! (I'm going to have a much heavier course load- I'm also in the elementary education program- and even though I only work about 10 hours a week, it's usually at night, so I'm up a lot later than I should be to do my homework.) It's just weird transitioning from a school where nearly all my friends worked to where almost none of them do, so I think I'm just a little over-sensitive to the issue, that's all.</p>
<p>I think this is a great thread. My daughter is a junior and I have been lurking here for over two years. The information here is like none other, and the feedback from parents and students is so helpful. Can't wait to see more postings regarding how students are doing their first year and their impressions.</p>