<p>Hi, I'm currently a junior in high school and am in two AP's. I have also taken a good amount of honor classes freshman and sophomore year. I plan on taking two more AP's when I'm a senior but I'm worried about my grades. I got a C last year as a sophomore and am getting a C in math this year. But, my GPA is still good and I am doing very well in all my other classes. Right now I have about a 3.6 and if all goes well I can end high school with a 3.8. Do I have a chance into getting into the more prestigious Universities for musical theatre? I've heard a lot of your acceptance is weighted on your audition but I'm scared. Help please, thank you! :)</p>
<p>(The first C was in honors English and the second C is in Pre-Calculus.)</p>
<p>You must research each school you plan to apply to and find out their academic criteria. Many MT programs are select admittance (by audition) and others are non-audition (anyone can declare the major). Some schools will require academic acceptance before even allowing an audition. AP courses aren’t necessarily a precursor for admittance to an MT program, especially a BFA, where most of your credits are taken within your major. If you’re looking at top tier programs with high academic standards such as Northwestern, NYU, UMich or Carnegie Mellon, then you will need to work on keeping a high GPA. Sometimes taking an AP course only benefits if you can score a B+ or better, 4 or better in the exam to earn credit, and only if the college accepts those credits (some don’t). You may wish to reconsider taking the APs and take an Honors course instead, which may not drive your GPA down as much if you don’t grade high enough. Just something to consider…</p>
<p>Be sure to thoroughly research your college choices, and take another look at their criteria again at the end of junior year. There are often changes to the process from year to year.</p>
<p>You’ll be just fine in almost any program. Even schools like Michigan that have strenuous academic requirements have lower requirements for MT programs, and if they like you, they will make it work. Your grades really are fine though, so I wouldn’t stress about that :)</p>
<p>Don’t sweat it with a 3.8. BTW, at Carnegie Mellon, the audition is weighted about 90% for admission and academic requirements are relaxed compared to academic programs. At a Q&A session, the head of the theatre program, in response to a question about having some C’s on a h.s. transcript, expressly stated that it wouldn’t matter, that with engineering students they look at grades, with theatre students they look at the auditions, they wouldn’t expect engineering students to be able to audition and they don’t expect theatre students to have the same grades as engineering students. DramaMamaZ is correct, though, that you must look at each program individually. Even among the most selective schools, there will be great variances in the weight given to academics vs the audition, the academic thresholds that must be met and whether academics and the audition are considered separately from each other or are part of a blended process.</p>
<p>One point to consider is that your grades may not be as critical for acceptance to the MT program, but will be looked at for merit scholarships. So you want to keep your grades up to maiximize the $$ a school can give you. You don’t want to get into a program, and then not be able to afford to go because the scholarship money is too low. So keep you grades and test scores up!</p>
<p>JeffandAnn is exactly right about the merit aid (Although I don’t think Northwestern gives any). It is true that the academic standards are a bit more relaxed for the arts than say, Engineering, there are still academic standards and as DramaMama pointed out one should research those standards. Some schools, Michigan for example will not permit an on campus interview unless you have met their academic requirements AND passed the prescreen (that was the rule last year, it may have changed. Others have different requirements. Get your spreadsheet going!</p>
<p>Following the assumption more or less stated in previous posts that a 3.6-3.8 GPA is probably plenty good enough for admission to all but the most highly selective schools (of course, test scores, EC’s and other factors are likely to be considered the more selective that the school is), I did a quick check through the “Big List” of MT schools and found these that are labeled “MOST SELECTIVE” by US News. The list of MT schools where super-high GPA’s MAY be a requirement for admission is pretty short:</p>
<p>Northwestern University - BA (MT Cert) Non-audition
Carnegie Mellon University - BFA Audition
Brandeis University - BA (MT Track) Non-audition
University of Southern California - BA (MT Minor) Audition
New York University: Tisch School of the Arts - BFA Audition
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor - BFA Audition
University of Tulsa - BA Non-audition
University of California-Los Angeles - BA Audition
University of Miami - BFA Audition
University of Florida - BFA Audition</p>
<p>There may be others but I think that I found most of them. Of course, other sources may categorize additional schools as HIGHLY SELECTIVE or MOST SELECTIVE or whatever…</p>
<p>GPA is only one factor for admission at highly selective schools, and it can be difficult to arrive at a threshold for these schools because most or all will unweight and then re-weight each applicant’s GPA in order to come up with what they consider a fair basis for comparison among applicants. The re-weighting will likely vary from school to school but typically involves an assessment of the difficulty of the high school, the difficulty of the courses attempted, etc. Some schools recompute GPA’s based only on what they deem to be “core” courses such as math, science, English, social studies, and foreign languages.</p>
<p>As noted, in some or many of these schools, such as CMU, highly-artistically-qualified applicants for Musical Theatre may be considered for admission even if they don’t meet typical academic threshold metrics (along with sports and other areas of special interest to the school AND students with other “hooks” such as legacies, large donors, etc.). The audition-based BFA programs are probably very likely to admit students with lower-than-average GPA’s based on artistic merit. Michigan MAY be the sole exception, but, as noted above, they may “flex” on GPA for MT applicants as well.</p>
<p>The U Mich bar is actually reasonable. Cutting and pasting from the School of Music Theatre and Dance’s own webpage:</p>
<p>We expect freshman applicants to achieve the following: </p>
<p>•Graduation from an accredited high school. </p>
<p>•GPA of 3.0 or better (calculated using unweighted grades in all subjects taken from 9th-11th grade.) </p>
<p>•Completion of the SAT with Writing or the ACT with Writing. Minimum score requirements are: ACT of 24 or better or SAT of 1100 or better in the Critical Reading and Math, or SAT of 1650 or better including Writing.</p>
<p>Thank you for all of your input! I will definitely look more into the requirements for schools I want to apply to and hopefully I will be okay for next year’s auditions. I know that UMich and NYU are some of my dream schools. I’m taking the SAT sometime in 2013 so hopefully my test scores are good. Currently I’m in the process of auditioning for pre-college summer programs for musical theatre. Pre-college programs on an application (and the whole experience) will help, correct?</p>
<p>Pre-college programs are an excellent way for you to receive intensive training over the summer. It’s what you learn from them and apply to your craft and the overall experience that’s important. I don’t believe their appearance on your college applications and theatrical resume will mean much to the evaluators at your audition. </p>
<p>My S is a MT Performance major @ Wagner College, and interestingly, his teachers, who were the evaluators at last year’s auditions, told the class at the end of this semester that besides their obvious talent, they were chosen because at their audition, they conveyed a professionalism and serious commitment to wanting to pursue this field, i.e. their preparedness at the audition, confidence and poise, genuine personality, how they dressed - like it’s a job interview, and how they interacted with both the faculty and the students throughout the day. The school held a one-day on-campus audition, with 180 invited students. Observations were made as to how potential students conducted themselves throughout the entire process by the faculty. </p>
<p>Consider a pre-college program as a great experience to learn and grow, not just something to list on your resume to give an “advantage” over another candidate. Everyone will come in at different experience levels - some extensive, some late to the party. My S has many friends at various college MT/Acting programs and their professors don’t place any weight on what they did before college…it’s all about the now and preparing for the future. It’s an exciting journey you’re about to take…best to be as prepared as possible. Good luck!</p>
<p>^^^Yes to all of the above. Be sure you look at it as enhancing your training to apply anywhere vs. thinking that if you go school X’s summer program, it will give you an admissions advantage at that same school. I know many extraordinarily talented MTs that did not get into the school where they attended a pre-college program. (MPulse, Cherubs, CMU etc.) Come to think of it, I don’t know any student who did. I’m sure there are some, but I personally can’t think of a single one and all of the students that I’m thinking of would make a wonderful addition to any college’s MT program.</p>
<p>1) Northwestern DOES require audition for admission to the MT program, but that audition happens at the end of freshman year. Generally speaking, kids who are competitive for top-10 BFA programs can expect to be admitted to NU’s MTcertificate program. Initial admission to the school is based on academics and activities resume, similar to other highly selective universities.</p>
<p>2) I do know many kids admitted to MT programs (NU and UMich) after attending their summer programs, but we also know many who were not admitted so it’s certainly not a guarantee.</p>