By the way, the NY Times article grossly misrepresents the BA programs on D’s list. Many kids in her program can spend over 80% of their classroom time on performace training (most enter with a lot of AP credits) and are fully committed to careers in theatre. It also presumes that kids in BFA programs don’t decide not to perform over the 4 years of college, while in fact even at top conservatory or BFA programs many kids either switch majors or realize they won’t perform professionally by the time they graduate.
It also says kids go to certain schools to “increase their probability of being drafted”, yet in my experience those very same kids were likely to be “drafted” wherever they had gone to college, as most successful actors were the lucky winners of the genetics, talent and childhood training lottery well before they chose colleges. Evidence of this can be found in the random selection of schools (or no schools) found in virtually any Playbill you open.
great article and after I read it, I did a little search to see what had become of the young man who was featured. He has apparently had some great roles at Gettysburg and it looks like he might now attend the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Not too shabby
Unfortunately, it was an issue of practicality for us. UMich MT has like 700 plus applicants for a mere 22 spots. I didn’t think it was practical for her/us to prep, travel, audition, etc… for just one or two MFA programs that she would very likely not have gotten in to. Had she committed to the full audition season - then yes, it would have worked for us to spread the expenses and odds across 10 or 12 schools including possibly a few uber-competitive programs like UMich, CMU and Juilliard. However, had she done that, I really think her BA search, list, selection and applications would have been compromised at least a little bit. There are only so many hours in a day.
@arwarw - Your D’s approach sounds perfect for her, and I completely agree that traveling for just a few auditions may not make sense! My point was just that everyone’s list will be specific to their individual desires and that it might be a good idea to research specific programs rather than automatically ruling any in or out based on the letters on the degree, and also to include some variety in case your 17-year-old changes their mind during the application, audition, waiting or decision seasons.
My daughter chose a less competitive school academically that admitted her into their honor’s program with almost a full scholarship. She will leave school debt free, talented and well rounded. Couldn’t ask for anything more…
@actorparent Don’t assume a school like NYU doesn’t give out any merit aid even though they have high academics as a criteria for admittance. We didn’t qualify for any need based aid, but D received $11K a year in merit aid for talent. That was through Steinhardt and she graduated in 2012. But my understanding is that merit aid (without need) still exists in Steinhardt and Tisch for performance/ portfolio majors. These scholarships are only given out for RD candidates.
Evidence of this can be found in the random selection of schools (or no schools) found in virtually any Playbill you open.