My youngest is interested in a MT major. She will likely have a good GPA but is not going to take a lot of AP classes, so she will not be one of these kids with a 4.3 etc. Probably will end up in the 3.5 range. How important is it for schools like Syracuse or others with MT majors?
In our experience, for the vast majority of schools, GPA and rigor of HS classes did not factor in to acceptances at MT programs. There are a few schools (NYU is one that I remember clearly) that state that you need to be independently accepted on the academic end and the artistic end, but we found this to be the exception. And then there were a few schools (Michigan is the one I remember) that has a minimum academic standard for MT students, but this was far lower than their typical standard for a straight academic acceptance. The majority of acceptances will be based on the audition - at least that was our experience. The one caveat to this is that the amount of aid your daughter gets could be highly affected by her GPA/test scores. My daughter got a very generous financial package from the school she is attending and it was based completely on a combination of her SAT score and GPA. It is also nice to have a few APs to get out of some gen ed requirements in order to free up space in the schedule for more theatre/dance/voice electives. Good luck to your daughter!
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Everything you said - spot on!
For us, the 2 things we didn’t realize but probably should have, was the $$ and the AP/Dual Credit advantage. Some of these schools are a little pricey and having a GPA in the high 3’s unweighted is worth a lot of money. Also, because of her AP/Dual Credits transferring, she only has to take maybe 2-3 “regular” classes to meet the graduation requirements of the college - more time for “free” dance classes!
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