<p>In the spirit of being helpful, I tend to believe it’s better to be cautious about making general statements like that when the statistics and the published admission processes simply don’t bear that out. Knowing a sample of students who were the exception really isn’t much to go on. It’s really just their particular stories. Further, if the implication is that size matters, perhaps one can conclude that to be the case for the particular sample of students you are referring to but you can’t really know if it was that, or if their essays were banger, or if their auditions exceptional, their legacies well established and so on. Assuming it’s just size doesn’t explain nor do justice to all of the extremely talented, credentialed and lovely kids that both BU and NYU turn away every year. </p>
<p>Now all that said, I agree with everyone who says if BU and NYU appeal to @echowits, absolutely he should apply. Being extremely smart with decent test scores is helpful and I’m sure won’t go entirely unnoticed at both of these schools which do include evaluating your academic potential as part of their admission process. What won’t be helpful is a continued stand against doing the work. Getting in is one thing. Staying in is another. I can’t speak to the workload at BU but @marbleheader can and she has posted enough on the school for me to know you don’t attend BU’s BFA program expecting for it to be easy academically. I can speak to NYU and I promise that school is not a good fit for anyone not prepared to do the work. </p>
<p>And never in a billion years would I let either of my kids apply to 25 schools for all of the concerns expressed above. His time is way better spent finding the right 10-12 and then nailing those applications and prepping for the auditions. A great list is a powerful thing. All the best! </p>
<p>When my d was first putting her list together she had close to 25 schools and felt the need to apply to them all because of the competitive nature of the whole thing. But as she researched schools (and started looking at all the extra essays she would have to write!) she started to realize there were just some programs that she could take off. Some had too may general ed classes for her, or required that she take a math/science class (horrors!) one even required a language, so off it went! Also some of the schools were in small towns, away from the big city and she really wants an urban experience, so she took those off. Now I think the list is at 16 schools with two of those just straight, no audition BA programs. Also some of the programs that she was on the fence about she can always do as a walk in if there is time. She also was granted application fee waivers to a few of these, so that definitely made it more reasonable from my perspective! </p>
<p>And remember there is often an audition fee as well! I remember being excited last year that BW had no application fee- but if I recall correctly, their audition fee made up for it…(higher than many)</p>
<p>Like Soozievt stated, NYU will look at academics and artistic review–50-50 each. And as much as Tisch or Steinhardt might push for a particular student artistically, they can only do so much for a student who does not have the academics. I would try to use as a benchmark the 25th percentile for accepted students for gpa and test scores as a realistic minimum.</p>
<p>Older D did a summer program at NYU years ago. Back then, some students were told that they were accepted talent-wise to the VP program based on their summer work. One male student was a real standout at the summer program’s showcase. D was good friends with him. He was accepted artistically–and fought for by the program’s head–but was not accepted academically. Ended up at Temple for undergrad and returned to NYU as a graduate student (but clearly with the grades to be accepted this time.)</p>
<p>In this particular case he was told. He had done the summer program and several of the students were told that they would be accepted artistically if they applied. My daughter and several of her friends were among the students who were told that, never needed to audition, and were accepted. This particular student was also accepted artistically from his summer work, applied, but was not accepted by NYU. He knew when he applied that his grades/scores would be a problem.</p>
<p>Good information. I was told incorrectly by a professional that kind of information was never made available at Tisch . Can you share here who it was that was able to gather those specifics for your student? It would be valuable to know. Thank you.</p>
<p>My D did the summer program at Tisch as well, in her grade report (she got 6 credits, which was great) one of her teachers (who was also on the audition committee) indicated that based on her summer progress she was “strongly encouraged to consider Tisch”…we took that as a “good sign”, but not not an offer. uskoolfish might be talking about something entirely different, just though I would add D’s experience</p>
<p>Just as a heads up–Words are words. They can mean something, or not. This goes for any school and life in general. Until you have something in writing, an admissions offer, like a job offer, is still just words. For Tisch, it sounds like they were simply saying, “You are very strong ,so on our side, we would support you” But that’s all they can say. When push comes to shove a) academics/admissions plays a role and b) the person saying this may not even be on the committee in the fall. This is true for any school (and job!). Not saying that happened here, but it most certainly can happen.</p>
<p>I think the point of the poster though was to say that academics plays a role at Tisch even for someone very desired artistically, and that’s a good point to keep in mind. </p>
<p>@connections - I totally agree with you. At CMU Barbara said to my D, “I really like your style, I think you would do well here”. Now that praise was a highlight of the audition season for my D (and a point of pride for D to this day) but we didn’t assume it meant a call was coming…</p>
<p>The young man that uskoolfish was referring to was applying to VP, as she mentioned in her post, in Steinhardt, not Tisch. I know that this happened fairly often at Steinhardt back when my D was at Tisch.</p>
<p>good catch alwaysamom - there is indeed a difference in process between Steinhardt and Tisch (NOT saying either is better/worse, just that I know there are differences!!)</p>
<p>So…I am the mom of a sophomore BFA theatre student who took a similar stand about homework. It absolutely did affect him in his choice of schools. I felt strongly that he had shown me who he was in high school…a very talented actor/singer/dancer who hates homework. He is attending a wonderful program and is working his tail off but still hates homework so I am glad he did not apply to more academically challenging schools. 25 is a lot of schools to audition for…I would think about paring it down. That is a ton of travel and auditions.</p>
<p>@toowonderful I agree that it is important to not blow up a compliment and think that is means more than it does. But in the case I am referring to and the experience I am telling first hand, I am not referring to just “words.” </p>
<p>My daughter attended a summer pre-college program in Musical Theatre given by Steinhardt the summer before senior year. It was a very talented group of students, and the program itself was run by Steinhardt’s full time faculty. About 2 weeks into the program the head of VP told the students that some of them would have the opportunity to apply to NYU’s VP (MT) program without any further auditioning. They would have an artistic acceptance based on their summer work. All students were told to contact him in September to see if they were being offered that opportunity.</p>
<p>My D and about 10 others were offered that opportunity. They did not need to audition any further. They only needed to submit an application and make it known to the program’s head that they had applied.</p>
<p>Since we were local, we met with him and he spoke to us about the program in detail. D made it known that NYU was her first choice. He asked her SAT score and he was very pleased that they were fairly good. He even told her not to bother re-taking the test since she had obviously passed the benchmark she needed. (2000+) He advised her not to apply ED since he could try to get her merit aid (no need.)</p>
<p>As it turned out, D graduated NYU in 2012 with about 6 of the students from the summer program who had the automatic talent acceptance.</p>
<p>The boy I had referred to in my previous post did not have the same outcome. He was also told he was artistically accepted, but he did not have the grades and scores. He did not get accepted…which leads back to the original discussion that certain schools have academic criteria that must be met.</p>
<p>The reason I brought any of this up on this post is that this shows the importance of academics and that in NYU it is 50-50 (talent/academics) as they state for both Steinhardt and Tisch. So while there are differences in Tisch and Steinhardt…and truthfully I don’t think the Tisch summer program has ever offered the artistic acceptance that I am talking about (probably because the full-time faculty–the actual audtion committee!-- is not as involved with Tisch’s summer offerings)…the bottom line is that it is the policy for ALL of NYU that audition/portfolio programs are 50-50.</p>
<p>But NYU under normal circumstances will not say whether a student was accepted artistically, but not academically. Applicants are either accepted or rejected. This case illustrates the point.</p>
<p>@uskoolfish - my D did the New Studio Summer program at Tisch in 2013, and worked daily with the voice (Michael), Dance (Byron) and acting (Kenneth) teachers that are at the core of the that studio’s training. 2 of them were a part of her unified audition. To my knowledge- Tisch does not offer students admission based on Summer training - I had missed the distinction that you were discussing Steinhardt in your post</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether that is still the case at Steinhardt. This was back in 2008. But it showed that even an artistic acceptance does not guarantee admission without the academics. And that was with a strong push from the director of vocal performance. Was told the same when younger D applied to NYU for studio art in 2012. </p>
<p>I think academics is ultimately what took NYU and Boston off the list for my D. She has very little desire to spend an inordinate amount of time on academics and homework. Most of the programs she is interesting have very few additional academic requirements, and if they do, they are focused on arts-oriented things and writing, rather than math, sciences, etc. She’s a strong student, but homework just isn’t her bag. </p>
<p>Perhaps the real answer to all of this is that, a school that requires a certain level of academic success does so because they know what is expected of students at their University/College. We all know that it isn’t as simple as “getting in” but even more important the ability to “stay in”. Schools that are more lenient in their academic bar for acceptance are probably saying that the student doesn’t require the same level of academic abilities (or willingness to do the work as some other posters have mentioned). There are kids who don’t mind heavy study “work” loads as opposed to rehearsal and training time, as others. No question anyone pursuing a BFA knows, or needs to know, that the commitment is huge and time spent “working” on something will probably exceed many students in other fields even very academic ones. I feel very strongly, and tell the students I work with who are pursuing BFA degrees that “you will ultimately end up where you belong.” And even when that doesn’t happen at first they almost always find the right place for them. My younger D is pursuing a music degree. Her grades are very good, not stellar. I have a good sense for which schools are simply not right for her. She would gladly spend 100 hours in a row practicing and composing and working on computer music but is pretty miserable doing work for her academic courses. Clearly she would not thrive in a school with a strong academic component. Look at the curriculum at the schools your child is auditioning for to see if it is even a good fit. It should help modify (and shrink) the long list into something more manageable.</p>
<p>I generally agree with what you posted Pohsmom though I do think there are some other factors in play. I think part of what plays into NYU’s and BU’s focus with respect to undergraduate academic numbers are school policy decisions that they don’t want BFA kids to mess up too badly their overall numbers. The BU faculty person I spoke with two years ago when my daughter was auditioning was quite candid about it. The school had given him overall numbers within a range. He could slip a few in but not many. This had been a change over the last few years but it wasn’t driven by a conclusion that prior BU BFA kids were not cutting it academically. I don’t think they take any heavier academic load than many other BFA programs. I never talked to anyone at NYU about their policy but I’m sure the very large class they take plays into pressure to make sure the numbers aren’t too far off the rest of the school population. Obviously, at a school like UNCSA that doesn’t have any programs but BFA programs there isn’t going to be any school pressure to maintain GPAs or SATs at any particular level. </p>
<p>NYU was recently ranked as one of the the top academic universities in the countries- they absolutely want to make sure that the kids they admit have the “numbers” or academic chops to be admitted. Studio (acting classes) are all day, 3 days a week- the other two are “academic” days. This semester my D has two academic classes- the dreaded “Writing the Essay” (most NYU freshman’s least favorite thing on the planet), and Intro to Theater Studies, which is a requirement for her. While she spends plenty of time preparing for her studio classes, the vast bulk of her “HW” has come from her academics- and the standards are high. She knows more than one person from Tisch who are struggling academically- and knows kids who are dropping at the end of the semester b/c they either can’t handle or are unhappy with the academic workload. I would not be surprised to hear similar stories out of BU. This is why research is so important as you create your list of schools. If a kid applies to a school like BU or NYU merely b/c they are well known and respected- but aren’t prepared for the academic component they are not going to be happy or successful. My D (and I) went round and round on BA/BFA, and Conservatory/Liberal Arts- there are merits to each, and it’s a personal choice. I think sometimes kids/parents get so caught up in “getting in” that they forget the bigger picture- which is will the kid thrive there. </p>