How many visits?!?

College Majors Dance Major
1

For those who have BTDT, any advice on how many different places to try and visit prior to auditioning (which presumably will also be a visit)?

At this point I am thinking that we will do a visit to Dallas/Ft. Worth to see SMU and TCU; Northeast to see Temple, Rutgers, SUNY-Purchase and maybe a couple of others. Probably will go see U of I Urbana-Champaign because we can combine with a visit to family; maybe hit Ohio State on the way home. Plus day visits to 3-4 schools near to us. But that’s feeling like a lot.

(She is a rising senior but taking a gap year so this upcoming year will not be her auditioning year.)

2

We couldn’t afford to visit more than once when they were out of state, and we really didn’t have the time either, so the audition was the visit at each school. Before she committed she visited her top choice again, just to be sure.

3

I’m hoping that by doing some visits BEFORE auditioning we might be able to narrow down the list of schools to apply to. Although no matter what it seems like it’s important to cast a wide net. It’s hard to imagine fitting in 8-10 auditions in a single fall, though.

4

Auditions for my daughter ran from October through February. She did 3 in the fall and 3 in the late winter. There was one more school she kind of had as a back-up that she could have auditioned at in early March, but ultimately she didn’t. Had she been able to attend regional auditions she would have, but she was out of the country for two of those. We also don’t live close to any of the college fair/dance fair type auditions where you can audition for multiple programs at once. I think there’s one in New York, and maybe one in Florida?

My daughter’s opinions of schools seemed to solidify AFTER auditioning and experiencing the teachers, the rigor of the audition, etc. She didn’t have her heart set on a type of school - urban, suburban, big, small - so I think that for her, visits ahead of time might not have eliminated any schools. She had preferences but wasn’t ruling anything out. She used college websites to try and learn about the programs (as did I!) and that helped us figure out which schools offered more of what she wanted. But it wasn’t until actually being at the auditions, meeting current dance students and faculty, etc. that she started to really see the various schools.

When we started the process we thought it made sense to audition for her top choices early and then go to more auditions if she had to. We were trying to save some money and time, as all except one audition required a flight, hotel, and so forth. She was missing a lot of school for them, and that was stressful. (Had she taken a gap year, and had we been able to schedule things without worrying about school, some of that might have been different for us.) In retrospect, I wish she’d done that in reverse and gotten some nice acceptances and scholarships early in the process (instead of February/March), as well as more audition experience, before tackling those selective programs. In the end it’s all worked out, but I do wonder if things might have gone differently had we approached it differently. I didn’t realize (dumb mom here) just how subjective the entire audition process would be. That should have been obvious to me, but it wasn’t.

5

All the OOS schools D18 applied to were only visited for auditions, apart from the one she’d attended for a summer intensive. A handful (most notably Ailey and Butler) were not visited at all, because they had audition tours. Prior to applying she did one visit at spring break to 4 SoCal schools, just to get a flavor of the differences (large vs small, public vs private, BA vs BFA). That was plenty to help decide where to apply. I’d suggest one tour with a variety of different schools, perhaps the northeast ones on your list.

She did 10 in person auditions plus 2 re-auditions, so there was really very little cutting down of the list to be done. The auditions are split between fall and Jan/Feb, we did 3 OOS ones in the fall and then 9 in-state/tour auditions in Jan/Feb. January was 8 auditions over 5 consecutive weekends so much more intense than the fall. We did find that the audition tours can sometimes be less competitive/easier to stand out in (i.e. higher chance of success) because fewer people attend, so that is something to bear in mind. I would think applying to at least 10 schools would be advisable, especially if some of them shortlist before audition.

6

Which 4 southern California schools did she visit and what did she think of them? We live near Chicago, but DD is doing a dance intensive in SF this summer, so afterwards we are going to drive to the LA area and look at schools. She will be a senior this fall. We are considering UC Santa Barbara, USC, Chapman and, UC Irvine. Any thoughts, positive or negative, on any of these schools? She wants to focus on contemporary dance, and also wants to attend an institution with strong/solid academics.

7

@kkddrr05 She visited Chapman, UCSB, UCI and UCLA. Didn’t have time for USC that trip but did apply. USC is the only one she didn’t get an audition at, it’s incredibly competitive. Her preference is ballet and her academics are strong (4.0UW, 35 ACT, NM Commended, 9 APs, with eight 5s and one 4).

She decided not to apply to UCLA for dance as the program is very modern and isn’t really set up for becoming a professional dancer (it became an academic only backup). Ended up with dance acceptances at UCSB and UCI (both with Regents scholarship), UCI was a slightly stronger dance program but not necessarily pre-pro oriented, and the setting isn’t as beautiful as UCSB. Given the choice of just those two she would have picked UCI, though I wouldn’t really consider applying to them from OOS if the aim is to dance professionally. There are better dance schools available for less money and neither has great links into the LA dance scene from what we could tell. But if it’s mostly about academics with the chance to dance as well, and finances aren’t a constraint, then for a modern dance BA UCLA would be worth considering too. Chapman was more contemporary and quite professionally oriented, especially towards commercial dance (Disneyland, LA music videos, etc). She was waitlisted there. The academics are a fair bit weaker than UCSB/UCI but merit aid if you get in with a high GPA/ACT is apparently quite generous.

In terms of visiting I think the 4 you picked would be the best to visit in SoCal. But all have their issues (USC being how hard it is to get in), so your daughter might not end up choosing any of them.

Her favorites were Oklahoma and Utah for ballet, Indiana is also great but a really tough admit. She’s attending Utah which is an excellent program and had the best (academic) merit scholarships of anywhere she applied. All three of those also have good modern dance programs but are better known (and more competitive) for ballet.

For contemporary Fordham/Ailey was the strongest and merit aid was pretty good (about half the total COA). UT Austin also has an interesting program (although not much more pre pro than UCI) and she got an OOS tuition waiver there making it pretty cost effective (though don’t count on that, it sounds like it is extremely rare, perhaps 1-2 a year are offered in fine arts as a whole).

On the “strong academics” front, it’s worth noting that your time is extremely constrained when doing a BFA (she has to take 82 out of 120 credits in her major and its 5+ hours each day Mon-Fri). So your ability to take advantage of the school’s other academic offerings will be pretty limited and their strength or otherwise may not make much difference. OTOH if you do a BA, then that will provide more freedom to take other subjects.