<p>I was researching James Madison University this afternoon and on their page it said that an audition is no longer required for admittance into the musical theater program, but you can audition and if the audition is good they will encourage your acceptance. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this change, or anything about James Madison’s program in general. Thank you!</p>
<p>I did a little search for you and couldn't find much on James Madison, but I noticed that Momsinger's daughter is going there next year for MT. Hopefully you can be in touch with her about what they think.</p>
<p>Also, I'm copying the below from a different thread from someone who visited. You can also search by pulling down "search this thread" at the top right corner of this screen.</p>
<p>Here is what I copied:</p>
<p>11-05-2005, 04:06 PM #190<br>
draMOMMAqueen
New Member</p>
<p>Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 9 Dear Sareccasmom and Kaysmom: Again, thank you for your assistance. My daughter and I have had long talks about her priorities and she is coming around to realize that her training is paramount. We actually attended an open house for the visual and performing arts depts. at James Madison Univ today. This would definitely be a safety school for her. Their board and gpa requirements are below where hers are (by enough to probably get her a merit scholarship, but not low enough that it would not be challenging) and although there is an audition for the MT program, there is no cap on the number of kids they take. They offer a BA and a BM in MT. They have about 200 kids total in the theater dept 50 of which are in musical theater. They will be building a new theater to be done by 2009 (her senior year). The kids there are happy with the program and although the course requirement seems adequate, I know there is no comparison to some of the other schools mentioned in this discussion. I am happy to have found a back-up that she liked. No, it's not in a city, but I think it would be okay although it is rural Virginia. It is larger than she wanted (16,000 undergrads), but, it may have to do.</p>
<p>Not that this tells us anything about MT, but in the new US News & WW college rankings for master's level Southern universities, James Madison was ranked 2nd and Elon was ranked 3rd (first was Rollins College in FL).</p>
<p>I have a friend who goes to JMU for mt. The reason there are no auditions this year is because a new dean came in. She wants to evaluate her program before setting up auditions again. This is secondhand information, but I hope it helps.</p>
<p>Thank you for all your responses! They're very helpful!</p>
<p>My daughter just started at JMU last week, first week of classes finishing up. It's way too early to report much, but stay tuned, because I will be giving reports to the forum.</p>
<p>JMU is a non-auditioned program (or optional audition). My D reports that there are 28 new declared MT majors in the freshman class! The prior year there were 6. There's a new director of MT, so presumably changes will be coming. Hopefully one of the changes will be to institute private voice lessons for MT majors. At the present time, the only way a theater major can get private voice lessons is to establish a connection with a voice teacher willing to take them on, and their schedules are pretty much full with music majors. This is, of course, not good. We were fortunate in that one of the new voice faculty is a friend and colleague of mine (I'm a professional singer) and we were therefore able to get her private lessons with him.</p>
<p>Further info will come.</p>
<p>James Madison University now DOES require an audition for the Musical Theatre Concentration BA. The auditions for the Theatre concentration are still optional. </p>
<p>The audition date is January 27, 2007</p>