Yes @soozievt I get that your 2 kids had the same exact process / expenses many years ago.
I’m just saying now kids are applying to 15, 18 . 20 some schools in some cases so they are incurring much greater expenses then perhaps you did as i seem to remember your MT daughter did not apply to that schools. The odds seem to have changed significantly even in the past 5-8 yrs therefore necessitating great amounts of applications , auditions, vists and from I have seen an extreme sense of need to have your child enrolled in much more intensive training programs , summer intensives, coaches and the like to give themselves an edge and perhaps more chance in getting some decent acceptances.
Just bringing up that the expense level has risen to a very high level and I truly don’t see how one can deny it. True some kids need none of these things to be successful but they are really the outliers I suppose, the insanely talented triple threats right out of high school who really will be accepted to tons of programs regardless of amount applied to. Unfortunately most of our children do not fall into that group.
@theaterwork, yes, applicants are applying to a greater number of schools now. However, this is also true with non-MT applicants seeking highly selective colleges (Ivies and the like) as my non-MT did. Each of my kids applied to 8 colleges. Today, I think they would each apply to 10-12. As a college counselor, I rarely have had students applying to more than 14 schools and do not think that is necessary. So, while my kids would apply to more schools today than originally perhaps, that is true of BOTH my kids. For example, Ivy level colleges have single digit acceptance rates these days too.
Summer programs? We did those for both kids for YEARS. (my MT D went to a theater camp for six weeks for 8 summers…but other D did equivalent, including theater camps in fact). In terms of training, given that we lived in a rural area, I cannot see how my MT D would have any more training than she already had…multiple dance classes and private voice. We didn’t really have drama classes/programs. She worked with her voice teacher on audition songs. She had a monologue coach. All that would be the same today. By the way, her friendship group who all went onto BFA in MT programs that are quite well known, all had training in their home areas, lots of experience in productions, and went to summer theater programs too. That is not so different than today.
Just an observation…for most MT kids they HAVE to audition. Sometimes on campus, sometimes at Unifieds and sometimes they are lucky to be able to send a video. Very few academic programs REQUIRE you to attend their campus to apply. For my students who are really struggling to afford this process that seems to be the difference between them and their academic siblings. If you are fortunate enough to be able to do campus visits within your budget than there are more similarities. I also think it’s fair to say the number of schools being applied to has gone up in the past ten years. Maybe not the past two or three years and there were certainly students who applied to 14-16 schools ten years ago but I have definitely seen (an encouraged) an increase in applications and auditions over the past 5-10 years.
Yes, there is an increase in the number of applications/auditions in the past 10 years! I am a college counselor who has been advising students and their parents for 15 years and have seen this. The discussion wasn’t really comparing costs now to costs 10 years ago. It was comparing costs of MT applicants to non-MT applicants. In that regard, it costs the same for both my daughters, for MT or for highly competitive non-MT college admissions. I think it is very important to visit colleges for any interest area. This was no different for my family based on intended major. MT D incorporated auditions in her college visits. She actually visited some of her schools twice, once to visit and once to audition. I strongly advocate for campus visits for any applicant. @Pohsmom, you are right that it isn’t required to visit non-audition colleges, but my reasons for visiting a college are truly the same no matter the intended major.
If the topic switches to comparing then and now, as I wrote, my kids would likely apply to more schools now, possibly as many as 12, since students are applying to more and more schools and so this is affecting acceptance rates to highly competitive colleges (whether BFA in MT or Ivies/etc.). That cost of applications and related expenses would go up for either kid. In fact, when non-MT kid applied to Ivies/etc. graduate schools, she increased her apps to 10.
However, with MT kids, there is the option to do SOME auditions at Unifieds, though we did not opt to do that.
I would not send my kid to a college without having visited. I also would not wait until April of senior year to visit. I understand this is hard to afford for many of us. But in the scheme of what four years of college will cost, it is a small amount. I would not spend that kind of money on an education without a visit. Campus visits really help a student determine their best fit. This was fruitful for both my kids. The schools they each landed at were visited twice.
I had one go through regular auditions, and one go through this. It was night and day from a cost and a time/effort perspective, because of prescreens, and because of the sheer volume of schools. Older D (accounting) applied to three schools; one was a reach. She had visited them, and a couple others, over the course of high school. She got into two, visited them both (in-state!), and picked one. The #10 accounting program in the country, since we love lists here so much, lol. Done, and done.
From an overall expense and savings for my MT D, I would say figuring out what she wanted before we were midstream would have been huge!! She fell in love with MT in high school and figured out she wanted to do this as a major her junior year, and we figured we had time, haha. Sitting in on a few college MT classes her junior year would have been immensely helpful in identifying the right kind of program. We were all completely clueless about the process, so she was focusing on things that ended up not being important to her. Such as, she thought she wanted a large university campus but the more she learned and the more places she visited she realized she wanted a conservatory. She thought she wanted to be a short-ish drive away, but she realized NY was where she wanted to be. She thought she wanted some specific programs based on their caché, or rank in lists, that ended up being the “we will break you and build you in our image” kind of programs, which is just wrong for her. Some programs that marketed themselves as kindler/gentler did not have the rigor she wanted (“mom, this would just be four more years of high school PA”) and she could have cut them. Lots of wasted applications and prescreens, and trips to audition. For us, we had to take the (costly) shotgun approach because we did not know enough to build a small list in which we were confident she would find a match.
@CentralOHmomof4 You are a good example of where the cost was different between both of your daughters’ college admissions processes. I can see how that was for you. Our experience for both Ds differed from your experience as my non-MT D was also applying to the same number of schools as MT D and these were highly competitive schools as well. The visits were all out of state for both daughters.
I do think it is generally more expensive to apply to BFA programs, even if you were applying to and visiting the same number of schools with both an MT and a non-MT kid. So many schools now have prescreens and those all come with an additional fee on top of the regular application fee for that school.
Also, the average BFA MT or Acting applicant is applying to more schools than even the average Ivy applicant (based on a fairly large sample size of kids I know).
In addition, you may be able to keep audition costs close to the same as non-MT visits if you live driving distance from the schools and in the same time zone – generally in the northeast quadrant of the US. But once you have to fly substantial distances to get to auditions on specific dates/times that are not very flexible, and you need to be fresh and ready to audition once you arrive, the amount of time and money that must be expended increases. Many kids on the west coast do not visit colleges before they apply for non-auditioned majors. They wait and see where they get in because of the time and money required to travel from the west coast. But if they apply to auditioned programs, they do not have much choice.
Pre-screen and audition fees alone will put a MT kid in a much higher expense category. We spent maybe $500 on applications and campus visits for my non-MT son…will have spent close to $7k for my daughter. Living on the West Coast probably made our costs higher because we could not drive anywhere. But, I would budget $5k for the whole process, no matter where you live.
I also think this is a more costly endeavor for MT applicants who are on the West Coast since so many of the BFA in MT programs are in the Eastern portion of the country. We live in the East. We drove to most schools, and flew to three.
I had always stressed grades over anything else with my D (freshman Wagner) - she got a very nice scholarship based on academics and additional talent money. At Wagner you need to get in academically first, so the talent money was just icing on the cake. The entire process (and it continues even now that she is IN college) is very, very expensive. On top of all the money spent preparing them for auditions (coaching, voice lessons, dance, prescreens etc, etc.) the application process for the programs was an additional cost. Throw in travel to visit the colleges or to on campus auditions (even travel to Unifieds in the major cities is not cheap), meals, gas…it is ridiculous! And parents, it doesn’t end once they get to college! I keep thinking how much cheaper this all would have been if she would have went to college for accounting
I agree with the $5000 figure given as an average by @artskids. I think when i figured it out last year we came in at just under that. That was for auditioning at 10 schools on campus, no Unifieds (factoring in visits twice to the non audition school including a scholarship interview which entailed a separate trip, also app to one school that we didn’t audition at because of illness) , gas, tolls, hotels, food , one audition dress, new leotard, new pair of jazz shoes, application fees and any additional Conservatory app fees, regular fees
that any college student needs for SAT score reports & AP scores sent etc & revisit costs to the 2 final decision schools. (This is not even counting the costs of travel to summer intensive before senior year, extra costs associated with vocal prep and monologue prep helpers.)
Ain’t no regular college application process costing $5000…unless you’re applying to a ton of Ivy League schools or your program is so competitive that you have to apply to tons of schools to get in ( I know certain medical majors have this etc)
@theaterwork, all those things you listed in post 31 to apply/audition at 11 (?) schools, is what I had to do with both my kids, MT or not. Same amount of visits. MT D did 13 visits. Non-MT D did 13 visits. Hotels, gas, food, some flights, app fees, SAT score reports, revisits to accepted student events, etc. Did not buy an audition outfit, but for that matter, other kid had interviews. Summer program, both did. Vocal prep and monologue prep…MT kid did, but other kid had her share of expensive lessons, classes and programs outside of school, just as much as MT kid. Just saying the cost was equal. Now, others may opt to not visit schools, but we thought it was important for any college applicant to do.
In terms of the families I advise, whether for MT or other selective colleges, they tend to have about 10-14 schools, and most are visiting the schools on their list. In fact, very recently, I met with 3 of my families who were in my city while on spring break trips to tons of colleges up and down the East Coast. Two sets of parents flew in from China for these. One, who is also from China, but living in Chicago while son is in HS, drove to lots of colleges over spring break. These three families were not for MT. An MT student of mine is now doing a lot of visits this month because they unfortunately did not visit many of her schools prior to acceptances and have a lot of accepted schools to squeeze into just a couple of weeks.
I meant to clarify in post 32 that the families doing lots of campus visits over their spring break are juniors. With my non-MT kid, we did our first trip to each school during junior year as well.
@soozievt - did you have prescreen fees? Any idea how many of your D’s schools are now prescreen that were not then? (CMU for example) Also - I have to say that it seems application/audition fees have gone up shocking just in the 5 years since my D did it. For example - if NYU is approx $200 (as people here have said) then it has doubled since my D paid it in 2013…
@toowonderful…while we were discussing comparing applying to MT vs. not MT, I do think if comparing costs now to costs in the past, everything goes up, yes. And as I have already mentioned, kids (those vying for MT or those vying for highly selective colleges for other fields) are applying to a greater number of schools. The other change now is prescreens. We did not have prescreens. We only did the video audition thing for YoungArts. I’d have to figure out which of my kid’s schools now are prescreen. CMU is one.
And of course, tuition/room/board keeps rising!!! My kids qualified for need based aid. But one thing that would be lower today if my kid went is her cost of attending Brown University. We got very good aid, but right after my D graduated Brown, the aid policies got way better for those in our income bracket and her college would have cost us less today.
I’m just going to mention once again that a BFA is a professional degree program and many who go to one, don’t eventually go to graduate school (though some might). But in many other professional fields, a graduate degree is helpful and so, as I wrote, I funded 8 years of school for my non-MT degree kid vs. 4 for my MT kid. Both now are professionals in their respective fields. Non-MT was more expensive to educate.
Okay - as the mom of twins who went through the application process last year - one MT/one not, I feel like I should weigh in. Both took their standardized tests once - SAT, SAT-IIs, and ACT. Both had voice lessons in high school. Both had summer intensives during high school - writing for my daughter, MT for my son. We did not visit colleges over spring break b/c the kids were either on service trips or on band trips. We did build in some combined long weekend college visits where we could see colleges in the same region together. My daughter visited 5 of the 7 schools she applied to prior to admission, went back for 2 for on campus interviews, and then to 2 others for admitted students days when she was trying to make a choice. My son (the MT kid) only visited 2 programs that he applied prior to admission, but did all of his 7 auditions on campus. And then he went to on campus admitted students day events for the 3 programs he was considering (2 within driving distance, 1 required a flight). So I think that the costs for both were not hugely different - we were able to drive to many of the visits/auditions and used miles and hotel points to save on the travel costs for the auditions on campus. The main difference in cost came down to feeding my son during our trips :)! Oh, and where is he now? At the non-audition “safety” school he applied to, which he hadn’t visited prior to applying.
I think 1 point that drove up the cost for @soozievt was visiting all colleges applied to, prior to admission.She did this for both MT and non-MT kids. One of the key ways we saved money was to only visit schools that my S was accepted to, and of the accepted schools, only the ones which were true “finalists”. My S did not do much in the way of training; lessons were sporadic (approx 10 voice lessons in total), dance skills (admittedly meager) were mainly achieved via high-school showchoir, and he did not attend any true/costly summer intensives. (He did do the free 5 day program at LIU Post) We decided to use a coach, and he was granted a scholarship - attending Moonifieds was a huge “saver” for us - both in terms of money and sanity. In retrospect, we could have saved money and not attended 2 out-of-town on campus only auditions. Do not be afraid to ask the schools for a fee waiver, and for some kids, guidance counselors can provide waivers as well.
@beachymom You said , "We decided to use a coach, and he was granted a scholarship - attending Moonifieds " Was your son gifted the scholarship you mention from Mary Anna Dennard or Dave Clemmon? Aren’t they the only ones who attend Moonfieds? This is great for you and I applaud it, but not all will get that advantage… and for those with daughters, it is much more competitive. But I am happy for your son to have options. He must be very talented.
