<p>First, welcome to posting on the Forum! Hope you continue to do so. We'd love to hear how things turn out for your D this season. </p>
<p>Your question about how my D chose CAP21 is a good question because it brings up how the decision is truly a personal one where each student has their own college criteria and then weighs which school fits their own preferances more than which school is "best". </p>
<p>I'M GOING TO ANSWER THIS IN A 2 PART POST BECAUSE THE PROCESS WASN'T BLACK AND WHITE OR SIMPLISTIC.</p>
<p>For starters, my D made sure to like each school on her list because she knew the odds of getting in were just so tough and that no particular school could be counted on. We figured she only needed one and hoped that would happen. While we were anxious if any would come through, we felt there was a decent chance that at least one might. We knew she'd be lucky to have a choice. We thought if she got into one of her favorites, then it is like icing on top. She decided to not fall in love with or pine away for one school because it might be a set up for disappointment. She better look at each school closely because that may be where she'd end up. The more she thought about the odds, the more she looked with open eyes at the schools that were not initially her favorites. She had visited 4 of her 8 schools prior to auditions and then ultimately all 8 for the on campus auditions. Ideally, we'd have liked to see them all the year before she auditioned but the kink in that plan was that she decided to graduate a year early which pushed us into this process before I originally thought. We began midway through her 10th grade year (and normally would have started at the beginning of 11th grade to look at colleges as my older D had done) and thus we could not fit in hardly any visits that year and my other D was also a college applicant and we had her process and visits that spring to her accepted schools. I can say, however, that when we visited some schools for the first time for the actual auditions (winter of her junior/senior year), she came to like more programs much more in person than whatever she knew on paper or word of mouth before visiting. I think she really started to open up and explore each one when she realized any one of these might be where she'd end up. </p>
<p>As with all students, certain schools were favored early on and again, in her case, she visited some schools before she applied and so all schools were not looked into as in depth before the auditions as others and how much she liked each program tweaked more AFTER visiting during auditions. </p>
<p>Starting at the very very beginning (I sound like Julie Andrews, :D), my D had wanted to attend NYU/Tisch/CAP21 since she was about 12 or so. Granted we were not thinking one iota about college and surely didn't even look at which colleges have MT or anything remotely like that at the time. But she knew of CAP21 because she had been attending a summer theater camp since she was 9 1/2 and had ALWAYS had older friends and she knew some really talented kids who then went on to Tisch for college and so well, at that age, it was like, "I hope some day I can do that too." I recall being in NYC a few days before 9-11, and my D was almost 13 and she had an audition there and in between callbacks, we met up with Freelance (who posts here) and her D, a best pal from camp and we all walked around the NYU and Greenwich Village neighborhood and I recall the girls saying, "one day we're gonna go here and room together." :) So, already there was an afinity for that school before she ever explored colleges. </p>
<p>Then when she did her search in tenth grade, she made a list of each school and wrote down criteria about each one. The list was not that hard to come up with as by then she was aware of where MT BFA programs were located and she had many friends also applying to these programs (a lot of her friends are older) and their lists were fairly similar with some differences due to personal criteria. </p>
<p>If I recall my D's criteria...I know she wanted a balanced program with singing, dance, and acting. She likes all three areas and wanted to not focus on any one particular one area. She did care, however, that a program offer enough dance and have challenging levels of dance or if not, then where dance was a criteria for admission, as she had been dancing her whole life. She also wanted to be on the East Coast (though we put no restrictions on our kids with where they wanted to go) and did not want the South. She made ONE exception for UMichigan. As far as location, I think she preferred to be near a city if she had a choice, mostly due to having grown up in a very rural area and so she wanted that experience. She happens to love both NYC and Boston, always has. She also was always a very strong student and cares about the challenge level of academics. While she definitely wanted a BFA program, she wanted SOME liberal arts courses as she does want some education beyond training, and ideally, she wanted the college as a whole (outside of the BFA program itself) to be a more selective or challenging college. This was more ideal for her but she'd have passed that up if she had to. These were merely preferences if she had any say in where she got in. She didn't want a cut program. She wanted intensive challenging training, while still being nurturing. She examined each aspect of every program such as curriculum, performance opportunities, size, and then trying to talk to as many current students as possible. She tried to do overnights and/or meet up with kids on campus, observe a class or meet with whomever she could in the departments. With each program, she was able to list some features that were appealing about it. Not all the features were the same at each school so it wasn't always apples to apples. Examples: PSU has these cabaret type troupes, Syracuse has semester in London and semester in NYC, UMichigan had opportunities to continue with piano, some schools had good student run productions besides mainstage ones, and so forth. Some things you can compare equally amongst programs like location, size, curriculum, and others are just unique to each program and there might be some appealing extras about each one. </p>
<p>Having visited all these programs, my D had 2 favorites, NYU & UMich. Both just met her criteria the best but also she simply just really liked both, plus spent time with kids at both overnight. While NYU had been a favorite before her process began, and she was going to apply ED there in fact, but she decided to go to see UMich in Sept. of her jr/sr year and when she did, she found that she liked it as much as NYU, and then decided to NOT apply ED to NYU and just see what happened. </p>
<p>So, as the audition season began NYU and UMich were her top choices and tied in her mind. At that stage, she would have said Emerson was third BUT a big part of this was that Emerson was one of the four schools she had visited and so she knew it better and she had friends there and spent some time there and loves Boston and liked what she saw. I have to say that AFTER she did all 8 auditions, Emerson moved lower down in her mind. She still liked it but found she was liking other programs more now that she visited. Originally she didn't want strictly conservatory but she liked BOCO a real lot and where it had been nearly last on her list early on, it moved up later on. She seemed willing to almost forego the academic options she'd have to if she attended but kept saying that the actual liberal arts courses they offered happened to be ones that interested her. We also got to see a show there (only got to do that at BOCO and PSU) and the show was very good and that elevated the school more in her mind at that point. Ithaca pretty much was her last choice. The program is very good and actually someone from our HS had graduated it in recent years and loved it. However, if given a choice, she liked other schools more. Ithaca was the only school on her list where you can't walk to anything off campus even though the town is only about a mile or two away (and the town just didn't thrill her). Also, dance is weaker at Ithaca and they admit there that it is not a big component or as emphasized there. She didn't like that given there was no dance audition to get in, that there were not dance levels in the program and so too many levels of skill would be in one class. Also there were only two years or levels of tap and she is very into tap. Otherwise, it seemed great and the students were very happy there. It was her first acceptance and so she kept an open mind when she got it. She liked PSU way more after the visit. It was a balanced program and the kids seemed happy. The reputation hasn't built up as much yet but it is a newer program. The talent varied in classes observed and in a production, but that is true everywhere. She ended up liking the campus once there though the location is not as appealing to her. Her cousin goes and loves it. She ended up liking Syracuse a bunch. The program was real balanced and she liked mostly everything she learned about it. Location also not as appealing but otherwise, the school elevated in her mind once she auditioned there. She came to like CMU MUCH more after visiting, than beforehand. Originally she was concerned about dance and all but after meeting kids there, seeing their talent, had a friend in the program, meeting kids who were dancers and happy with it, she ended up really liking it. I wondered how much she would have liked the focus on drama and not that many musicals and not quite as much dance or liberal arts but she did get into it from the visit, even if some criteria on paper differed from what she had originally wanted. Sometimes there is a "feel" of a program that you can't pinpoint and you gotta take that into account when visiting. This one appealed in some intangible ways. </p>
<p>to be continued in the next post>></p>