One thing @artskids mentions about her oldest son (now in a BFA in MT program) and who had attended Stagedoor (not when my kid was there), was true about my kid too. My D knew from a pretty young age that she wanted to go to a BFA in MT college program (she had many older friends at Stagedoor and so was well aware of this kind of thing on the young side) and so didn’t need to try out a summer pre-college program in terms of seeing how she liked the intensity and all that (not that that is the only reason a person would attend). We never even discussed it. Once she went to Stagedoor at age 9, for six weeks, she wanted to go back every summer and so she did. Back when she attended, a three week session cost more like $3000 or less. It has gone up!
@Calliene – Artsbridge is on the list of places she will be applying! I love the way they have faculty from many different schools…seems like you could get a feel for what their respective schools are like, as well as lots of great feedback!
Does anyone have any experience with the 2 week “Blueprint” session for 14-18 year olds as opposed to the 3 week session for 16+ students?
I wouldn’t say my kid did a pre college program in order to see if she wanted a BFA (she had been heading that direction for awhile) It was more that she had done lots of shows and was looking for a new challenge.
My daughter LOVED camp at OCU and definitely wants to go back! She is a rising 8th grader, and most of her friends were rising 9th graders so she wants to audition for the HS program next year.
From my perspective it was interesting as she is a “singer” who can act and sort of dance. She was cast in a role that was all acting. She only sang in 2 numbers. In someways she wished she had been in the ensemble. But it stretched her as an actor, as she had to be on stage and present in her role when the action wasn’t on her… she is use to being a main character or have a big singing role… so it was different but good for her. I was impressed with the performance.
The one down side I would say is that there were times when she was bored. When they were working on the big production numbers she wasn’t in most of them, she had to sit and watch. But that’s the business right? There were no classes, just the production which I didn’t realize.
As for Rider, she did a week of the vocal performance camp and then right after a week of musical theatre camp, last summer. She enjoyed it. She had a bad experience with a roommate. Who was someone she knew from home. So that soured her a bit on the whole experience.
She thought she learned a lot at the vocal performance camp. Her year was slightly different as I think about half the kids in both programs were from Italy, and they did Suessical. Imagine doing that when English isn’t your native tongue. They did have other classes not just production, but the over all production value was not in the same league as OCU, or even the program she does at home. She did Peter Pan the following week at a local day program with lots of younger kids, and overall I thought the production value was far superior.
She would go back to OCU over Rider. But her bad roommate experience clouds that choice.
We live in NC so getting to Oklahoma City is not an easy trip. I drove to pick her up… 16 hours! 
I did listen to half of Chernov’s Hamilton!
Next summer she says she wants to go to OCU, to her regular summer camp and she wants to apply to TPAP. I imagine she will audition for TPAP, it is here in NC so that makes it much easier, and maybe OCU.
A number of her friends went to the Southeastern Summer Theatre Institute, which had a week long program for Middle School this year and they really liked it. So we might consider the high school program for next year.
I think 2-3 weeks is better for my daughter. She takes a little while to warm up to people so more time is better for her.
Sorry @Calliene – in my earlier post I confused Artsbridge with TPAP…TPAP is the one that has the “Blueprint” camp for the younger (14-18) age group. I actually can’t find anywhere on the Artsbridge website where it says what age or grade you have to be…do you happen to know?
@muttsandMT, my daughter first went to ArtsBridge the summer after her sophomore year in high school. She is about to be a senior in college now so that was awhile ago. Most of the kids there that year were a year older, but a few were her age. Not sure the minimum age but you can call Halley Shefler (head of ArtsBridge) and I’m sure she’ll happily tell you. PS my daughter never did a college program. She utterly loved Stagedoor and wouldn’t have given up returning every year for anything. But she did do 2 years of ArtsBridge and had MTCA coaching so I feel she had quite a good sense of what a BFA program was going to be like.
Thanks so much for sharing your D’s experiences at Rider @KTVoice ! I hope your D will indeed audition for the OCU 3 week HS camp…like Stagedoor they do get students who come back year after year because they enjoy it and learn so much. 
@Calliene I will definitely give Artsbridge a call…sounds like a fantastic program!
Thanks so much everyone for all of the thoughtful replies! You have my D convinced…I dropped the Stagedoor check in the mail this morning! Hopefully there will be room for her in the session requested. With any luck, she will get in there (fingers crossed that signing up in mid-August is early enough!), but she will still apply to the other summer intensives on her list and hopefully be able to attend one of those as well.
Hi @muttsandMT - my d was a freshman at OCU’s 3 week program this summer and also loved it. I guessed who u were based on your info and my D confirmed it with yours:) Anyway your D is amazingly talented and so sweet! We applied to stage door 3 summers ago during the first week of August and were wait listed. One thing that’s cool is that they track if u were wait listed in the past also and I think that bumps you up the line so if you don’t make it this year, you should be in a good spot next year. We waited on the list quite a while but ended up taking our name off and going to French Woods since that was our second choice and it was starting to fill up too. If stage door doesn’t work, you should check them out. My D loved it there and went back another year but this past summer we decided to try the pre college intensives instead. As a freshman, she did get accepted at artsbridge so I know they take them. They did have a two week program for younger kids in the past but I don’t think they offered it this year. We are in the south so the dates were an issue for us. It sounded great but my D would have had to miss her first week of school and since she’s young yet and it’s focused on college audition prep, we decided we’d try again later when we were closer to senior year. In addition to OCU, other programs we looked at that allow freshmen that I didn’t see you mention were CCM - the CCM Prep summer immersion, BOCO, Penn State, Syracuse, and the Texas musical theatre workshop. I don’t know if any of those will fit the bill for you but they might be worth a look. Good luck choosing and keep us posted - I’m curious to see if you were early enough for stage door. Thanks!
Hi there @ourturn2 ! Thanks for your kind words about my D…your D is incredibly talented as well, and my D misses her so, so much. Any chance she’ll be going back to OCU again next summer?
Ugh, I was afraid of that about the Stagedoor waitlist…and we won’t know until mid to late September, right? That’s why I wasn’t too excited about sending them that $1000 check! We were kind of hoping she might get in because we suspect that the session she applied to might be the least popular one due to the timing, but we shall see.
Ah, French Woods…glad your D had such a great experience there! I had always heard good things about it…but then my D’s best friend (who doesn’t intend to pursue MT in college, but just does it for fun) attended last year and had a really bad experience. I’m afraid my D won’t hear of going there because of what happened with her friend.
My D is applying to CCM, but in all likelihood, the dates will conflict with OCU’s (they have for the past couple of years but haven’t updated them with 2017 info yet), and if she gets in both, she would probably choose to go back to OCU. She will also apply to Penn State, which won’t conflict with OCU…but I think I read that they take only 20-25 students, so we know it’s an extreme longshot.
My D is actually still too young for Syracuse – by summer of 2017 she will only have just finished her freshman year, and the for the 3 week MT camp you have to have completed your sophomore year (though freshmen can apply to 2 week camps…but none are for MT). I would LOVE for her to go to the Texas MT Workshop, but unfortunately she will still be in school for the first 2 weeks of that one, so it’s out. And as for BOCO, my D unfortunately isn’t a triple threat like yours…she doesn’t meet the basic application requirements of having “significant dance experience” – she’s only been taking dance for the past 2 years, and it’s by far her weakest area, so I don’t see any way she could pass the audition, which I read is dance only.
I will definitely update once I hear something back from Stagedoor!
Well, it’s official – she’s in for Stagedoor session 3, and she’s ecstatic! Anyone else have a child attending session 3?
Session 2 for us.
Muttsandmt - Last year was my daughter’s first year attending Stagedoor. She absolutely loved every minute of it! She was in session 3 last year and it was full of kids doing the camp for the first time. It was nice because it let her make close friends with other new students. This year she and her group chose Session 1 because of their summer schedule.