<p>I am in the earlier stages of college planning, and I intend on majoring in musical theatre. I have strong SAT scores, good grades and I take a lot of AP classes. On the theatre side of things, I have been in most of my high school productions and several regional theatre productions. I also have training in dance and an extensive background in music theory.
I would like to audition and apply to West Chester University, Ithaca, Nazareth College, Marymount Manhattan, University of the Arts and Baldwin Wallace.
Is this an appropriate number if schools to audition for, or am I not likely to get into any of them.
If anyone knows anything about a specific program, that would be great.</p>
<p>Do you have a non-audition, safety school you can afford on your list? I am not familiar enough with Nazareth and Westchester to know of they are auditioned programs or not. It looks like you are focusing in schools in NY and eastern PA… you may want to also look at the following programs in that region to see if any appeal to you:</p>
<p>Temple, Penn State, Muhlenberg ¶
Syracuse, Pace, NYC (NY)
Montclair State, Rider (NJ)</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>
<p>All of these programs are audition only.
Oh, and I also meant to include Temple in my list!</p>
<p>Audition schools are all highly competitive to get admitted to, regardless of your grades and training and talent. Pick a MT program at a non-audition school as a safety. </p>
<p>See this link for a list of all MT schools, sorted by non-audition and audition and types of degrees (BA vs BFA). You don’t need to read all the chatter, just skip to the most recent list.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1335445-big-list-mt-colleges-program-type.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1335445-big-list-mt-colleges-program-type.html</a></p>
<p>Unless you would prefer yo take a gap year, or attend one of the schools on your list (that you know you will be admitted to academically) in a different non-auditioned major. You will likely want to add at least one non-auditioned academic and financial safety to your list. </p>
<p>Admissions to auditioned programs is competitive and subjective. So, the advice above is for all applicants, not specific to anything you communicated about your background.</p>
<p>In my post above I meant to say that you might want to look at NYU in NY.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>
<p>I actually posted this message over in the Theatre Major section, but it might also be helpful for you, Broadway Baby 7.</p>
<p>"I attended a PA High School and received excellent training, across the board. For years I have also taken private lessons in acting/singing/dancing outside of school as well. Every girl in my discipline (Theatre) has years and years of experience in school productions, community productions, and in performing arts classes and workshops. Some of us attended our state’s Governor School for the Arts summer intensive as well. I consider the majority of my peers highly talented. This is not the “Glee” effect. We have all spent years working on/perfecting our skills and put in long days and weekends between school, rehearsals, and private classes. We are very committed to our Art.</p>
<p>Even so…most of the girls I know auditioned for ten to sixteen colleges. The top female students at my PA HS each got one “excellent” college to attend (i.e. BoCo, DePaul, Roosevelt, Ball State, Wright State, CCM, NYU, RCS, etc.) and offers to safety schools; however, top offers were not pouring in as we had all dreamed of before audition season. Males did a little better with more scholarship offers, too.</p>
<p>There are SO many talented students out there that are all vying for the same few spots. When I walked up and down the halls at Chicago Unifieds everyone looked and sounded good. Make your lists carefully and include safety/fit/reach schools! Just because you attended a PA HS, have an extensive resume, were the lead in most shows, and are a triple threat does not guarantee a top tier college offer. Many of the girls who auditioned for ten schools wished they had done more. I know others feel differently about auditioning for so many programs, but I am just relaying our experience. It’s plain hard for girls. (And this line is worth repeating…It’s plain hard for girls.)</p>
<p>The actual audition is what counts the most, but there are so many factors out of your control that go into these decisions, too. You may be the greatest redheaded belter they have ever seen, but if they don’t need one…you will not get an offer. Have a long and leveled college list, do your best, show your range, and be yourself."</p>
<p>My point is… the most talented girls I know did not receive more than one top offer despite their excellent skills (me included - although I do not mean to comment on my skill level - just that I got only one top offer). We did get fit/safety acceptances, because our school counselor required each of us to have those on our lists. </p>
<p>KatMT is correct in saying you definitely need safeties (we were asked to have two) and I would add you also need fits (colleges where you would have a decent chance of getting into your major) added to your list of dream schools. The only one on your list I am familiar with is Ithaca. I do not know which would be fits/reaches for you because it would depend on your personal situation (grades/test scores and talent/skills), but make sure you add one or 2 safeties (non-audition programs) to your list also. Your dance and music theory training will prove very helpful as an MT major.</p>
<p>Best of luck in your auditions, Broadway Baby 7. If you have a solid list, you know you will have someplace to go when auditions are over…and it might even be your “dream” school :)</p>
<p>BroadwayBaby, just so that you know, Muhlenberg is a non-audition BA program of high repute. Students can do an optional audition for talent scholarship money. In addition, the school looks very closely at a holistic match between applicants and the school. An interview is highly recommended to enable the school to get to know you better as a person. In addition, if you wow them at the audition, the theatre department does speak to admissions but, again, the audition is purely optional and admissions decisions are made by the admissions office based on the student’s profile, demonstrated interest and a sense of how the student would fit into the school community</p>
<p>What I am learning from this board is that there are so many opinions on the same subject. You can ask 10 people and get a minimum of 10 opinions. There are some here who have indicated you need to apply to and audition at over 10 schools to get a spot, and then some (soozie particularly) that have said you should apply to around 8-10. There are some who talk about making sure you have a safe, i.e. non-audition school, and some who talk about what schools give students the best chane to be professionally successful coming out (and I don’t see many non-audition schools on those lists). And of course there are then those who will say, like a voice teacher said to my daughter, that if your goal is a music theater career you shouldn’t even apply for an MT degree, you’re better off majoring in another area and continue voice lessons, etc but get a more well rounded education before pursuing the MT profession. And then there are folks on here from MT programs that talk about how they hve taken students who had little experience in MT in high school, but they saw the potential of the student. And so on. </p>
<p>So in replay to the original poster, I’m not sure there is any true logic into what schools to pick, etc. You sound an awful lot like my daughter, good grades, good performing background, etc. So I can only tell you what my D has planned. She is applying to 8 audition schools. She chose them based on their overall curriculum, as well as how she feels as far as a fit for the overall college experience she wants. From a practical perspective that seems appropriate, and I think input from those who say you should apply to a dozen or more on how you can actually get to that many auditions while maintaining your schoolwork, and still doing performances in HS would be welcome. For example, my D’s show choir competitions start in February when there are a lot of audition dates, so it would be a practical impossibility to do 12-15 auditions even with unifieds available, not to mention the expense involved. If she does not get a spot then she’d be happy going to one of the schools on her list, majoring in theater, and minoring in voice and dance, if she does not audition in during re-auditions her freshman year. She realizes it won’t be a disaster if she follows that path. Disappointing yes, but not disastrous.</p>
<p>So I don’t think there is one magic formula out there for this endeavor. It seems there are a multitude of paths towards the same end, and I wish you luck going forth!</p>
<p>luvzthe8r WELL WRITTEN AN WELL DONE!!! Based on my own personal experiences I agree with you 100%. My D and I went through this process in 2007 (she graduated in 2011). At the time we investigated over 35 schools, visited about 20, applied to 15 and were accepted into 8. I would say the big difference between now and then is there are probably a lot more applicants but also a lot more schools to choose from. I know it can be a problem, but this is a very specialized degree program, and I would apply to as many schools as possible.</p>
<p>jeffandann:</p>
<p>My D passed on the final high school production in order to be focused on the next stage of her life. As disappointing as it was at the time, it was a necessary sacrifice. I think this is the decision all performing arts students need to make.</p>
<p>Regarding the voice teacher who says to pass on a MT curriculum? I wonder what he meant by that?</p>
<p>I could only assume the path he is referring to is the “business” of MT and not performing? Students who go through a MT program go for the intensive training in the each modality, singing, acting, dancing.</p>
<p>While I understand the concept of applying to a large number of school to increase the odds of success, I would love someone to provide insight as to how in the world you can do so from a practical perspective. My daughter is applying to 8 schools and already I see conflicts with audition dates. So that’s an issue, not to mention the expense associated with auditioning at more than a dozen schools, plus the time away from studies during the senior year, plus most students applying to MT school are involved in productions back at their high school. If someone can tell me how to apply to and auditon at such a high number of schools (15-16 depending on the posts here), I’m all ears. I can’t see how one can do that.</p>
<p>Beentheredad: My daughter knows the winter production will not likely be in her schedule next year for audition reasons, but she also has a full load of academics and has show choir competitions starting in February so she can’t just walk away from all that fr auditions. I’d love to hear how you managed that with your child. As for the voice teacher telling her not to major in MT, I don’t necessarily agree. But her point was this: ultimately when you audition for whatever you want to do in the future (Broadway, cruise ships, whatever), directors don’t look at your type of degree or where you got it, they look at the talent you have in auditions. And her point was you can get that outside of a MT program. Not that I am dissuading my daughter from going for her BFA MT, but it does help her understand there are multiple ways to achieve her goal.</p>
<p>jeffandann: regarding how it is possible to do a lot of auditions, the kids from my d’s school typically do some combination of 2-3 on-campus auditions on Saturdays in the fall, 2-3 on-campus in the spring, 2-3 onsite auditions at my d’s school in the fall and spring (some colleges come to her school for auditions), then 5-6 at Unifieds in Chicago (some squeeze in more in Chicago, but these usually include unplanned walkups) for a total in the range of 9-15. Some kids do as few as 5-6 total, some do in excess of 15. Since it is a well-respected PA HS, some schools come see productions and directly recruit some of the kids. </p>
<p>Some seniors skip the all-school productions their Senior year in order to keep their weekends free (the departmental productions usually do not rehearse on weekends</p>
<p>jeffandann,</p>
<p>Yes it can be done! It is hard. It is expensive. It is frustrating. But it can be done! My daughter auditioned for 16 programs and had the lead in her high school’s production of Brigadoon that spring. And living in Denver, we had to travel to all but two of the auditions.</p>
<p>My winter/spring of craziness with my daughter was 2008-09. She was still undecided on MT or VP so she decided to do auditions for both. Fall break in 2008 was spent on applications, essays, and pre-screen recording (all the VP programs required pre-screens). After initial audition slots were assigned, I spent a lot of time on the phone with schools moving things around so they could all fit. After the scheduling was completed, my daughter missed three days of school and three rehearsals for the musical. We got this all approved by her teachers and counselor.</p>
<p>Suggestion no. 1: Get everyone on board early on. We let her counselor and teachers know months in advance that she would need to miss some school.</p>
<p>Suggestion no. 2: Get organized. Whether it’s a spreadsheet, a calendar, folders … do what you need to do to keep it all organized.</p>
<p>Here was our schedule to show you how we made it happen.</p>
<p>Fri 1/23/09 late flight after school to Pittsburgh; Sat 1/24/09 audition for CMU VP; Sun 1/25/09 fly home.</p>
<p>Fri 1/30/09 late flight after school to NYC for Unifieds; Sat 1/31/09 audition for Pace MT, CCPA MT, BoCo MT; Sun 2/1/09 audition for CMU MT and fly home.</p>
<p>Thurs 2/5/09 late flight after school to Oklahoma City; Fri 2/6/09 audition for OCU MT and fly to LA for Unifieds; Sat 2/7/09 auditions for Hartt MT, UArts MT, Otterbein MT; Sun 2/8/09 auditions for CCM MT & PPU MT; Sun 2/9/09 audition for BoCo VP and fly home.</p>
<p>Thurs 2/12/09 audition for Berklee VP in Denver after school.</p>
<p>Fri 2/13/09 late flight after school to Utah; Sat 2/14/09 audition for Utah State VP and fly home in time for her Valentine’s Day date! Sun 2/15/09 fly to Baltimore; Mon 2/16/09 audition for Peabody VP and fly home.</p>
<p>Somewhere in there we also sent off a DVD audition to University of North Texas VP (Jazz). And then Brigadoon was performed in early March, right at the time she started hearing the results from schools.</p>
<p>Crazy, right?! But doable. Not trying to brag (OK, a little!) but to show that the craziness did not hurt her, here were the results: accepted at seven of the nine MT programs and four of the seven VP programs. She is about to start her senior year at CMU. </p>
<p>The greatest thing about it was how close my daughter and I got going through this together. That right there was probably worth the cost.</p>
<p>xatty, here is my problem with this… If your daughter was talented enough to get into CMU, some mentor along the way should have told you that you are over- auditioning. Congrats to her!! And I know that we all want to make sure we have enough, but that was a lot! Master classes and other programs give you a great idea where your kid fits in. You had MANY that seemed like real fits for someone that talented. Mentors can pare this list waaaaay down. I have limited us to 2 on-campus “must haves” and the rest need to be at Unifieds.</p>
<p>I’d be interested in opinions on unifieds. I see on some websites and/or opinions here that you stand a better chance if you audition at the school vs. at Unifieds. But at one school we visited the associate director said sometimes unifieds can better since they only have a couple people there, vs auditioning on campus when you have to impress the entire faculty. I think my daughter may go to unifieds for a couple schools, depending on how audition dates fall out, but we plan to do most auditions on campus so she can see each campus during the auditions.</p>
<p>Glee first appeared in May 2009. Those auditioning starting 2009/2010 on have had to compete with a much larger talent pool due to the “Glee” effect and it keeps growing every year! That is why so many colleges are now requiring pre-screens…they just can’t see all the candidates who wish to audition for them and they were having to add in extra audition dates last year and more audition slots per day to deal with the larger number of applicants. </p>
<p>From my own personal experience…if you are a girl…you will want to audition for more than 10 programs. I did make it through several “top” pre-screens but did not get any final offers from those programs. My point is, even if you have great skills (to attract attention from top programs) you are competing for so few spots you will want to increase your odds by increasing the number of colleges you audition for.</p>
<p>Another friend of mine (several states away) auditioned for 17 or 18 programs and she ended up with the most acceptances of any girl I know (6 acceptances). She does live in NY, so her parents drove/flew with her all over the east coast to do her auditions + she met my friends and I at Unifieds. </p>
<p>Luckily I LOVE where I ended up (my top choice) so I am happy with the number of colleges I auditioned for (11) but had I not gotten that top offer…I probably would be disappointed I did not audition for more.</p>
<p>jeffandann, you will ultimately have to do what is right for your D (and you). There is no way we personally could have gone on 12 auditioned schools–the time and expense would have been far too much for this single working mom. (Luckily for us we were spared much of the hard choices because my D took a gap year, so when she auditioned she wasn’t in school! I have to say it was a looooot calmer!) But she was also pretty picky about what kind of program she was interested in and ruled out many based on fit. She’s not MT though; she’s strictly interested in straight acting. Another hurdle for us was the cost of the school–some schools have very little money and do not typically offer enough aid. For instance, at one school, we asked the rep to tell us about need based grant/scholarships and he was UNABLE to answer us! This was in front of 100s of prospective students. Though this school gives what it calls ‘merit’ aid, really a discount, its overall expense is far too high for us even with, say, $20K ‘off’. So that was that for that particular school. </p>
<p>My D ultimately combined BAs and BFA schools and ended up choosing Northwestern. Her goal is to become a working actor, so she viewed each college as a potential path toward her goal. I agree with you that there are many paths. For some people a small intensive BFA MT program is the way they learn best; others prefer a more eclectic education. A very successful B’way actor we happen to know (he is still getting lead roles), majored in voice as an undergrad at an Ivy. Then he got his Masters in voice (not a BFA). That was his path.</p>
<p>My D also nixed any school that had cuts or in which you had to audition in the second year as she felt that would be too backstabbing. Also certain locations she didn’t want. She applied to a school like Temple, which has a very good non auditioned program (although MT is auditioned) as a ‘safety,’ and then chose her BFAs carefully. She ended up auditioning for only 4 schools I think. Consider the rolling admissions approach too–eg UArts & Coastal Carolina (off the top of my head) have auditions going into early March. Also consider early auditions. This will spread things out. </p>
<p>Again, remember that your D should choose the path that fits her own particular goals. Everyone is different.</p>
<p>theatremomma - I think our situation may appear to you as “over-auditioning” simply because we combined VP with MT since my D was unsure which direction she wanted to go. The only on campus MT audition we did was OCU since they did not go to unifieds. All the other MT auditions were at NYC and LA unifieds. VP doesn’t do unifieds so we had to go to on-campus auditions. </p>
<p>As for finding a mentor, CC was my mentor at the time! I am not a theater person and I was lucky to find CC part way through – it helped a lot. We had no mentors that we knew in our area to guide us. And frankly, with the low admission numbers being quoted all the time, I stand by our decision to do nine MT auditions. We had no way of knowing how successful she would be, and I’m not so sure a mentor would really know either; there are too many accounts of talented kids who did not get even one offer. Take away the VP auditions and we did her MT auditions in two weekends. Definitely doable for most families.</p>
<p>jeffandann, there are threads covering the unifieds v on campus debate. I think the conclusion is that the acceptance numbers do not indicate an advantage either way.</p>
<p>Also, regarding your question about where to audition:</p>
<p>My D learned a great deal about the program by auditioning there–what the current students were like, whether she thought she’d be a fit, how organized or disorganized the program was etc. </p>
<p>But one thing we were pretty shocked by: You state, “vs auditioning on campus when you have to impress the entire faculty” Well, only ONE college had my D audition for the 'entire faculty." One had a panel of two and two had what I think is a very…puzzling set up: only ONE PERSON on the ‘panel’. That’s right. My D auditioned for ONE person, and this person, alone, decided whether she’d have a callback. Even weirder: There were several such people: THat is, Girl A could be seen in one room by Auditor A; Girl B could be seen alone in another room by Auditor B. I guess I’d advise a mix of Unifieds and on-site if you can.</p>