<p>I turned down a full tuition scholarship to Temple University and the University of Illinois- Urbana, a $5,000 to the University of Michigan (in-state) and a $10,000 scholarship to Drake University. I’ll be attending Penn State with a full scholarship (tuition, room and board) for actuarial science in the business college. I absolutely loved PSU when I visited and I immediately felt at home as I was walking around the campus.</p>
<p>Kind of a unique situation, as d was auditioning for programs in musical theatre – which requires a 2-step admission process – academic admission to the school (all the essays, apps, etc that every applicant has to do) and an in-person audition. She chose highly selective programs that admit 2-4% of the highly qualified applicants to the major (a.k.a. artistic acceptance). Academic acceptances in most cases was a separate process. She’s a high stats kid, so fortunately, did not have to sweat the academic acceptances (auditions were another matter…thankfully, she came out of the process with several good choices). Since artistic results are often not released until March or April, a kid looking at a competitive arts major must put their all into every application, since they don’t know which (if any…d has several friends who completed multiple auditions this year and received zero artistic acceptances…) school they will be calling home for the next four years. </p>
<p>So…kiddo is releasing the following 4 year awards (and did send a “thanks but no thanks” to each school as soon as she made her final decision…
$52000 at Baldwin Wallace, $32000 and Elon College Fellows at Elon University, $90000 (National Merit) at University of Oklahoma, $68000 (academic merit and talent award) at Otterbein University, $76000 at Pace University, $32000 (academic merit and talent) at Point Park University, $64000 (National Merit) at University of Cincinnati.</p>
<p>She is thrilled to be one of 8 women out of approximately 800 auditionees who will attend Ball State University. She has been named a Bold Celebration Scholar, Presidential Scholar, will receive their National Merit Award, and is a Whitinger Scholar – these together add up to that lovely thing known as a full ride – or a future performer graduating into an unstable career path with zero college debt. She did compete for several academic awards along this path of auditions as well.</p>
<p>I’m only really aware of these totals (all together, she was offered over a half million over four years) because her school asked tonight for a list of scholarships offered, whether a student will accept them or not. </p>
<p>And it’s interesting…over on the musical theatre forum, for a while there was a discussion where people were debating whether grades/test scores were important for a potential theatre major. Well…they definitely will NOT get a child admitted to the major – that’s all based on their performance skills, but they can certainly help with the academic admissions piece…and being able to afford to go to school!</p>