Too early to look into college programs?

My son is a sophomore in high school and is starting to bring us lists of different schools he wants to attend. Is it too early to be looking into programs already? He still has to get through this year before his junior year when I thought would be a good time to start the search. He has mentioned wanting to do summer programs starting next year, does anyone have suggestions for good musical theatre summer programs at colleges that he could do?

Not too early at all. My son is a sophomore also. We are west coast. We took a trip over fall break and hit some midwestern schools, mostly so he could get a feel for a big school versus small school, city versus suburb versus in the middle of nowhere. We did 3 official tours of schools with MT programs which gave my son a bit of an idea of the difference between different type of MT programs. The other thing you should do now is get him in Ballet classes.

It is also a good idea to start discussing how much you can/will spend. We have specific limits that I won’t exceed that put some schools (NYU, Penn State etc. . .) out of reach under any circumstances and many that only work if he maintains a 3.75 UW GPA. You don’t need him falling in love with NYU if you aren’t going to fork over $400,000 over 4 years. It is also a good time to start planting the seed of all the great programs that are not on every top 20 list on the internet.

There are several great summer programs at colleges. I know that Nexus, Florida State and Rider are planning on live sessions this year. There are also a number of great programs in NYC over the summer that have not finalized whether they will be live. Almost all of the summer programs require an audition with at least one (usually 2) 32 bar cut and a monologue.

But your gut about junior year being key is generally correct. The general thinking is that kids should have a good handle on a list of schools (with around 20 schools) and be finding audition material towards the beginning of second semester junior year. College applications and prescreens should go in pretty much at the start of senior year.

One thing you can start planning for in sophomore year is ways to clean off your child’s “plate” during his/her senior year. My daughter has three HS classes this year as she auditions for schools. This was made possible through a combination of taking a couple of HS level classes in her last year of middle school, taking a full load (actually required by her school) of 7 classes in freshman and sophomore years/6 her junior year, and taking theater arts classes for credit during the summers after her sophomore and junior years.

Also, start pooling/saving frequent flyer miles and hotel points. I switched from Marriott to Hilton specifically for the Palmer House (even earned Platinum status) only not to need to stay at a hotel for any of this. That should not be the case in 2022.