<p>Hi All, I have been a long time reader of this forum, but never posted. Sorry, my name is lame, but I picked it on a spur of the moment. I really should be “dancingmom”. I am still a little hesitant but will at Ericsmoms encouragement to respond to the UCF thread. My D recently reauditioned and is transfering to Elon after realizing that UCF was not her perfect fit in MT. This is going to be a long story, so here goes:</p>
<p>My daughter decided on UCF over Elon last spring, at the urging of the director of a regional theater that uses Equity leads and college and post-college for ensemble. My daughter has performed there twice, once as Baby Louise in Gypsy and once in the ensemble of Funny Girl with Jodie Langel and Josh Walden. We both value his opinion and he said that UCF students did very well at auditions he had seen them at and that it would be a very hard and intense program. Were not really sure why as Im sure he has no affiliation with the school but it really convinced us that it was the place to be. So, that coupled with a couple of other random reasons such as school calendar and warm location (were from Syracuse), coupled with the fact that I am a native Floridian and have family in Miami, prompted us to have our D head to UCF. I might add that our daughter fretted over this decision all summer, thats how much she had also loved the Elon program!</p>
<p>My daughter and I both loved Elon upon visiting and auditioning last February. Cathy McNeela seems to be very hands on with this program and my daughter likes that kind of contact having gone to small private high school with teachers that you can get close to. We should have gone with our gut feeling at that time but allowed ourselves to be swayed towards UCF. I am thrilled that our daughter is transferring there even if I have to eat a little crow! She is excited too and cant wait to get there later this month!</p>
<p>The MT program at UCF seems to still be developing. While I think that in the coming years they will be able to build a strong program, I mean who wouldnt want to go to school in sunny Orlando, but they arent quite there yet as we may have originally thought. The main drawback at this time is that there are no voice lessons in the freshman year. Second semester freshman year there is a group vocal course that apparently deals with anatomy and such. (I know nothing about voice, I run a dance studio!) My daughter, who started as a dancer, is a late bloomer and is a great belter, really wants to improve and gain confidence vocally in her head voice. She barely has 2 years of voice lessons with a more mature body so a year off without voice lessons is not a good thing for her or for many people I doubt. As it was, she went to reaudition at Elon without having any voice lessons for 4 months! She had no one to practice her music with so ended up singing to a CD of the song before going!</p>
<p>The other drawback for my daughter at UCF is related to dance. She has been dancing since before she was born haha. She dances very well in ballet, jazz and tap but she wants to continue to improve and develop other styles of dance and choreography having grown up dancing at her moms studio (me ). UCF offers one dance class per semester starting with Ballet 1. She liked the instructor who she said was quite picky, and learned a few things differently that helped her. They do offer a dance minor at UCF which she was planning to pursue, had she stayed. UCF also offers an MT MFA so many of those students are in the productions and I guess that does take spots away from undergrads, but they do a lot of shows at UCF. I dont think that is necessarily bad but this past semester the head of the entire MT, who again, is very nice and always helpful, was over at Daytona Beach most of the time, where the MFA program is. There was not someone to mentor the underclassmen on a regular basis. That apparently has changed recently as there is an undergraduate head of MT now. I think they are trying to work out the kinks.</p>
<p>I should add that my daughter did like the classes she took which also included Survey of Theater, Intro to Acting and Music Theory. The instructors were all very nice and helpful. We have found everyone in the Theater Dept. to be very friendly and nice to the kids. The theater dept. is located just off the far end of the campus in a little business park .a bit of a nuisance but doable. Everyone there however, kept telling my daughter how intense the program. Weirdly enough, she did not find it to be so, though perhaps as you get more into it, it gets busier. Unless you are in a show or teching one, there seemed to be waaaay too much free time. My daughter got very much into having a good time, tanning by the pool, working out at the state-of-the-art gym, going out with non-theater friends that she met, shopping, etc and still managed to make Deans List!</p>
<p>I was impressed, however, at how understanding the dept. was when my daughter recently submitted her resignation. The new dept. head was very kind and wished her well. Another instructor emailed and actually asked her opinion about the voice thing and went so far as to acknowledge that perhaps they are losing kids because of the lack of voice training in the freshman year. We had originally thought it was only the first semester and didnt realize it was the whole 1st year. Perhaps they will add freshman year voice in the near future. I would certainly ask about it if you are interested in UCF. </p>
<p>Regarding the comments about their productions being terrible and people walking out - my daughter went to each show and did not see any of that. She said the plays are pretty good there. Of course, like any school, they do some unusual stuff that maybe people that arent into different stuff might walk out on, who knows. She was not as impressed with the musical but maybe again, that is because of less voice and dance training in the program.</p>
<p>UCF is a BIG school also. My daughter did not get dorm housing because she got her acceptance kind of late. It was partly our fault, as we inadvertently forgot to send her transcripts but yes, it even seemed quite a while after that. I did think some of the offices seemed less than enthusiastic but not extremely so. At any rate, UCF has a large apt. complex across the street from the campus that they run with RAs and programming. Though it was a little more inconvenient to get to and from campus via the shuttle, it was a great situation. She was in a 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom, (yes, private bathroom) apartment! Large living room, dining room, full kitchen and laundry room in it too!! Despite only finding out her 3 other roommates shortly before going down there, she made 2 friends of a lifetime, which made for teary goodbyes last month. UCF and Elon are so different in size, though both are attractive campuses in their own way. Our daughter thought she wanted the big campus and all that goes with it. She realized that it is full of distractions and she really wants the training. I think at Elon she will get the best of both. An absolutely beautiful campus and the training! We allowed her to choose UCF but Im proud of her for realizing that it was not helping her as much as she would have liked and that Elon is what she should have chosen. She scheduled everything for it and flew up their on her own, not to mention packing up ALL her stuff at UCF and mailing it home 10 HUGE boxes full during finals week! I was actually visiting with Ericsmom on the SU campus (live about 2 miles from it) when she got the call from Cathy McNeela!</p>
<p>UCF appears to be trying to spread their name so they will draw from a larger pool. I noticed on their website they are auditioning at Unifieds for the first time this year. I think any program will improve with having more students from more places to choose from. I think if you are interested in UCF, I would ask more questions about what they are adding to the program regarding voice and dance. I think you might find they will be making some changes; it just was not soon enough for our daughter. If you have other questions regarding UCF, feel free to email me.</p>