@mtAllDayEveryday I got my letter today as well! I haven’t been to the campus so I am excited to visit and check it out
My younger daughter got her acceptance to the BFA program yesterday. My older one is there as a sophomore in the program already, so let me know if you have any questions. Congratulations!
Awesome! I heard because they said there was an update in my admissions portal that had to do with my audition and the letter pdf was attached!
@secondtimeMT , @mtAllDayEveryday - I got an email from the head of the department with my letter attached!
@secondtimeMT - any info you could share would be great - just in general .
I’m going to ask my older daughter to pop on here tomorrow and type some thoughts and notes. Better to hear it from her than my interpretation of what she tells me. 
Hello, my D has been accepted and since you will now have 2 kids there, I have some questions.
Hi, I’m so sorry. We traveled for the holidays, and I thought we’d have time to pop in here, but we didn’t. What are your questions? I will still ask my older daughter to come in here and answer them.
@secondtimemt I am curious about how many shows they do and just the general feel of the program?
How many students in each class? What other programs did you audition for and why did you choose Tampa?
This is still her mom - she’s not here right now so I’ll do my best to answer. Each semester, they do one mainstage musical and one mainstage straight play. Of all the college theatres we saw, UT was my favorite! It has a lot of character, and I believe it was a professional theatre before the school took it over. In her first two years (she’s a sophomore), they’ve also had some shows and performances at the chapel on campus, which is a beautiful place. But for Fall 2020, they are opening a new state-of-the-art arts building, which will have a black box, so I think a lot of those smaller performances will move there. In addition to the 2 main shows, there’s a revue second semester - I’m not sure if there’s one first semester. There are also student-directed performances. There’s an acting fraternity as well as a music fraternity and sorority, and they do some performances. There’s also a lot of local theatre, and students can audition around Tampa if they are not in a show (as well as at all the theme parks - Busch Gardens, Disney, Universal).
Every semester, the BFA MT students have a class that is a choir/glee club of some sort. You start in the basic glee class, and you can try to audition into the others as seniors graduate and openings pop up. These groups also do performances - many of them perform over parents weekend (which is nice that it’s a built-in trip to see a performance, and not necessarily as great when they have to be on campus a lot and you can’t just go out and explore Tampa).
There are also Dance Happenings - dance shows - and they can audition into those as well if they want to. My older one hasn’t tried that yet, but my younger one is a dancer - she may double major in dance - so I am sure she will audition for these shows.
In terms of general feel, I’m not sure how to answer that without her here. At first, she said the program wasn’t what she expected. She had some friends at more conservatory type schools, and I think she was expecting that. Tampa has around 9000 kids - most of them are not majoring in the arts - and I think that took some getting used to if that makes sense. She went to Stagedoor Manor summer camp for years, and she was expecting that I think. In the end though, her program is close knit - all of her closest friends are theatre majors whether it’s MT, Vocal, Acting, etc. In the BFA program, you mostly are taking performance classes - she’s had one core class each semester, and the rest have been acting, singing, music theory, dance, etc. She’s very happy with the professors and the program. If you met the head of the department, he probably said something along the lines of that he came out of a conservatory setting, and there were things about that that didn’t appeal to him, so he’s tried to build a program that reflects the best of all worlds. I love that it’s a real campus and that there are so many other majors around them as well as some sports (it’s not a football school, but there’s always a game if you want to catch one - lacrosse, softball, soccer, hockey, etc.) Tampa has the best dorms that we saw. There’s so much to do off campus in the city itself - including a lot of theatre. The students can walk to the Straz Center and the Tampa Theatre, and there’s a lot of great touring shows to catch there. I bought my daughter season tickets to their Broadway Across America season both years.
As far as class size, Tampa takes more than 20 a year, so it can vary. I think the class ahead of her came in at 30, so the department head split the group in half so they didn’t have any classes that were too large. The sophomore class is 19 kids I think.
And as far as why she picked Tampa, there’s a few reasons. She really liked the two professors who ran the auditions and their philosophy. It was her favorite campus. We did Unifieds in NY and CHI, but we did see some schools in person too, and Tampa was just the right size to her. She had also spent some time in downtown Tampa every year of high school with her drama troupe, and she’s always loved the city (it’s basically connected to the school). She auditioned early, and once she was accepted into UT, she dropped some auditions at places she was probably more likely to get into than the auditions she kept (not that any of these auditions are easy). She auditioned for many of the “big” ones, but didn’t get in. She was waitlisted at Ball State, but she decided before she even heard a final from them that she liked Tampa and wanted to go there instead.
So my younger one has sort of followed in her footsteps and dropped some auditions after receiving the acceptance from UT. One thing they both like about UT is that the program strongly encourages a double major or a minor (although finding the time to get the credits may be another thing if you don’t come in with a lot of AP credits).
My D has 7 auditions scheduled in Chicago, but has a gut feeling that Tampa is the one. I’m reluctant to let her cancel as I don’t want her to have any regrets. She will have 20+ CE credits to transfer, and she likes that they encourage a minor. Do you get a chance to learn much from the other programs at Chicago unifieds? Thanks again!
Hi, I know a few schools hold parent meetings at unifieds, but she didn’t audition for any that did. My older daughter really liked Roosevelt when we auditioned at NY unifieds, so we made a point to go tour the department when we were in Chicago for unifieds. It is so hard to balance the on campus auditions versus the quickness and ease of unifieds. I went to the University of Miami, and my older daughter auditioned for them at NY unifieds (just because she was in shows both weekends they auditioned on campus). She liked them, but she didn’t come out extra excited or anything. My younger daughter was able to audition on campus in October, and even though she grew up hearing about the school and had been to campus and football games from the time she was little, she came out of that audition really excited about the school and program (then she auditioned the next day at Tampa and was equally excited, but she had already been to the school several times to see her sister). By the same token, my older daughter and I traveled to two schools that we were so sure weren’t right within minutes of arriving that I was sorry we invested the time and money into the trips. It’s such a hard call.
Sorry to eavesdrop, but one of the benefits of continuing with the Unified auditions is that if you get a better scholarship offer from another school, you can sometimes use that to negotiate the offer from the school you’re actually interested in. I know a couple of families who were able to negotiate more money using competing offers. It doesn’t work all the time, but it also doesn’t hurt to have in your back pocket. At the very least it’s a confidence booster. 
I’m so happy to hear such good things about the program. We saw Baby in November and were impressed. Fino is so personable.
D also auditioned in October, but we didn’t receive her acceptance letter until early Dec. We live just outside of Tampa, so she’s happy, but feels like she’s not really going to be leaving home if she chooses UT.
We are still planning to do NY and Chicago Unifieds and then she has on campus auditions at FAU and Wright State, but I think UT is near the top of the list.
BTW, Secondtimemt, are you Dani’s mom? She and Audrey were in Crazy For a you at Stagedoor and she would be thrilled to hear Dani got in.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Hi, yep, it’s me! I’ll tell Dani too.
Yay! Congrats to Dani! I’m glad to have the pressure off before Unifieds.
We are 1800 miles away, so I just want her to be certain. It would be nice to save the time, expense, and stress of Chicago unifieds. Do you know if Tampa offers much talent scholarship money to students?
My older daughter received a small talent scholarship. This year, at the audition, the head of the department said he plans to give less scholarships, but the ones given will be a more substantial amount. I have no idea what that translates to in terms of how many people or the dollar amount. I also don’t know if they factor in your academic scholarship when deciding on an amount.
Thank you. So much pressure to make the right choice as MT majors are not easy to transfer!