<p>Some of the incoming freshmen don't know they CAN audition into the BFA as a first year (perhaps weak high school counseling or naive research skills when it comes to department opportunities). Once they arrive and start in the BA track, they learn of the opportunities available to them through jury/audition.</p>
<p>Also, I would point out that this number of BA students advanced into the BFA program this year attests to the quality instruction that the UofA students get - the acting faculty for the "non-majors" sections are as top notch as the majors' instructors. I have instructed at this school, as was I a BFA MT student there 15 years ago. The instruction is of quality, in my experience.</p>
<p>And what Prof. Bagwell stated about the "classical acting" nature of the program, that is absolutely correct. I believe they feel that if students are not prepared for what the faculty knows awaits them in the following semester(s), they would not be well serviced by being advanced and then failing out (remember, the "B or better" for retention policy - which, BTW, is a common policy among BFA programs).</p>
<p>Again, my sympathies to all. This isn't easy on either side.</p>
<p>Prof. Bagwell,
I do appreciate your intent to inform and you do communicate in a caring manner which is also appreciated. That said, I reiterate my position that there is no point in separating BFA and BA students as entering freshman in such a system as the one described at your school. Prof. Himmelheber pipes in, and this perspective is also appreciated - however, students with well above the 3.0 average were unexpectedly cut this year in what appears to many an arbitrary fashion. I maintain that the policies at this school are quite different from policies at most others and that students should be wary of trusting this program. Knowing what I know now, I agree with Jersey44 and would not allow (finance) a student to be part of what is truly cruel and not good practice.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Also, I would point out that this number of BA students advanced into the BFA program this year attests to the quality instruction that the UofA students get - the acting faculty for the "non-majors" sections are as top notch as the majors' instructors. I have instructed at this school, as was I a BFA MT student there 15 years ago. The instruction is of quality, in my experience.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>This strengthens my position that UofA shouldn't bother with the freshman year audition process. It's a bit of a farce, isn't it?</p>
<p>This is an interesting discussion on a very difficult subject. I'm curious, though, if the B.A. students are all students who have NOT auditioned, or are they applicants who have auditioned for the B.F.A. and have been placed in the B.A. program instead, or is it a mix? I guess I'm wondering why bother having two separate programs if the B.A. freshmen can easily enter into the sophomore B.F.A. stream after an audition. </p>
<p>Marsha,</p>
<p>I'm not sure what your point is with this quote:</p>
<p>"Many schools (NYU and Syracuse for example) take in twice as many students as we do and some schools do not let freshmen or sophomores enter into the BFA degree until their junior year."</p>
<p>Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how this relates to the discussion at hand.</p>
<p>I also am of the opinion that programs which cut kids like this are not places which I would recommend to any kids I know. I don't think that it's necessary, healthy, or wise, to have cut policies at the college level which will arbitrarily reverse an admissions decision which was already based on an audition. This obviously would not include instances where there are issues of attendance, being unprepared, poor work habits, etc. This is yet another reason why very careful research must be done during the application/audition process, and if you and your kids do not want to face this possibility, then choose wisely!</p>
<p>I agree with our very wise alwaysamom and others above.</p>
<p>I think this discussion helps students who auditioned and did not get into programs on the front end appreciate the fact that many schools "cut" during the entering freshman audition process, by limiting the number of students accepted into the BFA. Many of those schools then seem to support keeping those same students for the whole 4 years until graduation. I'd rather be hurt by not getting accepted to start with than to be cut after one or two years somewhere.</p>
<p>I certainly agree with those who expect a commitment for the four years after making it through the very grueling freshman audition process. At one of my daughter's auditions, the Director of a very competitive BFA program spoke to parents about wishing he had more than 3 minutes to make decisions about whom to accept and admitted to regretting some choices later. Perhaps 3-5 minutes isn't enough for either students or auditors to determine how good the "match" is?...........</p>
<p>I agree with jersey, alwaysamom, babar, and others regarding this issue. About the auditioning process, I don't believe that 3 to 5 minutes is enough. And sometimes I'm sure it goes another way in regretting choices: I bet some schools may often regret NOT picking someone that they perhaps should have picked. I understand and know the audition is important, but I don't think it's the only thing that can predict talent and success. </p>
<p>By the way, if a student is getting good grades and feedback and is attending class, etc., that student would have no reason to believe he or she is in danger of being eliminated from a program. No reason at all. And I don't like the idea of cuts either after making it in with an audition or without for that matter (if it's a nonaudition program). If the student is making a commitment, the school should too. A poster here said (paraphrasing), "What is the worst thing that could happen? They don't get a job in the field after graduation?" These kids need to be educated and nurtured and to grow. If they were completely ready for Broadway, prime time, film, or whatever when they went in, why would they need the school? Just my opinion though.</p>
<p>So the lesson we and our children need to take from what happened to the original poster here is "Know whether the university or college you are applying to has a cut program, and if they do, take it extremely seriously, because programs <em>do</em>, in fact, cut people and if the program stated its policy up front, a student who finds himself or herself out of a BFA program halfway through has no real recourse."
I appreciated Ms. Bagwell coming on this list to explain University of Arizona's policy and program, but I still wish I had the answer to one question I asked, which was this (I am paraphrasing, as I am too lazy to go back and find my original post! :): Of the students who are cut from the performance major, how many are satisfied to just switch majors to something else and finish out their time at U of Arizona, versus leaving to pursue a performance degree somewhere else?
I would frankly be surprised if most MT BFA candidates were Ok with just switching majors/life goals at that juncture.
L</p>
<p>Each case is different. Some stay at the University of Arizona and change their major to vocal performance in the Music Department. Others go into<br>
theatre education, theatre history, stage mangagement or technical design.
Some stay for one more year and get all their general education courses out of the way and then transfer or audition again for our program. </p>
<p>Some students change colleges in Arizona or return to their home states.</p>
<p>Most freshman have taken general education classes that transfer to any university.</p>
<p>It is difficult to select a high school senior after a five minute audition and know that they will be able to continue at that same school for 4 years.</p>
<p>I do want to set the record straight on the numbers this year which were not typical for us. Ususally, we do not advance only one ot two sophomores out of 20. The freshman to sophomore can vary. There are years that two or threee students want to change their major. On an average we usually do not advance 5 freshman because of transfer and BA competition.</p>
<p>I was making the point that our school selects only a small number of students. We hope in those five minutes auditions we can see all we need observe for this critical selection process. Of course, we hope to keep the entire group for 4 years. I am sure that every school tries their best.
But, that is always not possible based on many reasons which I have stated before in my reply</p>
<p>We have a small BFA program so we can give studetns a chance to perform. The schools that take in large numbers of students may not cut, but they usually can't give all those students performance opportunities in a main stage production directed by a professor or visiting professional director each semester.</p>
<p>I'd like to know the answer to that question as well. I can't imagine a student being accepted into a program of his or her dreams, performing well in every aspect during the first/second year, and then registering for classes for the next year as if never even being in that department and never interested in pursuing an acting/MT education and career. I think it's also important to get the college to give an honest and complete explanation of its cut program up front, including how many accepted and how many will be cut and when. It seems that in some cut programs, a student can be doing very well and still be cut, because the college intends to meet a planned goal for the number of students in the next class. I think there is one college that tells this up front, right? The one that accepts so many and then says they WILL cut half no matter what. But students know that before they even apply to that college. It seems like U of A has a similar style of cutting but it doesn't sound like this policy was clear before maybe now. That's just an observation on my part though. Anyway, I am glad we all know the policy now.</p>
<p>Ms. Bagwell - Thanks for explaining. I have a question - if a BFA major is not advanced, can that person still be in performances? Can he or she take classes within the BA program? Or does he or she have to completely eliminate theater performance from his or her educational career path? I have heard of colleges with juries telling students that they believe the student is more suited for the BA program vs. telling him or her he or she is not suited at all for a scecific major. Also, do you have any idea why the numbers were so much larger this year? It just seems staggering.</p>
<p>The University of Arizona has a BA program and all majors except technical design must take the same Acting I and Acting II course as BFA students. There are usually two or three sections of BA acting classes and one section of BFA classes.
All sections are taught by tenured or tenure track professor, not graduate students. We believe it is very important that all students interested in theatre have the same background and acting technique. Students majoring in Theatre Education of course want two good acting classes since they will be teaching high school students.</p>
<p>Our school wanted to make the system fair for all, so that any student who wanted to audition after their freshman year would have the same knowlegde as the students in the BFA sections.</p>
<p>Many schools offer a BFA major as a freshman. It is always best to research the program that interests you and your child and see what is the best fit for you.</p>
<p>We found that BFA students could be challenged and have a performing opportunity if they were in a section my themselves.</p>
<p>Some BA students are not hoping to be acting or musical theatre majors and they appreciate having the course geared to any needs they have for their major. Such as a costume design major understanding how the actor they design for needs to feel the costume enhances their character based on the research of the play. I sometimes have other majors in my acting class relate their major to the particular topic we are dicussing. This has proved very helpful for them.</p>
<p>Ms. Bagwell, thanks again for your willingness to engage in a back-and-forth discussion here. You have been very nice about answering all the questions that keep coming your way on this thread, and I am sure we all appreciate it.
I am hoping you will post at least one more time and respond to the member who asked why you had to cut such an unusually large number of kids this time around. It sounds, from what you stated here a few posts ago, that this year you at U of A had to cut almost three times as many kids as usual. Is there an obvious reason for this? Forgive me if you have answered this question. I am just not clear on it. You have explained most of the school's policy clearly, but I am still at a loss as to why so many kids were told they could not continue.</p>
<p>Yes, the reason for the many cuts this year was becasue we had an exceptionally talented group of transfers and BA studetns audition. As I said in a previous reply, we usally cut 1 or 2 sophomores at the most and a average of 3 to 5 freshman. This year was most unusual.</p>
<p>So, the kids who come into U of A as freshmen are not given any preferential treatment/advantage over the kids who want to transfer in from elsewhere? In other words, the university doesn't feel any special loyalty to those who entered as freshmen; is that correct?</p>
<p>I don't see any reason for the students to feel any loyalty to U of A either. It looks like it would be a great place to start in the BA to get your general education classes done before committing to a conservatory. You can audition for their BFA at the end of the year after going to the LA Unifieds and auditioning for all the other programs that don't cut. They offer full scholarships to National Merit Finalists which makes me almost wish I had considered them more. However, I don't see any point at all in going out of your way to audition for the BFA as a high school senior with their setup unless you feel like you HAVE to perform as a freshman. I looked at their website and you can audition by DVD which might not be too bad of an idea.</p>
<p>Call me naive (you won't be the first person to do so! :)), but it seems to me that a University should have some -- even if small -- loyalty to the kids who were accepted and matriculated as freshmen. In other words, those kids earned their way into the University of Arizona as freshmen. On the other hand, from the U's point of view, they probably just want the "best" people they can get, whether those come in as freshmen or not.</p>
<p>NMR, I don't think it's naive to expect that from a university. At most programs with which I'm familiar, transfers are only admitted to fill spots which have opened up due to attrition.</p>