<p>Good questions, Lauren.</p>
<p>Lots of theatre kids apply to more than 10 school. My D applied to 13 schools, 14 programs, plus a walk-in at Unifieds. You don’t have to do this, especially if you have a great safety or two that can allow you to take chances at just your favorite auditioned programs. But you have to be happy if you are rejected at every school except the safeties because that happens to theatre kids just like it happens to kids who apply mostly to Ivies.</p>
<p>You’re not wrong to have the schools you have. I will point out one phenomenon that does matter to some kids: For some people, it is uncomfortable to do a non-auditioned degree where there is an auditioned degree at the same school, to which they auditioned and did not get accepted. In the long run, while my D did really like the BA at Minn, and actually in many ways preferred it to the BFA, she decided that with so many other choices she would rather not go to school where she’d be side-by-side with kids who were in a program she had been rejected from. Try to imagine that, for real, for yourself. Also try to find out everything you can about the differences between BA/BFA at the same school (or BA/MFA; BFA/MFA if they exist). Opportunities can be very very different and sometimes not what you’d like when two or more theatre degrees coexist.</p>
<p>Also, sometimes you audition for both at the same time. Sometimes you audition for each separately. Sometimes THEY pick which one you can do. It all depends on the school. You have to do very careful research - we made a couple of mistakes this year in that way that fortunately didn’t hurt her, but almost did.</p>
<p>You are absolutely right that you have a chance at any and every school on your list. The wonderful thing about this forum is that no one will try to assess anybody’s talent or predict if a school will like them. That is your business - and we all are very happy to assume that you, like all of the rest of the kids here, are absolutely awesome and SHOULD get into whatever school you want!!</p>
<p>But look at the results kids have had this year. Some got into almost all of the schools they auditioned for, and some hardly got into any. Some got into maybe half. This happened whether they auditioned for 3, or 15. It happened whether their academics were high, or low.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t want to criticize your judgment or choices - I really hope everything works out for you. But if you want to audition for all of those very, very competitive programs, I do think you should expect to apply to more than 12 schools, in order to have good choices if the auditions don’t go your way. </p>
<p>My personal opinion is to find some less prestigious auditioned programs where the odds are a little better of getting in, and to find some non-auditioned programs that are true match/safeties (not Wash U - not even a 4.0 with high test scores can assume an acceptance there), where you really like the school and they have the training and performing opportunities that you want.</p>