<p>My dd has the opportunity to choose between either a regular public high school with great drama dept. in southern California or Orange County High School of the Arts, a 'performance' high school.</p>
<p>Which would be the better choice in the eyes of top notch musical theater colleges across the country?</p>
<p>Forgive me if this has been covered, I'm brand new and attempted to search out this answer but didn't find anything...</p>
<p>cotomom, I think you are going about answering the question backwards. The first thing you need to ask is "Which school is right for my daughter?"</p>
<p>I can't answer that for you, except to tell you my D knows a bunch of kids at OCSHA who are happy as clams there. You probably know the advantages of the program; conservatory classes after school and top notch faculty. Also, being with kids that share the same sort of passion, and focus.</p>
<p>My D had the same choice, but it was in her junior year in HS, and she had already paid her dues at her local school. She stayed at her local school and had some nice opportunities to perform that she might not have had at OCSHA. I know when my D was accepted she was taken off a wait list and given a weekend in which to make up her mind about changing schools. It was a stressful weekend, and I hope you have some time to make your decision.</p>
<p>There is a woman here who is on the faculty of OCHSA that may be able to answer your question about how the grads from there fare in the college app process. Her screen name here is WCT and although she hasn't posted lately here, she may see a PM if you send her one, or your could try sending her an email. She helped me with several issues about college apps even though my D did not go to OCHSA.</p>
<p>I can tell you the top theatre grads from our hs have ended up at NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, Chapman among others, in the past two years. I would ask at you local HS to see where the theatre kids have ended up. I am sure Ochsa has a higher pecentage of kids who pursue performing arts after HS vs a non-p.a. high school.</p>
<p>Hope this helps a little. I know it is a difficult choice, especially when many of the schools here in OC have great things happening already for the kids.</p>
<p>Hi cotomom, my name is Hannah and I'm actually a student at the Orange County High School of the Arts. I'm a senior, graduating in June, and I basically have nothing but good things to say about OCHSA. It's a great academic program combined with a great conservatory program, it has lots of professional working teachers, and it's a great environment for a young artist. It's prepared me better than any normal high school in our area could for a career in theatre. All of the colleges I auditioned for were familiar with our school, and I feel as though it gave me a bit of a leg up over the competition. (I actually just got accepted into Ithaca with a great scholarship, if that's any indication. Haha.)</p>
<p>Just know that OCHSA is a big commitment, with a school day that ends at 5 o'clock, and after school rehearsals that can go until 8 or 9 PM, 5 days a week. (Next week I have rehearsal all 7 days, and it's not even Tech Week yet!) On top of that, we get the amount of homework that would be assigned at a regular high school. It's a lot of pressure, and you have to be really good at managing your time.</p>
<p>I do agree with NotMamaRose, though. If you haven't already, you could try visiting OCHSA and seeing if your daughter enjoys the environment and is confident that she can handle the pressure. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>I agree with NotMamaRose....the decision should rest solely on which school is the best fit for what your child wants in a high school experience. If she wants a PA high school, that sways the decision one way. If she think she can get what she wants in your other option, go with that. Either option can result in the same outcome as far as college admissions. College admissions officers weigh your child's record in the context of her high school. There is no need to pick a high school as to whether one or the other will help you get into college. The student is the one who gets into college, not the HS from where she came. You want to find the best environment for your D to grow and fit in. Simply. One high school or another is not the ticket into a college. </p>
<p>Where I live, there is NO choice of high schools. It is the local rural public serving six towns. There is no private day school. There are no performing arts high schools in our entire state. My D ended up at NYU/Tisch/CAP21, amongst other BFA acceptances. That said, she has several very good friends at Tisch who went to OCHSA. Her roomie, also in CAP21, is from another rural town in our state. Another roomie is from a public HS in Oregon, also in CAP21. Kids from all types of high schools all end up at the same sorts of colleges. So, if you have the opportunity to pick high schools, which we did not, the decision truly should rest on which HS best fits what your D wants in a high school experience. Does she prefer a performing arts HS or a regular one? Can she get the training she wants outside of HS if she goes to the regular HS (and they don't provide it at school)? One school or the other is not going to be her "ticket". Her skills, achievements, talent, etc. is what will carry her into the admissions process with success. Top BFA programs take kids from all sorts of high school backgrounds. The key is talent, training, academic qualifications, etc., but not the name of your HS. That said, IF we had had a PA high school in our region, I think my D would have loved it. I never would have even contemplated the idea in relation to getting into college, but simply that she'd have loved such a high school environment way more than our high school. However our D made do with our high school and was enriched in performing arts activities outside of her school day. Likewise, when my older D picked a college, we put no thought into which college would get her into the best graduate schools. We feel that she is the one who will get into grad school, not the name of her undergraduate school. My kids could not pick their high schools. They picked their colleges totally around fit and not with where X school might get them later.</p>
<p>I didn't see Palendrome's post before I posted and I can appreciate the long day she describes. I think a PA high school would be way more convenient than what my kid had to do who ALSO had very long days all day and evening and weekends. The difference was that we had to drive and commute to an array of extra training opportunities outside of school, including very long distances. A PA school sounds appealing logistically to me, besides the peer group being attractive to my D. Still, while OSCHA would be recognizable on an application to a BFA program, kids from our high school can still get in. Like Palendrome's example, my D also got into Ithaca's BFA with a signficant scholarship and some years ago, so did two others from our rural completely unknown public HS.</p>
<p>I really truly appreciate everyone's comments. We're very early into the game and what we're actually looking at is auditioning for OCSHA for 7th grade! However, I'd like to try to get her into the school that supports HER the best ... not solely for the future for sure!</p>
<p>My d can absolutely get the training and experience outside of a performing school... living so close to Los Angeles. </p>
<p>She really wants to go to OCSHA but my concern was that by having such 'competition' within 1 school, it would LESSEN the chances of a good college program. Not everyone can get the leads, etc. if you follow my line of thought. </p>
<p>Knowing how large of a commitment OCSHA is, and the fact that most outside training/classes/regional theatre experience/auditions/etc. would stop, I didn't want the decision to go to OCSHA to hurt her chances in the future.</p>
<p>Cotomom, you make an excellent point in your last post (#6). While we don't have performing arts high schools in this region, I have seen some parents here making decisions whether to send their child to the local public high school (the only game in town, no private day schools except a ski academy) or to send their child away to a boarding prep school. Often, I see some of these parents choosing a boarding prep school with an eye on that their child's chances to get into a "good" college will be better. My personal opinion is that they should ONLY choose the prep school if they feel the experience itself will be better for their child. With regard to college admissions, there are pros and cons between applying from an unknown public high school and a known boarding prep school. Kids from the elite prep school are often all applying to the same elite colleges and "competing" with one another for the same colleges. So, while kids coming out of a school like Deerfield, Exeter, St. Paul's, Choate, etc. will often fare well in college admissions, each elite college doesn't want to fill their classes of umpteen kids from the same prep schools. Thus, a kid, say in the top half the class, but not top 10th of X elite prep school might not get into their top choice college, when they may have coming from their public school where they would be in the top 10% of their HS class. Colleges want kids from many different backgrounds. Kids from an unknown public like ours rarely go to elite colleges, but a few do per year. The colleges never heard of our high school and so these kids do NOT have the advantage that the kids from known prep school have in that way. On the other hand, there are not a lot of kids applying to the same elite colleges all competing with one another from the same HS for that college. There are many other pros/cons with the public/private issue for high school. Overall, I think going with best fit is the way to go. </p>
<p>I have a child at Brown who went to our local unknown public high school that rarely sends kids to Ivies. I know another kid from our community whose parents sent him away to a boarding prep school with college in mind. He is now also at Brown. This year, another girl from our rural prep school got into Brown (for that matter, another got into Harvard). The end results were the same. What was different was their high school experiences. Both were well prepared for a school like Brown, however.</p>
<p>I know if my younger kid had had the chance to go to a PA high school, she'd have really loved it. However, I feel she was able to get what she needed for training and production experiences both in and outside of our regular public school. And like you say, there are some advantages. Being the shining star or leads locally due to less competition, affords some neat opportunities, that might be harder to attain at a PA high school. Still the PA high school has some advantages with peer group of like interests, training during the school day, and so on. Those are the kinds of things to weigh, more so than which will look better on the college application.</p>
<p>Cotomom
My D has been at a public arts school since fourth grade, her choice not ours and there are clear benefits and disadvantages as with all things in life. As a parent one of the things I really appreciate is because the training is at school I or my husband do not have to drive D from one place to another. The school day is long, typically 8-5 with some later rehearsals, but she is in one place the entire time. She has, up until this year (9th grade), been able to participate in local and some regional theatre and dance productions but this takes a toll on her energy and she was too often rehearsing two different things at the same time.
As for competition within the school. We have found that to some extent this varies at different grade levels - some years the kids enter with more competitive pool than others. However, over time this has seemed to balance out so she is not always competing with the same cluster of kids. There have been times that the internal competition has strained friendships but they have learned to work through some of this.
We are not in an area nearly as big as the LA area, but even here there are multiple opportunities for kids outside of the school and some of the kids who never attend the PA are VERY talented and outshine the PA kids.
We have appraised our decision to keep D at the PA each year, looked at where she is academically and artistically and what other options might be available. ANd as I mentioned earlier, one huge factor for us now is the convienence of having her train at school rather then driving all over the place to bit and piece things together and minimzie conflicts and ...</p>
<p>Cotomom --</p>
<p>I agree with many of the above posters that the essential question is what is the best program for your child. I would also add that I don't think the colleges care about how many leads an applicant had, or even how many high school, or community theatre shows, an applicant has been in. The essential thing is to get good training in all three disciplines, and as many have pointed out, it is often easier to do this in one place.</p>
<p>I am also a big believer in the pre-college programs as a training vehicle. In addition to excellent training, I think it helps the colleges to get to know the student prior to auditions, and helps to pull your face out of the crowd.</p>