Who is Doing the Leg Work

Okay, I need some help here. Who has done the work with looking at schools, audition requirements, understanding the process? Has it been the parent, child, or both?

I ask because I am struggling to find my role as a parent. My generation understands how to research and solve problems. Where to start basically. I kind of wonder if my D generation understands this skill. Please help and be honest. She is a HS junior.

I know a father whose S is a sophomore at Anderson University in the MT BFA program and he mentioned to me that he did a lot of leg work for his S…Is this normal?

I have done a lot of the research for my D because between school, productions, volunteering, and other activities she hasn’t had a lot of time to do it. She went through many of the lists on this site and looked at the different programs based on overall program, cost, type of degree, etc. She then eliminated many of them and added a few others she looked into at the advice of her mentors. It’s a heck of a lot of work and it’s a delicate balance of helping and doing too much. Good luck to you and your D!

I was logistics coordinator and my daughter was artistic coordinator. As previously mentioned, my D was super busy senior year as well and absolutely needed the help. I handled scheduling, prescreen taping, and some of the generic application work, including paying for all the applications & prescreens. Of course she wrote her essays and chose all her materials, organized her book, arranged her letters of rec, etc. I’m footing the college bill and felt a level of responsibility to research schools independent from her research. I needed to know we were making a solid investment in her future and not just taking her word for it. Now she’s a first year MT and she is handling all this stuff on her own…for school and summer stock auditions. You will know how much or how little help your child will need - and helping them understand the work done along the way will help them know what to do when they don’t have mom or dad around anymore.

@deelight and @Mardeen thanks for the feedback. @deelight, May I ask where your daughter is attending? Also, is there anything different you would do on your end?

I drove the car to visit chosen colleges. And helped with timing logistics for scheduling auditions, booking hotels and driving to auditions. Also moral support. Otherwise nothing. I never saw an application.

I am a student, and I personally did all of my own research, applying, and scheduling. I would of course talk to my parents about the process and get their ok before I applied or scheduled anything!

For my situation, I thought that it was best that I take the reins. I researched the musical theatre college audition world heavily before senior year began, and I was the one who explained everything to my parents, from BAs vs BFAs to different school’s reputations to the scheduling process. I even found my own audition coach and scheduled my own prescreen recordings.

This may be different from other people because my parents have never been heavily involved in theatre- they both majored in finance in college and they didn’t understand terms like prescreens, unifieds, or walk-ins before I told them about it.

I am a student as well and the idea of my parents researching musical theater schools is truly hilarious. Seeing as my parents did not even know what half of this was, the main burden of research and selection of schools fell on me. My HS has a dedicated college advising faculty so I actually began finding schools from a list that was suggested by a college advisor, and from that list and in tandem with my own knowledge from CC and other online sources, I began to piece together a list. Then my college audition coach suggested a few others. In my personal opinion, not that this is the only way, I think it should be the kids job to curate their own list. It gives us more ownership of our process and at the end of the day, only we are really gonna know what we want out of the whole thing. If our parent hand selects our list for us, it’s kind of not the same. I can’t imagine being nearly as excited about my schools if my parents had picked out for me.

So long story short: I did all research and selection of schools, tracking of audition requirements, and scheduling. Parents did all logistical things from booking flights and hotels, to paying for fees, to double checking schedule. Coach helped me with artistic things like finding material, and interview tips.

@StewNChelle Sorry for the delay in reply - I missed your question somehow. My daughter is at BW. Would we do anything differently?? In regards to the legwork…probably not…our system worked for us. My best advice is to figure out what works for you and your family. As you can tell from responses, it’s all over the board how involved parents are or aren’t. What’s important is that you agree on who is going what, and agree on deadlines for everything - rec letters, essays, prescreens, apps, etc.

My D had better results than we expected, with an offer and WL to her top 2 schools, among other choices. She received NOs from top programs as well, but there was really only one or two schools that (after the fact) we felt probably never should have been on her list. Although she had great results without a coach, I have recommended coaches to others for a variety of reasons, especially because they seem to have such a good handle on schools/programs.

The only other thing we might have done differently…My D ended up not really loving the unified format for auditions, and wasn’t interested in doing walk-ins, so we probably would have shortened that experience by a day if possible.

Best of luck. Feel free to PM me if I can help answer any additional questions.