| The number of schools is a difficult question to answer. If your student wants MT and only MT, he needs to be aware of the acceptance statistics. Unfortunately reading them and lliving them are two different things. If your MT student has been in a number of venues where he has known many students who have gone down this path, and can gauge himself against them, it is helpful, though not always accurate. If he is a good student with SAT scores higher than the norm at the schools where he is applying and has had MT experience where he has done well relative to kids who are currently in MT programs, it is a pretty good indicator that he will get into a MT program. If you are shooting in the dark where you don't know many people who have gone down this path but your student has always had the lead in school performances, community theatre, you do need to proceed with more caution. It seems to me that this is the category (along with those who are truly clueless about the process and decide to audition as a lark) that have the most disappointments.
By applying to some early or rolling programs, you are giving the auditions a litmus test of sorts. If you get lucky like Lexasmomlbj's D did, (not diminisishing the talent end of it), you can eliminate a number of scheduled auditions or even the rest of the audition schedule. That is truly the best thing to occur as you limit the stress, time, travel, expense IF you get in somewhere. Everything else becomes pure gravy and elective. But if you do not get positive feedback, you may need to reconsider your options. You still have time to do this in December. You can schedule auditions at the Unifieds, you can add some non audition strong arts schools, consider some other types of programs. You can also call the schools where you auditioned and find out what the problem is and make adjustments, though often you may not get any helpful information, as the sheer number of kids interested in this program makes it so that qualified kids are denied. I truly feel that early feedback is crucial for those kids who have not been around the type of kids auditioning for these programs as the competition is not going to be like anything they have ever experienced. My son goes to a school that is strong in theatre arts offerings so that some of the kids who are not the top contenders there are still strong in the audition categories of schools beating out kids who are perenial leads in their school/community programs where the competition is not as intense. The other category of kid that seems to hit a streak of rejections, is the very talented kid who has weak academic stats. With the competition is as tough as it is, even if academics are only 10%, 5% of the total consideration, that is a tough hurdle for kids weak in that area since there are som many kids that are not only triple treats in the performing arts but are also outstanding academically. You can see that the merit/talent awards are generally given to the kids with the high academic stats; rarely if ever is it given for pure talent, and in those cases the kid has something rare that the school is seeking in addition to the talent. There is much, much talent here, so it is not reason enough to get accepted or get money. So kids with weak stats should have a number of schools where they are in the midstream academically, along with some schools that are not as concerned with the academics (Bos Co, Roosevelt come to mind) The school college counselor told us from the onselt that there is a direct relationship between the academic stats and the acceptances even for these programs that so intensely audition, something I did not completely believe upon the onset of my son's auditions. Now having seen the results for a good number of kids, having met some kids on the audition trail, I can see she was right. Not to say that high grades and test scores will make you a shoo in, but not having them is a definite detriment to your chances, and if you are looking for money, they are essential. |