proactor

Thesbohemin, I understand about the 'screw.' The monster does eat itself sometimes and always has. Have you talked to your teachers about your feelings about NC Arts and Purchase? It is not a good to waste other peoples time or your own auditioning for colleges you are not serious about. Can they work with you and make an exception on your limit since it seems like they pressured you to apply? Please promise me you will at least ask. There are other kids who want to audition for those schools very badly and you might be holding up their spots. The deals at Arizona and Otterbein might look very good in retrospect. Also, don’t turn up your nose at MT. A versatile actor is a working actor and MT makes for alot of gigs if you can do it. Do the right thing and break a leg at auditions for the colleges you are serious about.

notarebel

Proactor – She will probly kill me for saying this but the thing about thesbo is she NEEDS to audition for some of those schools. She doesn’t get how gifted she is and that she will be totally bored to tears with the training at schools where they start off assuming you don’t know anything and the students are rejects from other places. She needs to be somewhere she will be pushed and she needs to reconsider Juilliard. Our teachers keep telling her that and she doesn’t believe them. I wish they would tell ME that. Is the RU Screw for real? When did you graduate? It seemed okay when I visited but that was in the summer.

Thesbo – I’m all about being roomies at Guthrie little Miss Took-less-than-two-minutes-to-notice-and-fix-it-when-her-roomie-turned-ONE-book-on-her-shelf-upside-down-when-she-was-out-of-the-room. Got Zoloft? <3

thesbohemian

Proactor,
You may be right. Especially if I don't get in anywhere. It's an administrative thing and it's out of my teachers' hands. I will look at those schools very seriously if accepted. It's just that they're lower on my list than some of the others for various reasons. Sorry for sounding negative. I'm not turning up my nose at MT, either. I LOVE MT. It's just not a strength and given the choice between a school that does half their productions in MT and one that only does one MT a year, I'm taking the one that only does one. Potential stage time isn't a priority consideration, but it is a tiebreaker.

Notarebel,
What-everrrrrrrr. There will be teachers that push me at whichever place I end up. If they don't, you know me and I'll push myself. Also, some of those schools are lots of peoples' first choice and the other students won't be a bunch of "rejects from other places," Little Miss Only-true-triple-threat-I-know-who-doesn't-get-that-everybody-doesn't-have-rich-parents. <3

Everybody,
I should have mentioned that some of the schools that have full scholarships for National Merit Finalists also offer half tuition to National Merit Semifinalists.

wct

thesbohemian-

I just read your comment, "There will be teachers that push me at whichever place I end up. If they don't, you know me and I'll push myself." These two sentences have spoken a great deal about your integrity. You will always get out of an educational experience what you put in. I wish I knew more students with your kind of attitude. Bravo.

In many cases as a student you will go back to the beggining in order to correct bad habits that have been developed along the way and you have to be able to look at that as something positive. Sometimes it is to learn something in a "new" way, giving you another perspective in relation to your art. I have been doing all kinds of theater for over 30 years, and I learn something new everyday.

marissal

I got my first admission letter today!

It's from Tulane University. Although it's a non-audition program, i'd begin with the BA degree and audition for completing the BFA in my 2nd or 3rd year.

However, I've still got a few other universities to audition for and hear back from. It's just good to know i'm in somewhere (even though I need some finaid).

Catherdingmom

Congratulations, Marissal! I love what I've heard about Tulane and think it would be a great place to go to school.

alwaysamom

That's great news, marissal! It's so nice to have one-in-the-bag, so to speak. Congrats and good luck with your other schools.

Kellster

Hi I'm back! I talked to my parents and they won't let me go to a performing arts high school like I talked about earlier on this thread. They are going to let me graduate a year early and I am pretty sure I want to go to a good BA college with no grad school and no BFA where I can use APs to graduate in 3 years. I would want to go to a MFA program after that. My question is can students who graduated from a decent BA program get accepted to a good MFA program and is it possible at all to get into one when you are 20 years old? Does this ever happen? If it does, it seems like it might make more sense for me than going to a BFA school. The drama teacher at my school is totally clueless about all this.

Good luck to all the seniors going to auditions! I hope you all get your first choice.
Kel

gadad

I concur with all of the above "ranting" and I'm counseling my HS junior singer-actress-scholar accordingly. But as a college Student Affairs VP, let me offer my $0.02 about the real value in the undergraduate experience. Unless you want into a highly technical field (engineer, architect, etc.), I don't think there's a lot of correlation between undergraduate major and final career. But I'm quite certain that the best predictor of future aspirations and standards for onesself is the quality of the peer group. If it's acting and only acting you're seeking, you need to be among the finest, most passionate, most committed acting students you can find. If your interests are broader and more varied, you need to be among the best and most intellectually-curious students you can find at a school that also has a respected theatre program. I am convinced that the quality of the teaching in the Ivy League is not much better than at your state college - in many circumstances, it will not be as good or as dedicated as a state college professor's. But the real value in going to Yale is spending the four most formative years of your life being influenced by peers who also got into Yale. In short, I'd take a good look at the students who go to the schools you consider. In four years - for better or worse - you will be more like them than you are today.

gadad

I concur with all of the above "ranting" and I'm counseling my HS junior singer-actress-scholar accordingly. But as a college Student Affairs VP, let me offer my $0.02 about the real value in the undergraduate experience. Unless you want into a highly technical field (engineer, architect, etc.), I don't think there's a lot of correlation between undergraduate major and final career. But I'm quite certain that the best predictor of future aspirations and standards for onesself is the quality of the peer group. If it's acting and only acting you're seeking, you need to be among the finest, most passionate, most committed acting students you can find. If your interests are broader and more varied, you need to be among the best and most intellectually-curious students you can find at a school that also has a respected theatre program. I am convinced that the quality of the teaching in the Ivy League is not much better than at your state college - in many circumstances, it will not be as good or as dedicated as a state college professor's. But the real value in going to Yale is spending the four most formative years of your life being influenced by peers who also got into Yale. In short, I'd take a good look at the students who go to the schools you consider. In four years - for better or worse - you will be more like them than you are today.

gadad

I give up. Why this posts on part 6 when I respond to part 7, I don't know.

marissal

Gadad: The entire thread (all 6 pages) is part of Thea/Dram Colleges Part 7.
The format is just a little different than the last board, so we have several pages under part 7.

devron

Alright, I just left the SAT/PSAT boards and I want to shoot myself reading all these entries by sophomores who got close to the perfect score of 240 for the PSAT. Um, let's just say I did lower. Much lower. Lower than 200 in fact. I didn't intend to be part of the NMSC program, and I did much better than last year...but still I'm afraid that it will predict my SAT score. If I'm looking at schools such as NYU and CM for the acting department will they weigh my SAT score more than my acting abilities? Belive me, I'm a much better actress than learner (but I'm a good student...) I feel like I'm the only non over acheiver on this board!

notarebel

devron - Don't worry about it. I have math anxiety and didn't do so good on the Pee-Sat or the first time I took the SAT. If you are like me a Kaplan prep course will help lots. I took one last summer and my score went up almost 200 points. I think these colleges know we are ARTISTS - not digit heads - and expect us to be about average and maybe a little low in the total student pool they let in if we are good. If your grades are good, an average SAT wont hurt you too much. (knocking on my wooden desk) If I get in someplace they make you take math, I am gonna get the textbook and get tutored on it over the summer. Any science I take is gonna be totally "rock for jocks."

alwaysamom

Don't despair. PSAT is not always a good predictor of how you'll do on the SAT itself. The key is to prep and that can be done fairly easily with a good prep book and diligence. You should work on that so that you are as ready to do well as possible.

The schools you're looking at for drama have different requirements for applicants. For NYU, you will definitely need to have good 'stats' to have a chance. Their admissions process is a two-part deal with the academic review and artistic review having equal weight. So the higher your gpa and your test scores, the better chance you have of being admitted. There is so much competition there that you want to give yourself the best chance possible. About 3000 kids apply to Tisch every year so the competition is steep.

CMU was actually my D's second choice if she hadn't gotten into Tisch. There, and I'm assuming it's still the same as two years ago, the audition is what is overwhelmingly important. It can't hurt, though, if you have good academic stats to go along with your great audition!

It's going to vary school by school so it's a good idea to research the ones you're interested in NOW so that you don't get any surprises! Many of them require good academic records as well as talent. That seems to be a surprise to a lot of people. Good luck on your search!