Current Musical Theater College Students and Parents Share Experiences

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
181

<p>I can speak with confidence that my son is thrilled to be studying MT at Elon and couldn’t be happier. He recently participated in a Broadway Cares fundraising concert with a number of MT students and faculty.</p>

<p>He is very busy and is currently in a required freshman College Fellows winter term course. Each student takes one course in Jan. winter term. Some are fun or academic courses, others study overseas, and performing arts students who are cast in a play or musical for Feb. rehearse the shows for credit during winter term. </p>

<p>This school was the perfect place for him.</p>

182

<p>I posted my impressions a bit farther back and on the Tisch thread…</p>

183

<p>I am hoping my D will have time to post here too but I’m sure she won’t mind my saying that she loves it at Webster University. She has wonderful instructors, very challenging classes, great opportunities and fabulous friends. She could hardly wait to get back there after break and when I asked what she was the most excited about she said immediately, “My classes!” </p>

<p>Hopefully she will find time to give you more detail.</p>

184

<p>My S is at OCU and is very happy there. He loves his classes and his instructors. He finds it challenging. He particuarlly likes theory and his voice teacher and studio. He was lucky enough to be cast in an opera, his first, and he really loved it and hopes to be in more operas. I think we have a lot of lucky kids here who have found “good fits”.</p>

185

<p>srw, what is your S’s impression of the dance training at OCU? </p>

<p>My D is looking for a program that is strong in dance. OCU has said on here before that the students get excellent training from OCU’s school of dance, but I was wondering what an actual student’s opinion was. </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

186

<p>My D has received excellent dance training. OCU’s dance department is well known, and the MT students study with dance department faculty. They danced in the opening number of the Rose Parade (with Kristin Chenoweth singing). My D is a good dancer, but does not have much formal training because we live in a small town without advanced dance opportunities. Now she can tap pretty well! Go to youtube and search OCU. There are (or there were) some clips of the choreography show.</p>

187

<p>I can’t tell you much about dance, execpt that the classes are in such high demand I know of several MT freshmen who have had trouble getting into dance classes, I think some serious re-vamping of the dance portion is being done, to make classes more available to mt’ers scheduals. I do know that the dance school is very rigorous. My S is working on setting up a double major, VP and MT.</p>

188

<p>The dance classes at OCU are very intense. They treat you like a regular dancer (even in the basic classes) which means you get the actual dance faculty, and you can’t miss classes, you have to be dressed correctly, etc… It’s pretty standard, but there are big consequences for missing classes. I’m in basic tap right now, though, and I’m really enjoying it.</p>

189

<p>After reading my previous post #186, I should say that my daughter is a “fair” dancer with lots of potential that was not realized due to the lack of opportunity in our town, and a lack of time and money to travel to the bigger city nearby for lessons. What I meant to convey is that she has progressed very well with the dance instruction at OCU. She had practically no tap experience before college, started in basic tap and was able to move to ‘beyond basic’ and then the next level in her first three semesters.</p>

190

<p>musicmom, good for your D!</p>

191

<p>musicmom, srw and be<em>a</em>star: thanks for your responses regarding dance at OCU. </p>

<p>Sounds good!</p>

192

<p>It’s been awhile since I lurked, thinking I needed a break, and my D needed a break from all of my “reports”. But over the next couple of weeks we are going on a hunt, and I was hoping some of you might tell me some of your tips for judging programs, environments, and what questions to ask. My D is a junior, wanting MT, but considering theater with a strong MT component. Over the next month we will be visiting NYU, Tisch school (and how is that different than CAP?), Fordham at Lincoln Center, CW Post, Montclair State, and Wagner. We have been to Point Park (which she loved), Penn state, and she did a summer program at U Arts. She can get in most anywhere academically (4.0+, good board scores, varsity letters, and lots of theater experisnce, and of course I believe she’s great on stage, though weaker in monolgues than other areas), so we are trying to compare programs, not admissions. Advice?</p>

193

<p>I would be really interested in hearing how you go about comparing programs and schools also. We are not looking at very strict academic programs. We will have some time this spring/summer to visit some places while I am working and would like to have some idea of what to focus on.</p>

194

<p>Here’s how we looked at this process: first of all we asked our S to make a list of the things that were important to him in a program. After he had a good list of what he thought he wanted, we created a spread sheet with all of his ‘likes’. We then began to look at each school on an individual basis and gathered information for each category we had created. We discovered things along the way that we hadn’t thought of before and added those to our spreadsheet as well. The spread sheet made it easier to look at a larger number of schools at one time and he quickly saw that some of the schools he thought he would love really wouldn’t meet the needs that were important to him.</p>

<p>We started out with pretty much the basics; size of school, size of program, tuition costs, location, degrees offered, senior showcase offered, balance of the program in vocals, acting and dance, conservatory or not, etc. We found that our list of ‘wants’ became more detailed as we dug deeper into what each school had to offer.</p>

<p>We added things to our list like, length and frequency of voice lessons, how many dance classes a week, music theory classes, piano classes, performance opportunities, can freshman perform, etc…I think you see where this is going. It is all so individual and all about what is important to your S or D!</p>

<p>We began this process the summer after sophomore year. By doing this early on, he was able to make a decision and give us a final list of where he wanted to audition by the end of his junior year. This also allowed him time to do his applications, write essays and request audition dates very early, which ultimately has lessened his stress level for senior year and allowed him time to prepare for auditions without worrying about the choices to be made.</p>

<p>I do think that it’s important for your S or D to be very involved in all of this research. I know that MT kids have limited ‘extra’ time with classes, lessons, rehearsals, etc. One of the things I did, concerning this forum, was to make a list of the thread and post number when I read information that I thought would be beneficial for my S. When he had some down time he would look at the posts I had listed for him. This seemed to work well for us. He also set a goal to try and research at least one school when he had a free weekend. Little by little he was able to do his research on every school he was considering and complete the spreadsheet.</p>

<p>I know this may sound crazy to some people, but it worked for us! Hope this helps and best of luck to you in your search. We are so excited to now be in the middle of the audition process…can’t believe it is finally here!</p>

195

<p>Thanks soooooo much. Great questions, great advice! As you know, pinning them down to look early is a challenge, and kudos to you S for doing this! Between shows, lessons, school, and soccer, I often just beg a few minutes, but I think we can be more constructive. Actually have a “dinner date” with her tonight for quality time. I’ll bring your suggestions along!
How are the auditions? Any advice there?</p>

196

<p>I know this probably should be on another thread, but I’m not bright enough to know how to do that :slight_smile: someone else will jump in and take care of it, I’m sure. </p>

<p>To briefly answer your question I will say that auditions have been a blast for my S and I. We have met people from CC and it has truly been a fun experience. Best advice I can give is to be as prepared as you possibly can be and know your material inside out, ALWAYS follow the guidelines that are set by each school, and most of all…encourage your child to go in there and have FUN. By the time they get to auditions, they should be prepared, so just go in there and have a great time! Help to make the day as stress free as possible for them.</p>

<p>Feel free to pm me at any time about specific schools. S is only auditioning at 3, so my info may be limited but I will be happy to pass on what we’ve learned. We have our final audition this weekend and I will probably post more about our experiences after that.</p>

197

<p>We compared programs based on campus visits - from summer after 9th grade and into second semester 11th grade. I didn’t find CC until we were half way through these visits. We visited a bunch of schools, whenever we had any free time between shows or other commitments! When visiting, we had a list of questions to ask, we saw shows when we could (planned visits to make this happen), and met with as many different people as we could work out. My son chose where to audition based on these visits and did not apply anywhere that we had not visited. Sometimes you can just tell what you like by how you feel when you are on campus. It is a very intangible and hard to explain feeling, but he ruled out many schools where he did not “feel” right. He also chose 2 non-audition programs that he could have been happy with, he applied to, and he got accepted with wonderful academic scholarships. We planned all along to visit non-audition programs (once he found the audition-based programs he liked) until we found something he could be happy with.</p>

<p>Something we did not do (and I’m not sure how important it is in deciding where to audition) was to compare courses offered and required. Once he had several good acceptance offers, we spent a good part of Christmas holidays last year comparing the courses that he would take at his accepted MT schools. We ended up finding out that they varied greatly - something we had not realized. This is what helped him decide where to attend, from schools that he liked very much, could have been happy attending, and had been accepted. Does that make sense? He only auditioned at schools that he really liked, so all were great choices!</p>

<p>I can tell you that he’s been very pleased with his decision! What’s really funny is that Elon, where he attends, was really the school that felt right to me for him the whole time, from the initial visit. Isn’t it great how things work out? I believe that we had visited 20 schools before Elon, because we targeted going to Elon to see a particular musical in his junior year. He had known some Elon graduates that he was impressed with. This school has exceeded our expectations!</p>

<p>I can also tell you that there are schools that we’ve heard good things about more recently where we never worked out a visit and therefore never applied. There are so many good choices out there! Just look until you find what’s right!</p>

198

<p>Our s. is auditioning for Webster at Unifieds next week. Any thoughts about what they are seeking?
Thanks, much.</p>

199

<p>To NotMamaRose,
It’s been so hard to keep “hands off” our son and let him do it all himself. I know he may not get into some places because he missed deadlines, etc. but we let him know early, this is YOUR life…</p>

200

<p>Mamalot, :slight_smile: I am confused by the above post addressed to me; were you responding to something I said much, much earlier? I don’t remember being part of this particular conversation, though I do appreciate your point of view.</p>