<p>I believe they are weekends when prospective and/or accepted students come and spend the night (or nights) at a particular college or university. This gives them a chance to experience life at the institution first hand.</p>
<p>Ooh, okay, thank you :)</p>
<p>Hi i was wondering if anyone has heard any buzz about the IU musical theatre BFA?</p>
<p>Springawake…two things…</p>
<p>You can use the Search function and search for threads and posts discussing IU Musical Theater BFA. </p>
<p>CC has a sub forum in the Musical Theater College Forum just for Indiana. Look at the top of this forum where there are about 35 MT schools listed. You will see IU listed. Click on that and find many threads discussing IU and Musical Theater.</p>
<p>My son just finished his freshman year at Northwestern, and is thrilled that he was just accepted into the MT program (they don’t audition until end of freshman year). Husband and I are learning to enjoy each other again since we’re now empty-nesters, and as an earlier poster said, our dog (and two cats) are just loving the new attention they’re getting! Matt loves NU and we’re so happy to see him happy.</p>
<p>What are your rising MT sophomores doing for the summer? Mine had a theatre internship lined up in Chicago, but decided to stay at school to get some classes out of the way early. He just doesn’t want to come home, he’s having such a good time. 
Good thing he’s not too far away.</p>
<p>Congrats to Matt!!! I heard through upperclass members of his a cappella group (who weirdly enough were my students long ago - once again proving how small the world is! ) how well he was doing, but it’s still great to have that official admission in hand! ;)</p>
<p>Thanks - I’ll pass it along. Yes, I’d heard that one of his friends knew you and had lunch with you recently, I believe.</p>
<p>edmondsg - I sent you an e-mail, and I’m very happy to hear how successful your son has been! Isn’t it great to be on the other side of college auditions and for our sons to be so very happy after a year at college? </p>
<p>My son is working summerstock theatre and is thrilled to have the lead in one of his shows. He doesn’t prefer for me to post the location, but I sent you the info. I’m looking forward to several trips to see him perform!</p>
<p>I’m just getting back to all of the posts…summer can be frantic! My D is finally weeding her list down, to about 10 schools (and she does not want to do any more apps than that!!!). If anyone is at, or has a child at, any of her school choices, can you let us know what it is like? She’s hoping to audition at Ithaca, Baldwin Wallace, FSU, PSU, UMich, Otterbein, Montclair, and maybe Rutgers, with her safety as West Chester and possibly point park. Making campus is not an issue…she has the grades and scores. It is making the programs. So, If you are at one of these, what is the make up of your class like? How do you like it? Is the focus acting or dance or vocal? And, how’s the out of class time?</p>
<p>Rutgers does not have a Musical Theatre concentration through Mason and Gross… they may have something through one of the other colleges on campus, though. </p>
<p>I know students who are currently at B-W and Montclair… I may be able to put you in contact with them. Let me know.</p>
<p>Please know that Point Park’s BFA is not a safety by the nature of the fact that it is by audition, even if may be a less “elite” BFA. Like Kat says, Rutgers doesn’t have musical theater, though they have a voice program. </p>
<p>A suggestion is to read the subforums for each of the schools (located at the top of the Musical Theater Forum) you listed as a bunch of the information and sharing about those programs is located there already and/or you may wish to pose a question specific to each school there.</p>
<p>The focus of the Ithaca program is primarily vocal and acting. Their auditions do not even include a dance audition. Montclair has an interesting division of the program – MT students can choose to focus on dance, acting or voice. If you focus on voice, your degree will be a Bachelor’s of Music. PSU has a program that focuses pretty evenly on all three areas. I know students at all three of the above schools, so I’m reporting what I know through their experiences.</p>
<p>I’ve looked at everything so often, I know some parts by heart. And, I do know Rutgers is drama, but they offer the Shakespeare program that my daughter finds appealing. I also understand Point Park is by audition, but we have some degree of comfort there because of her stint in governor’s school. Would love to be in contact with current students at any of those schools…thanks!</p>
<p>My daughter’s first month at UArts as a MT major can only be described as a dream come true. For those interested in the school, let me share some experiences and observations.</p>
<p>Move in day went flawlessly. I was wondering how in the world freshmen were going to move into apartment style dorms on city streets during a normal business day, particularly given all the extra stuff a kid needs to bring since there is no meal plan and you must stock the kitchenette in your apartment with all the stuff you need to have a functional kitchen. It couldn’t have gone smoother. Check in at Hamilton Hall took all of 10 minutes and then we drove down to my daughter’s dorm about 3 blocks away on Spruce St. Once there, there were a ton of student volunteers to assist in unloading and getting all her stuff onto an elevator and up to her apartment. The school had arranged with the city to take over 1 lane of Spruce St and the whole process from check in to parking and unloading took all of 45 minutes.</p>
<p>All of the dorm buildings at UArts are converted apartments. Most dorms are studios but there are a number of 1 and 2 bedroom units as well. Depends on which building you are in and you can have 1 - 3 roommates depending on the configuration. All of the dorms have their own kitchen space and private bathrooms, and are plenty spacious. There is an IKEA and Home Depot within 15 minutes easy driving from this part of the city for those who need to pick up stuff to complete setting up their apartment. Comcast cable was also on hand for those who were interested but unless you have a burning need for a TV in your dorm, is not really necessary. Each dorm room is set up for both wireless and ethernet cable connections to the UArts network. More on that later.</p>
<p>If you are a person who enjoys the city, Philadelphia is a student mecca. Restaurants and cafes with outdoor seating abound on almost every block in center city. The UArts Artsbank Theater, Wilma Theater, Merriam Theater (also owned by UArts), Kimmel Center, Academy of Music, Prince Music Theater, Walnut St Theater and Forest Theaters are all within 5-10 minutes walking from every dorm, with other theaters, such as the Arden, a little further but still walkable. Touring companies of current Broadway shows, regional productions, local theater and dance companies, world class orchestras, opera and ballet companies are all at a student’s doorsteps with rush tickets always available. A load of music venues, both indoor and out featuring everything from classical to heavy metal. Major art, science and natural history museums within walking distance. A safe city park system (one of the largest in the world) with bicycle trails and paths, walking paths and green space along the river. And of course, for those inclined, all the shopping a major city has to offer. As you walk along the city streets in the late afternoon and evening, you are surrounded by college and grad students and young professionals enjoying what the city has to offer. It is simply an exciting and dynamic place to be.</p>
<p>My daughter’s days are jam packed. Over 23 hours of classes alone per week. Add to it time in a studio or practice room, doing required readings, writing assignments, preparing monologues or songs for class, “dropping in” for an extra dance class, going to shows (as a homework assignment:) ) and her days start at 7:30 am until she falls into bed at 12:30 am. Time management skills are an essential survival tool! Even with all that, she still finds time to work out an hour each day at a nearby gym. </p>
<p>My daughter absolutely loves her classes and professors/instructors. She feels that she is learning an incredible amount in an environment, which while very demanding, is extremely supportive of her as an artist. All of the faculty are working pros (for example, the head of the MT program currently has a show at the NY Musical Theater Festival, her acting professor just came back from 2 days on a movie in NYC and her Music Lab instructor is the Music Director for the Philadelphia production of Assassins) and bring their real world experience into the classroom and studio. In addition to the classroom and studio work she is doing, her acting and voice teachers are working with her to develop a strong repertoire of materials for auditions and in this regard my daughter will start auditioning for school productions in November. Also, UArts has implemented a major technology initiative for this year’s freshmen. All freshmen School of Theater Arts students (and Fine Arts also) were given a MacBook Pro laptop fully configured with selected software for their major. (The laptops are theirs to keep upon graduation.) As I mentioned earlier, all the dorms are now wireless connected (as are the rest of the UArts buildings). The computers are being used for a broad variety of purposes. One of the coolest, though, is that my daughter’s voice instructor plays my daughter’s music on an electronic piano and uploads the music as a file into the school’s library. Back at her dorm room, my daughter can access the file and download it to ITunes on her laptop. She then feeds the laptop into some external speakers and voila, instant high quality accompaniment to practice her songs! My daughter can also record her voice lessons on her IPod, including her teachers comments and instructions, and upload that to her laptop so that when she practices she can also review the guidance she was given.</p>
<p>In sum total, my daughter could not have imagined this first month being any better than it has. She has made many new friends, she loves her program, and living in the heart of a major city is exciting and dynamic. While she is working her butt off, it’s doing the things she loves and for which she has a passion. As she put it, “I spend my days in class and studio acting, singing, dancing, studying plays and other literature, learning to play the piano and learning about theater. My homework consists of reading and writing about plays and other literature, acting, singing and dancing, playing the piano. Oh yeah, I also am required to go to shows and write about it. In between, I go to the gym, sit with friends with our laptops in a cafe with wifi accessing the school network to do some work. And at night, when I fall into bed exhausted, I fall asleep with my window open listening to the guy in the dorm above me playing mellow jazz on his saxophone. It doesn’t get any better than this.”</p>
<p>My daughter is also finding UARTS an incredible school and finding Freshman year more than she could have hoped for. We explored 12 schools last year and we learned a lot. Please feel free to contact me for info. CC helped me and I’d be glad to help.</p>
<p>Bump…for Racmom- here is a thread such as you described. There are other discussions as well, use the search function to find them…</p>
<p>What are all of you/your MT’ers doing this summer, do you know? My S is auditioning locally for ITA (Illinois Theatre Assoc.) and just sent in his application for a Strawhat audition slot. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him!</p>
<p>edmondsg - not to be the voice of doom, but if you don’t get those applications in right away, sometimes you don’t get a slot, no matter HOW big the resume. I found this out a couple of summers ago when my daughter didn’t get a slot for either Strawhat or NETC! Good luck, though; hope he gets a slot!</p>
<p>he’ll be ok with ITA (this is when he put in his app last summer), but Strawhat is another story. oh well, he’ll know for next year!</p>
<p>anyone know how difficult it is for an MT student to get an audition at strawhat, assuming the application is in early?</p>