If a student loves theater but wants to major in maths from any of the top 25 ranked colleges then how should he develop theater as an strong EC to strengthen his application? He is already taking theater as a course for all 4 years and doing school plays. What more can be done?
Of course assuming his GPA and SAT meets the acceptance criterion of those colleges.
Is there a theatre or drama club at his school that he could join or perhaps find leadership opportunities within the school program? Can he volunteer with theatre programs in your community? Teaching theatre to younger kids, maybe? Or helping out with productions?
IMO, he would have to do something UNIQUE with theater, not just perform in plays or be in a drama club. What would be unique? Direct a a kids’ play for poor kids in Haiti. Create some sort of website having to do with theater, something that’s never been done before. Turn an Emily Dickinson poem into a stage production. These are the kinds of things that stand out.
In truth, “something that’s never been done before” is practically impossible. With respect to theater, there are two major ways to make it an activity that will substantially bolster one’s application:
(1) Become a nationally recognized / acclaimed actor or actress and, if allowed, submit an arts supplement.
(2) Write an original stage production (can be an adaptation of a literary work if copyright permits) and have it performed by your school or published.
As an example of (2), there were two students at a nearby high school who collaborated to write a musical. One wrote the libretto (dialogue) and the other composed the music. Both were accepted to several colleges with < 10% acceptance rates.
Attend one of the top drama summer programs like Stage Door Manor. Do well there and get glowing recs that say she is a good actress. Doesn’t guarantee anything. I know one highly regarded Stage Door student who was rejected by Yale, but he attended another Ivy and is now a professional actor. (Double majored in theatre studies and another subject.)
I think there are so many good actresses and actors around these days. My daughter’s high school is overflowing with talented actors and singers. Nevertheless, if you (or your student?) are talented and love to act, that is definitely a plus. Otherwise, I think writing a play would be good. There are playwriting contests one can enter. Or you could direct a play. Lots of kids at my D’s current public high school direct plays there. I think there have been at least three student directed plays there this fall. So, directing is not unique, but it is a way to go deeper. Also, don’t discount getting involved backstage, running lights, and so on. Those are great skills to have. And they can lead to paid gigs. Are there any community theaters or professional theaters you could get involved with? Can you run an after school theatre club at a nearby elementary school a day or two a week (maybe with the help of a teacher), do some skits or one acts, or even a short play, play theatre games, help them do monologues and songs? Colleges love it when you combine your passion with community service. I actually don’t know that for a fact, but I would think they do. Or maybe you could write a play about math . . . I don’t know. Maybe it could help some math challenged kids somehow.
He should do theater because he LIKES it. If that is the case, it will come through on his application, and possibly on an essay. Doing this to pad his resume is not likely to be as effcto e as doing it because he loves it.
Every drama teacher I’ve met has emphasized the importance of players contributing to the show as a whole. In other words, it’s not a sphere for individual “stardom.” Good places to contribute would be to write his/her own plays, and/or start directing plays. This can be done as a group project, with willing friends. However, of course the play’s the thing, not the college application.
Theater is time-consuming. I love the things it can do for kids–they really grow through the experience. I have seen students who are involved with theater get into elite schools, but I would never have said that theater is a “hook.” Rather, the student who’s involved with theater tends to be a very nice child, who works well with others, outgoing (or can fake it on stage), able to discuss intellectual topics with ease, able to speak before groups, and willing to pitch to support a group project.
tl;dr; I agree with Thumper1. Doing theater can develop skills which will help in many spheres of life. It will not harm the college application. If anything, he/she can write about the importance of teamwork, cooperation, and lack of egotism in the pursuit of artistic excellence.
@WorryHurry411 - I am not sure what schools you are thinking of, but many competitive colleges also have highly regarded theater programs. (Northwestern, CMU, Yale etc) Kids will be going for those full guns- with crazy strong theatrical resumes. They attend summer programs (the schools I mentioned above all have them- as do others) work with local and regional professional companies (as performers and interns) and take quite a bit of outside study. My point is- high school theater as an EC is not going to impress those schools. So if you may want to bear that in mind
My D went to a top 25 LAC and theater was her primary high school EC. She participated in all the hs school plays and was part of a group of students who went to a state drama festival where she won an award for her performance.
What stood out more, IMO, was a community service project where she used her acting skills. She and another student actor put together a short reading of love letters that were part of a collection of materials from our local historical society (the couple whose letters they read lived in our town–letters were written during their courtship when the woman lived in another town.) The two of them did the reading for seniors at senior centers in our area and also for local women’s clubs and other organizations that had monthly membership meetings and also for the middle school English classes. Lots of interesting discussions about how courtship has changed.
I think if your child tries to do something more than just participating in the hs theater group, he/she will present a stronger EC. Let him/her figure out how to do that–it has to be an effort that truly interests your child. Also I like the idea mentioned above of possibly writing an essay on how participating in theater has had a positive impact.
I’m a strong believer in doing activities because you are desiring to do them and have a passion for them. I don’t truly believe in doing an activity to look good on an application. I know with my own kids (now out of college), who were heavily engaged in ECs in high school (and younger), they did these things out of sheer desire and would have done the very same things had they not applied to college (and will just mention in the context of the original question…one D attended an Ivy and one went to an elite college theater program).
While my theater kid applied to college theater programs and not for a different major like the OP’s kid, still I can give you the kinds of theater related activities she did while in high school. She was in school plays and musicals. Our school didn’t have any drama classes though. She also was in community theater adult productions of plays and musicals, and in some professional ones as well, all outside of school. She took private voice lessons. She was in a myriad of dance classes outside of school and a dance repertory company. She studied two instruments and was in band and jazz band and chorus. She went away for 8 summers to a theater program called Stagedoor Manor (which was mentioned in other posts above…and many of her peers there went off to either elite college theater programs or other highly selective colleges, including Ivies). At Stagedoor, she took many theater related classes and was in 16 full scale productions. Our high school had never had any student directed productions. In tenth and eleventh grades, daughter created two original musical cabaret productions…she created the shows, produced them, directed, musically directed, choreographed, cast, and every other thing to do with it, besides performing in these productions. She also raised money in these shows for charitable causes. I think her recs spoke to these endeavors. Someofher app essays brought up these experiences too. She also went beyond the norm for a history project and created a performance based production in our community around the topic of peace and activism (this was during the Iraq War) and did every aspect of putting that together. She also created and directed/taught, her own two week summer program for local youth in musical theater, which involved teaching classes to those in the program and putting together an original production for them to stage. She also entered state level scholarship programs and the national NFAA YoungArts competition (there is a category for theater). All these things dovetailed to taking it to a higher level in college and doing many of these things there too and now professionally and so she has built upon some of those high school initiatives and endeavors. Even if your child is not going to major in theater but may participate in it as an EC in college, these are the sorts of things that some other strong candidates to very selective colleges may have done in high school beyond being merely being in highs school plays.
One more thing I forgot, if your kid is indeed passionate about theater, as my kid was/is, it may even come up in their academic work. I recall in 11th grade, my D did a big paper for a combined History/English class comparing and contrasting two well known musical theater composers and her presentation of her research was all a big performance in class and so even that teacher spoke to it in his recommendation too. Even back in elementary school, my kid was doing independent studies writing original musicals, as well as research papers related to theater, her passion. I recall a 30 page paper when she was 11 years old on a famous musical theater writer/composer. A couple years ago as a young professional (around age 24), she was selected for a national award and grant named after the very same writer/composer she did the big paper about when she was 11. She had to give a speech in NYC accepting this award and she started out her speech holding up the paper she wrote on the namesake of the grant she had just won, back when she was 11. So, you never know how endeavors prior to college will come full circle later on!
I suppose there might be those who do theatre to pad a resume (i.e., college application), but honestly, I’ve not met them. All of the theatre kids I know (that have stuck with it) do it because they have been bitten by the bug. And once they have been bitten, they tend to gravitate toward all things theatre. If they don’t get a part in a play, or aren’t currently in one, they work backstage, just to be part of cast and crew. They direct, they work at children’s theatre camps as counselors, they do tech, they organize and put on shows/cabarets, etc., etc. It’s as if they can’t help themselves . . . And they are very supportive of one another for the most part, that’s the best thing.
If he loves doing theater, that’s great, but it’s not about padding a resume. As others have mentioned, there are tens of thousands of highly talented and trained theater kids out there - the idea would not be to out-impress them, it would be to come up with a creative way to write one of your essays through the lens of having been involved in theater. It doesn’t have to be about a big thing or being nominated for a Tony award - it just needs to have HIM shine through. And, as someone gunning for a different major than theater, it could be beneficial if done well.
soozie - When D had to write a paper on a famous American for APUSH she wrote about Sondhem. For AP Spanish her subject was Lin-Manual Miranda.
Yes she did musicals 
And my math guy wrote about Pascal for a French project in elementary school. 
@FallGirl Very cool. Yeah, the paper for the interdisciplinary History/English class in 11th grade and her subsequent performance of her topic in class was comparing Sondheim and Jonathan Larson.
Having done a lot of theater in high school (but for the love of it, not the bennies), I’d say teaching theater and stagework to young kids is a ton of fun if your kid is inclined that way. There are (at least around here) a lot of summer camps that are drama-oriented that always need talented and experienced teenagers as camp counselors.
Like others have noted, it’s not all about being the “star”; behind the scenes is just as important-without them, there would be no show.
D did theater, choir and acappella in HS. But she did expand them into leadership roles. Board member of thespian honor society. Choir manager. Founder/ leader of acappella group. In most of those capacities she did fund raising and community service. So she had plenty of talent related experience, but used her passion and leadership skills to go beyond just performing.
My D was in her school’s musicals. Although not having the vocal skills to land leads, she distinguished herself by; being vice president of the organization, helping choreograph the dance numbers, earning the coveted “gypsy robe” denoting the most valuable cast member, and being chosen to represent the program in a yearly televised TV special. Of course she demonstrated leadership & excellence in other ECs as well & was admitted to a “top 20 in selectivity” college, with below average academic stats.