Difficult choices

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
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<p>I’m currently a freshman in college who didn’t audition for any programs last year. At that point, I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue MT, and it seemed wasteful to go through the challenging and costly process of auditioning at schools when I was so uncertain. Of course, now that I’ve spent a semester in the general college at UMich, I realize how stupid a mistake that was. I love UMich, and I’m enjoying myself here, but I miss musical theatre desperately, and not having it be the central part of my life has been tremendously depressing. I’ve realized this semester that I don’t think I’ll be able to live my life happily unless I at least try to pursue this.</p>

<p>I auditioned at UMich in November since I already go here, and it would be my top choice, anyway (I worked with Mr. Wagner at MPulse ‘06, and I really connected with his teaching style). Now I’m faced with the issue of whether to audition elsewhere, where to audition, etc. I’m not at all confident in my Michigan audition, and even if I were, it would be moronic to bank on getting into Michigan MT. Like I said, not auditioning in my senior year was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made; now that I’m a college student, it would be much more of a challenge to go traveling around the country, auditioning. Even auditioning for Michigan took significant time and effort on my part in order to balance my preparation with my social life and 18 credits’ worth of classes (I was pretty much a hermit until the audition was over with). Far more pressing than that, however, is the issue of having to transfer. Honestly, the only thing about Michigan that I don’t absolutely adore is that I’m not studying MT. This place is already home to me, and I worry about possibly transferring to another school and regretting leaving UMich. The difficulty is weighing that risk with the reality of suffering through three-and-a-half more years of college not studying what I love. I don’t really know which would be worse.</p>

<p>Any advice?</p>

<p>EDIT: I just saw a somewhat similar thread in which I probably could’ve posted this. Sorry!</p>

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<p>If you are really interested in pursuing MT, you should definitely audition at some other schools to give yourself more options. UMich is a wonderful program, but one of the more difficult ones to get into. Practically speaking, you might consider attending Unified auditions in Chicago rather than trying to travel to individual schools. It’s only about a 5-hour drive from Ann Arbor, and you could audition for a number of different schools in one trip.</p>

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<p>Unifieds is a great suggestion to cut down on audition travel… as is auditioning for more schools to give yourself options. There are a lot of threads on here about transfering, and which schools are more welcoming to transfer applicants.</p>

<p>Applying to transfer and auditioning at a few others schools does not mean you HAVE to transfer… you do not have that choice to make until much, much later.</p>

<p>Good Luck!</p>

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<p>KatMT:
Where do I find the threads about which schools are more welcoming to transfers?</p>

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<p>If you go to the upper right hand corner on the top of the Musical Theatre Schools page and click on “search this forum” you can put in “transfer” and see what threads pop up… you will have to read through a lot of posts, but there have been many discussions about which schools accept transfer students, which may not, which will require you to go through four years of their program regardless of perevious college credits, which may allow you to complete the program in two - three years if you transfer from another program, etc…</p>

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<p>acsch, I recomend auditioning at Baldwin-Wallace, which is in Cleveland and around 2 hours away. BW is just as good of a program as Michigan is and you would have no problem getting into the school for academics considering you go to Mich right now. Good luck, and if you have any questions just ask</p>

<p>~Tim</p>