D25 thinking about applying to Duke. If she did she would plan to submit the Duke Arts supplement. The language on Duke’s website seems, however, to actively discourage people from sending it in.
Here is the language:
“ARTS SUPPLEMENT
If you have exceptional talent in dance, music, photography, film/video/digital, or theater, you may submit optional arts supplement(s) to be evaluated by a Duke University faculty member in that program or department. Typically, such submissions should demonstrate extraordinary talent beyond standard high school level accomplishment. Arts supplement applicants have often received significant awards and honors at a state, national, or international level. Consider carefully whether your supplemental materials demonstrate unusual talent before submission.”
I am pretty sure D meets the threshold (many district-level awards and multiple nominations and a top finalist for state-level awards, etc.) but now I am second-guessing myself. Their theater program is a BA, not a BFA, so I can’t imagine they only want a small handful of submissions from the country’s top 50 performers.
As a point of interest, music is the most widely attended EC at many high schools. But colleges do not want supplements from everyone with a music EC.
Think of it like a sports EC. A lot of high schoolers play sports, but they don’t want film from every student-athlete.
If the applicant’s level is at, or close to, the quality applying for art schools, conservatories, etc., send a supplement. If not, be content to list as an activity.
ok, that seems more reasonable. The way it is worded - “significant national or international recognition” - suggests that musical theater applicants should have a Tony nomination or have won American Idol before submitting.
I think their intent is clear. There are thousands of kids planning to submit arts supplements because “this is who I am and it has been a significant part of my life”. That is not the threshold for Duke. If you submit a member of the faculty will review it. This person is not Mrs. Sonata, your kindly piano teacher from down the block. This is an academic who has likely seen thousands of students over the years. Having “nice technique” is not what they are looking for.
The point about awards, recognition, etc is to help a kid calibrate. If you aren’t in the upper stratum of your art, you are likely better off listing your achievements, awards, writing an essay, etc. which demonstrates your passion for the arts.
Our first kid was a top ranked musician both regionally and in the state. IF he hadn’t applied as a music performance major, he probably would have sent a music supplement. But he applied as a performance major.
Second kid was top ranked in our pretty competitive state on the endangered instruments she played. She did NOT send in a music supplement but did include her music ECs and awards on her applications. Because she wanted to play in a college ensemble, she also reached out to the department chairs, orchestra directors and applied faculty on her instrument at every college she was interested in. They were very helpful.
If your daughter wants information about arts organizations she possibly could participate in at Duke, I would suggest she reach out as my daughter did.
The difference is that Duke’s Theater major is a BA, not a BFA, program and there does not appear to be any talent based scholarships for musical theater offered by Duke University (according to a very quick Google search).
Nevertheless, it is submitted or not submitted on the basis of the applicant’s discretion.
Correct. So the expectation is that many of those who receive “significant national and international awards” for Musical Theater would be applying to a BFA program, not to Duke. But their bar is still set at that seemingly nearly impossible to meet standard.
Which suggests that Duke admissions does not care about artistic ability unless it is exceptional. Has your daughter considered Juilliard ? Has she auditioned for any other college theater programs ? CMU ?
Are you aware of any theater or talent based scholarships offered by Duke for artistic talent ?
To which other theater programs has your daughter applied ?
(I recently went through a similar case with a niece who has both acting & singing talent and won many awards state & local & was always the/a lead in musicals, but Duke never appeared on our radar even though another relative recently attended on a partial athletic scholarship.)
FWIW I have a family member who tripled majored in college with one major being theater so I have some familiarity in this area.
I think Duke cares about artistic skill, just like they care about kids who have excelled in math or history or researching the taxonomy of butterflies. All of these are wonderful for a HS kid. But if you want a professor to weigh in on your paper explaining the causes of the Bolshevik revolution, it had better be more than just grammatical with proper citations and a well written topic sentence.
The arts supplement may work against applicants if the supplement is not justified by talent and accomplishments. I cannot cite that; it is anecdotal. I cannot tell from your post whether it is a good idea for your daughter or not.
Admissions and/or faculty cannot read, watch or listen to every district or state competition winner (thinking of music here). I still don’t know if admissions went by the resume on the supplement (and letters of recommendation) or if the arts supplement actually went to faculty, in the case of my kids.
It is important to realize that an arts supplement is not necessary for admission. It can help, but so can many other factors.
If your daughter did well in state level competitions, were there video submissions for the competition? High school musical theater has the Jimmy awards with recorded submissions. Does she have something like that? Sounds as if that would be appropriate, since you say she did well in state level competitions.
It appears that they are trying to discourage submissions that are designed to demonstrate “and I also play piano and dance”, submissions that are on the level of, “I edited the yearbook and was co-captain of the track team.” It sounds as if your daughter’s achievement is above that level, so I think she should submit a supplement.
My son is getting a bfa at a conservatory. He sent in acting supplements for several BA acting schools that were reaches and was accepted to a few. He also engaged with the theater department. Acting is not the same as music. If she has the talent to apply for bfa programs then she should send in a supplement and act interested.
She plans to major in STEM and go into that as a career. She will not be going to any schools with a BFA musical theater program, since she can’t double major with STEM and a BFA (well she could, but her undergrad would take 6 years).
She is talented enough for MT BFA programs (kids from her school with less impressive MT resumes have done so year after year - we live somewhere where MT Is a big deal) - that just isn’t where her long term plans reside. She want to do MT in undergrad, but not major in it.
Thank you to everyone who provided helpful feedback!!
I think she will likely submit the supplement. Duke is such a long shot anyway for everyone that I am not super worried that sending something they wish they hadn’t received will be the cause of any negative decision. If she doesn’t get in I won’t stress myself that that was the reason - I will just presume that those were the odds, especially because she will be applying RD.
[Her stats are at least competitive - 4.0 UW, 34 ACT (one test), IB diploma, lots of APs, etc. - But I am fully aware that is barely enough to be in the range of students they accept]
My D24 briefly considered applying to Duke, but decided against it because honestly don’t think she quite had the academics for it. (But she has a small hook and was almost there academically so we did consider).
Anyway…if she had applied we were kind of a tweener on whether to submit an arts supplement but probably would have. The wording did give me some pause and we thought hard about it. She is a dancer with plenty of regional awards but does not have any national/international awards. She did get on “national” scholarship to a summer intensive, but it was awarded at a regional event. So she doesn’t meet the Duke supplement standard but IMO she is not too far off. She definitely could have applied for audition based dance BFA at different schools and likely would have been accepted at least somewhere. She’s talented, but not exceptional (Duke standard).
We have lots of competition and convention video and we started to produce a highlight reel that I think would have shown well. No, she didn’t win any national/international awards but she does have some specific strengths that show well in her videos and the benefit of a highlight reel is that it can focus on those. I’m honestly not sure how much it would have helped her, if at all, but I definitely don’t think it would have hurt her either. My overall point is I think some people are kind of on the cusp of the high standard they set and it’s a little confusing. Good luck to OP.
And try to encourage her to do as exceptional an audition as she can. My S21 did not apply to Duke so I don’t know if they have specific requirements for the arts supplement but he did send in the same prescreens that he sent to the audition based schools
In her specific case, she likely is not doing any auditions. She might do one at our in-state highly ranked MT program just to prove to herself that she would get in, but she is explicitly avoiding BFA programs, and so far none of the BA programs she is applying to require an audition. (Her plan is to major in physics and minor in theater or MT if the school has it).
