@toowonderful Thank you so much! I’m sure I will have many questions and I appreciate your offer of help and all your advice and insight here on CC!
Congrats to you and your D @mammameuh ! Fantastic story. But man I was exhausted after our travel and we didn’t travel even half the distance you did!
Congratulations @mammameuh !
@mammameuh Congrats, i love the long detailed ones too @KatMT even your answer here shows you as a total CLASS ACT!!
Thank you @MTSongbirdMom! It was a trek for sure!
Thank you @katzenbogen!
Thank you @NYYFanNowMTdad! And yes, @KatMT is the best!
@mammameuh - your sheer joy is showing - congratulations!
I think @mammaneuh wins the travel award for the BFA admissions process!
PS, my niece did BFA Acting auditions one year, and lives in Alaska, but you definitely travelled a lot more than she did and had more schools and Hawaii is even further away.
@EastchesterMom, thank you and you’re right!
Congrats @mammameuh !! My D has a good friend at Tisch who absolutely loves it. Pomaika’i
@mammameuh I wonder if our daughters were at Destination Broadway the same year. My D went 2014 , that summer. I remember a large contingent from Hawaii being there that year so I’m wondering if we were there same time?
Mahalo@NewToThis13! I will have my D seek out Pomaika’i!
Yes, @theaterwork, that must be the case! That’s the year our gang went and I think there were 5 or 6 of us families from Hawai’i there that year. We love traveling in packs as it’s so far to go!
Thank you to everyone here who kept us sane through this long confusing process!
Programs Applied to: Baldwin Wallace, UMBC (non-audition safety), Belmont, CCM, Coastal Carolina, Elon, FSU, Ithaca, James Madison, Montclair, UMich, NYU Steinhart, Penn State, Shenandoah, Syracuse, Temple, Texas State, U of Arts (Philly), and the following after walk-ins at NYC Unifieds: Arizona State, Ball State, LIU-Post, Indiana, Rider, Roosevelt, SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design), Viterbo.
Prescreens passed: NONE! Yikes!
Auditioned on campus at: Baldwin Wallace, Belmont, CCM, James Madison, Montclair, U of Arts (Philly), and the following walk-ins at NYC Unifieds: Arizona State, Ball State, LIU-Post, Rider, Roosevelt, SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design), Viterbo.
Academically accepted to all that give separate academic acceptances. My D says Montclair Socks are actually very comfy 
Artistically Accepted: BW (redirect to Acting & Directing major), LIU-Post (BFA MT), SCAD (BFA Performing Arts), U of Arts (redirect to Directing and/or tech), and Viterbo (redirect to BFA Theatre Acting)
Wait-listed at: none
Coach: No college audition program, instead she did Melissa Mulligan’s Mastermind program and continued with their team after those 10 weeks for help with college audition/life decisions.
Summer Programs: none (She was cast in shows every summer; but, in hind sight, I should have had her audition for the college summer programs.)
Background: D had been singing with a local audition-based honor choir since 4th grade and taking private voice lessons since 5th grade. She started doing musicals at a local community theatre in 6th grade and was hooked, doing as many shows each year as her schedule would allow. She started semi-private dance lessons* the summer after 7th grade. She also did some semi-private and private acting lessons periodically over the years.
*One bit of advice to those having trouble finding dance classes that do not conflict with show rehearsals: I contacted every dance studio in our area until I found a dance teacher willing to teach semi-private lessons at a time that did not conflict with rehearsals; then, we gathered a few of my D’s theatre friends to join the class. While the classes were not as consistent as I would have liked due to everyone’s varying schedules, it was a God-send because none of the dance studios in our area offered dance at a time that the theatre kids could attend; plus, the studios focus on recitals from Jan-May and my D wasn’t interested in a recital, she just wanted to learn to dance with proper technique.
Due to the late nights of theatre rehearsals, my D chose to leave our local public school midway through 7th grade and switch to a cyber school. I figured, it’s middle school, if she is irresponsible and her grades tank, at least it won’t be on her permanent transcript, so I let her give cyber-school a try knowing she could go back to brick-and-mortar school if it didn’t work out. My D surprised me with her work ethic and not only thrived in the cyber school but was able to graduate a year early.
During the 5 years my D has been involved in theatre, she has been cast in many lead roles at some of the best community theatres in our area. In addition, she was cast in a few equity shows at a nearby regional theatre, so I considered her a big-ish fish in our small local pond. With so much local success, we encouraged her to go for it! However, at 17 we were not sure she was ready to go to college, but we agreed to allow her to audition for her two favorite schools just to see what happened. Not feeling that she had time to put together pre-screens, she chose to audition at CCM and Baldwin Wallace. By the time she got to those auditions, I felt much better about sending a 17-year-old off to college; however, she was declined from CCM and was redirected at BW to Acting and Direction. She chose to take a gap year and go through the full audition process to try to get into an MT program.
Thank God she took the gap year, because some serious health issues surfaced that summer, so it gave us some time to figure out what was going on and how to handle it. In the midst of dealing with her health, we needed to get the pre-screens filmed and uploaded. She wasn’t feeling her best, but she pushed herself to get them done. We were still feeling confident that she would get into an MT program somewhere; but we also knew that the ever-growing number of blonde blue-eyed sopranos is daunting, so we threw the net very far and very wide and included a couple of “safety” schools just for good measure. We were shocked when she didn’t pass any prescreens. Yikes! We better plan to go to NYC and Chicago Unifieds!
cont…
part 2…
She started Fall auditions with U of Arts and James Madison because, initially, those were not her favorites and she wanted to use them to gain audition experience. After the on-campus auditions, she really liked U of Arts, but they redirected her, giving her a choice between their directing, playwright and production program or their tech program, but she really wanted MT, so we put that in the “maybe” pile. At JMU, we learned that they have a lot of Gen Eds that D was not thrilled about, including 4 semesters of Foreign Language, so she wasn’t feeling great about going to JMU. (Skip forward – she didn’t get into JMU anyway.)
In January, we prayed that her auditions would have better success than her prescreens as we traveled to Belmont, NYC Unifieds (CCM plus walk-ins) and Montclair. She loved the students, faculty and campus at Belmont. Belmont became a favorite. We headed to NYC with a list of schools that she hoped to audition for as a walk-in. We got in line at 6:00am for the Combines on Friday morning, secretly hoping that Texas State would like her in-person more than they did in her pre-screen. It was a very long day with a very difficult dance call at the end. Some students were pulled aside and offered acceptances immediately after the dance call. Unfortunately, my D was not one of them, so off to Unifieds. She woke up Saturday morning with terrible pain in her achilles heel/soleus, probably from the dance call the day before, but no time to worry about it. She stretched it out, took some Aleve, and pushed on. She was successful in getting in the door for almost all the walk-ins she desired and felt really good about most of them, so we cancelled our hotel in Chicago. At this point, I was really impressed with her ability to keep a positive attitude about this whole process! The next weekend, we headed to Montclair. Her soleus was still hurting, so she asked if she could skip the live dance call and send a video for the dance portion of her audition so they could see her at her best. They “agreed” but never gave her any further information as they had promised.
February brought her last audition – the one she really wanted – the one she was redirected from last year – the one she hoped she could show enough improvement and growth that she would get into the MT program. Her soleus was still sore, but she sucked it up and did her best! She felt it went better than the previous year, so we crossed our fingers and headed home to wait.
No after no after no…then finally a few offers came: LIU-Post, SCAD, and Viterbo (all walk-ins at Unifieds). BW was another re-direct and she did not feel like the Acting and Directing major was the right fit for her. The other three schools she was accepted to were all walk-ins, so we had some scrambling to do in order to squeeze in some campus visits in April. She requested to sit in on an acting class, a voice lessons, and a tour of each school.
First, SCAD: the degree is a BFA in PA (Performing Arts), which includes film, tv, and MT training. The people we met were very nice, but we were unable to get much MT info from anyone. Everyone raved about their film/tv opportunities, but no one we spoke with seemed to know much about their MT opportunities. The school was beautiful, and my D was very interested, but she left feeling like there was something missing. The fact that few people could name a Musical that SCAD had produced in the last two years was a red flag for someone wanting to do MT. Other SCAD parents that I found on Facebook told me that the MT Director was new this year and may be trying to build the program. So, I encouraged her to call him to ask about his plans for MT. She agreed to call after her other visits.
Next, LIU-Post: The location is great, but the vibe did not feel right to my D. It just wasn’t the right fit. She quickly ruled this one out.
Finally, Viterbo: We flew to Minneapolis and rented a car to drive two hours to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Having never been to the mid-west, we had no idea what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised at the cute city they have there. The admissions office filled my D’s day with classes, lessons, and tours of both the department and the school. The head of the theatre department met her in the lobby of the Fine Arts building first thing in the morning. He spent time getting to know her a little bit, answered all her questions, and showed her around. While the school is tiny (only 2400 students) and they offered my daughter the BFA in Theatre Acting (not MT), they gave her the option to minor or double minor in dance and/or music. Their facilities were very nice, and the people were exceptionally nice! She ended her day at Viterbo feeling like all the boxes on the “What I Want from A College Program” list were ALL checked! (Obviously, good weather was not on the list!)
Final Decision: Viterbo University BFA in Theatre with a Minor in Dance
Now, off to go buy some more winter gear!
Congrats @hfstt201!
@hfstt201 - so impressed with your D’s persistence and drive! Congratulations on Viterbo!!! The good news is - once she’s survived a few midwest winters, NYC will be a breeze!!!
Congrats @hfstt201!
@hfstt201 Congratulations to you and your daughter! We’re a 2 1/2 hour drive from LaCrosse. It’s a very nice area. She will definitely need to be prepared for snow and cold, though!