Help with school list! (what to do when kid has no preferences...)

lmkiker
Sun, 09 Sep 2018 22:20:03 +0000

We are in the same place, trying to narrow down our list (my daughter is a junior). She’s academically strong, and strong in voice and acting but not as much in dance. She’s looking for northeast (but will also apply to 1-2 Texas state schools).

I’ve had a few conversations with her, trying to get a feel for what type of school will be a “fit”. Here’s what we came up with. Your son’s answers will vary, but you might find these useful areas to look at.

Location (northeast).

Balanced program: singing, acting, dance. (some are more focused in one area).
She wants a school that offers internships
Easy access to a major city
NY senior showcase
Probably doesn’t want to study abroad

Courses to prepare for professional life. Some programs have courses in senior year focused on audition techniques, the business of theatre, etc. Others are just performance focused. She doesn’t want to come out of college with great training to be on stage but completely unprepared for the professional life she is beginning.

Performance opportunities: she doesn’t care if freshmen can’t perform, but I expected that she would

She is strong academically, but does NOT want a very prescriptive core curriculum: interested in academic courses that relate to the field, OR good choices of electives. Ideally, the program will have a good mix of “training” and “education”, which is how I’m thinking of the difference between classes in acting, dance, voice vs. things like musical theatre history, Shakespeare, etc. Some of the academic programs that have caught our interest are Emerson and Point Park.

I’m struggling to determine how selective each school is, but feel like overall I’m coming up with a reasonable list. Mine overlaps yours somewhat (not completely because you’re looking in other parts of the country). Definites to apply so far are:
Hartt, Western Connecticut State, Emerson, Pace, Syracuse, Montclair, Carnegie Melon, Point Park, Texas State.

She visited Pace this summer and absolutely loved it (I was working - my company has an office blocks away - so didn’t attend the tour). We will visit a couple of schools in Texas (maybe TX state, but it’s a 6 hr drive. Probably UT Arlington and Sam Houston State University). Next summer, we’ll go up to Boston to visit my mother, and will plan to visit Emerson, and possibly 1-2 others. Her dad lives in Delaware, and if she visits him for spring break she’s going to ask to visit Montclair. For the rest, we’ll plan to visit after acceptance, or in some cases audition on campus (Hartt has an early notification option that requires auditioning in December. We’re planning to do NY unifieds, but know that we may not be able to get them all in.

So many others still being discussed, and her plan is to apply to about 15, so we have more to nail down. Not bad for September of junior year, though! There will be at least one non-audition program on the list… possibly Northeastern in Boston (potential for double major - BS in American Sign Language and Theatre, and there is a musical theatre minor). Muhlenberg is likely her safety school too… it’s non-audition, test-optional, and has almost a 50% acceptance rate. She has a 3.65 unweighted and a 4.05 weighted GPA, so it’s not really the academic acceptance we’re most worried about (except CMU), especially for those that are test optional.

Longer than I planned, but hopefully the hours I’ve spent looking at all of this will help someone else! I’ve been asked to help with the research (my strong point), but the decision will be hers. For now, she’s drowning in homework and trying to make time to work on her audition book!