<p>^I know someone who is a writing teacher. When she mentioned “scare quotes” I googled it and learned that this use of quotation marks implies skepticism or disagreement and may indicate sarcasm or incredulity.</p>
<p>So now, when I use quotation marks myself, I try to be more aware of how I am using them. If I want to indicate doubt, I endeavor to do it in another, clearer way.</p>
<p>RealKEVP, I honestly don’t know how to respond to your posts. I only brought up the SATII comment because it was the only positive thing I could say in answer to the post.</p>
<p>I wasn’t going to respond at all to your posts because frankly you are making me feel intimidated. You are treating me as though I were stupid, and even though I’m an adult and it is my right as a member of the CC community to ask a reasonable question in the hopes of a reasonable conversation, I found myself shutting down and not wanting to put myself out there only to have you treat me discourteously again. I can only imagine how a high school student would feel.</p>
<p>First of all, while it’s fine to offer someone advice in the spirit of helping, it’s not ok to act as though you are an expert in something you are not. This is serious because high school students read this for information. Read the original post. Is this something you have any firsthand knowledge about? If not, then why act like you do? If you want to offer information in the spirit of sharing, that’s great-- but then don’t disparage and belittle a poster. And if you do inadvertently, why not simply apologize? If your last post was your idea of an apology, it didn’t work, in that you proceed to blame me for ‘not being clear.’ Obviously I wasn’t just ‘asking about Guildhall’–but you know that. </p>
<p>I will assume you are posting here because you genuinely want to help others. I would ask that you try to consider how your posts come off to others. I would hate for someone to not want to post a question because they’re afraid they’ll be mocked and not listened to.</p>
<p>The CC community is wonderful in so many ways, and I think one reason is that we all try to truly listen and respect each other.</p>
<p>I spent much of my childhood, up to the end of high school, in the UK educational system, so do indeed have first hand knowledge of the UK educational system. And as I keep mentioning, we discuss the requirements for UK colleges and unis in great detail in the “United Kingdom” section of College Confidential. I am exploring the possibility of going and getting some kind of theatre degree in the UK, so I have been studying the entry requirements for these schools.</p>
<p>Basically, my fault was that I didn’t understand your original question, although I thought I did. And you keep telling me that I have gotten it wrong, okay. But now I have no idea what you were trying to find out in your original question. I still don’t understand it (although now I realize I don’t understand it)</p>
<p>This is a problem in the United States, and one of the reasons why I want to leave it, that if I tell an American something they don’t know, they will feel intimidated and think I am treating them as if they are stupid. When I am honestly just helping out. If it was the other way around, if I needed to know something that someone else could tell me, I would appreciate being told. If I feel like an idiot, that’s my problem.</p>
<p>My issue is that nobody told me anything when I was young. All of this information was kept secret from me. I could have gone to somewhere like Guildhall if I understood what their requirements were. But there wasn’t anyone to tell me these things, or to encourage me to explore this on my own.</p>
<p>KEVP – this was the original question – “Has any homeschooler applied for a conservatory-style theatre program, particularly in the UK?” Is it really that hard to figure out what she was asking?</p>
<p>Unlike some in this forum, Connections is more than capable of pulling out information posted on web sites. She didn’t asks what are the general requirements for any U.S. student to apply to the U.K. She was specifically trying to understand whether anyone had information as to the particulars of her situation.</p>
<p>And Ok, to be fair to you, maybe you werent sure and your first response was a general discussion of UK verus US schools. But when Connections responded as follows </p>
<p>Connections: “But when we look at the UK applications, they ask for a lot of school transcript info, and as we’re not British, we don’t have the skills to read between the lines or know protocol or unspoken rules. We could certainly ask each school directly, but before we do that, I was wondering if anyone knew how homeschooling was viewed in the UK drama schools or if there were specific tips for filling out the applications.”</p>
<p>[And to you she says] – “RealKEVP, you say with certainty that they ‘don’t care’ about schooling–how do you know, since you are American too? Do you have access to information you’d like to share? Do you know any US homeschooled student who applied to UK drama schools? Thanks.”</p>
<p>At this point, can you really have any confusion as to what shes looking for? The truth is you donthave any information she is looking for so what is the point of responding – </p>
<p>“I do indeed seem to have some sort of special knowledge of this–because I went to the webpages of these schools and read all the information there and in the prospectuses!” </p>
<p>To me, it doesn’t speak of any confusion. It is just rude IMO.</p>
<p>It would have helped if the OP had actually said what schools she was talking about. I made the wrong assumption, for that at least I am sorry. I haven’t met anyone here in this “Theatre/Drama Major” section who knows as much about the UK educational system as I do. So when a question about the UK educational system came up, I felt I needed to at least try to answer it.</p>
<p>Yes, it is a fact, and I know the fact, that RADA and LAMDA are not concerned at all about prior schooling, their admission decision is 100% based on audition and interview. And yes, I learned that fact by researching their prospectuses on their websites. So I would guess this would be a good place for someone without many formal academic qualifications who could still give a really kickbutt audition.</p>
<p>And yes, it is also a fact, and I know the fact, that UK colleges and unis are not particularly known for being willing to relax or modify their entry requirements for special circumstances, like being homeschooled. But the way that the UK educational system is set up it is still at least possible for a homeschooled student to get the same qualifications as someone who is not homeschooled (thus Guildhall requires a SAT 2, which a homeschooled student can take, it does not require things like a GPA or a class standing, which are completely alien to the UK system anyways.).</p>
<p>The UK system is very, very different from the US, and their college and university admission requirements are very, very different. I meet people in the “United Kingdom” forum here on College Confidential who sometimes have trouble getting their heads around this.</p>
<p>Connections I know I have spoken to you privately and thank you for being yet another voice and support for the UK auditions/applications that are quite different then the US.</p>
<p>I wanted to pass along that what I did was order a prospectus from every UK school that we are interested in and through that order I received emails back from the admissions department which I then used as a contact.</p>
<p>We started the UK applications last weekend and were stumped in many areas. I sent an email to each school we needed help with and within less then 24 hours they had responded to all of my questions. We will now be able to move on with all of the applications. </p>
<p>Please let me know if I can be of anymore help to anyone.</p>
<p>Thank you glassharmonica and connections. This is a long tough process and last Jan when I joined CC many of the posts sent out by all of you that are still on here, were very helpful and informative and I would like to do what I can to pay it forward:)</p>
<p>I also tried very hard and I hope it was evident to keep it more informative and less judgmental or full of our personal opinions. Me and my daughter had feelings and thoughts, and saw pro’s and con’s in regards to all of the schools we visited but everyone that comes to CC both parent and child have different wants, desires, things they are looking for in a school, etc., and I didn’t want to say anything that may cause that to go one way or another.</p>
<p>All of the schools we visited including Stella Adler which was not a college and therefore I did not write a separate post about the visit, had great things about them. It is simply what you are looking for.</p>
<p>I had someone tell us on one of the tours something that stuck with me:
Auditioning is like dating. You have to go in knowing what you want and understand that the schools know what they want and both of you are looking for a match and at the end of the process hopefully you find your mate:)</p>
And I agree; I love your posts on your college visits.</p>