Is there a thread specific to parents of high school seniors 2026 that are just about to start the college MT audition season?
If not, can we start one or is this one?
Lol. I think you just started one. Itâs still early in the process. Good luck.
This blog has some good information. They somewhere rank /rate Musical theater college programs.
Life After a Musical Theatre Degree â OnStage Blog Life After a Musical Theatre Degree â OnStage Blog
At this point of the process you should be parsing through the list of programs you want to apply to, finalizing and rehearsing your pre-screen materials, and starting the âregular applicationsâ The process for MT moves quick, and in phases.
Well, I am replying to my own post just to keep this active because I donât know if thereâs a better space to start connecting with others starting the acting/MT audition process for 2026.
Common App opened 9 days ago and because we are notorious for waiting until the 11th hour to get things done, I had a big plans to jump in and send it out the first week⊠hahahaha.
We DID get a jump start on essays⊠looking at the common app prompts, looking at supplemental essays required by the different schools that sheâs interested in âŠbrainstorming and coming up with solid concepts and rough drafts. Signed up with a coach and have one song and one monologue nailed down and participated in some virtual events with the different schools (especially those that count demonstrated interest).
Her summer was virtually nonexistent as far as college prep as she went to Italy with her school choir for competition, came back and directly went to Connecticut for the Yale summer Conservatory for actors which ended August 1.
So she wants to take a few days to see friends and decompress.
Right now weâre just kind of getting in gear. trying to figure out a system to keep everything straight. And reading and watching everything I can through âmusical theater parentsâ on Facebook and things on college confidential, school reviews from actual students on Niche and whatever else I can.
Just a little FYI, I was at BFA acting major at Syracuse University and graduated mid 90âs. I have been through this process, but it was NOT like THIS process. I documented it extensively on the musical theater parents Facebook page quite a while back just for comparison sake for other people to see what it was like. Maybe at some point Iâll copy paste it.
OK, back to the point
Iâm still positively mystified about how these things get scheduled with unified and unified and coaching and travel just heard of PUA for the first time and trying to wrap my head around that.
Really wish there were more opportunities for in person audition prep, snd Mock auditions and things like that in Los Angeles but for whatever reason, despite it being an entertainment mecca itâs lacking in a lot of those opportunities. Even LA unifieds are waaay at the very end of everything and the smallest , so will probably be looking too earlier opportunities.
Started with a list of around 25 schools because that seems to be what everyone else is saying, but DD came back from the summer program, and after hearing other student stories doesnât think that the chaos involved in all of that is going to be beneficial to her. She doesnât feel the concept of a safety school is for her because she doesnât want to go anywhere that she wouldnât want to go for other reasons besides âit was the only place she got in.â I certainly hope it doesnât come down to that, I guess we will cross that bridge if we have to. .
But itâs early days and Iâm sure itâs gonna change a lot. I do know everyone says donât fill up your common app slots because you only get 20 and you should leave room for walk-ins or something youâre not anticipating.
And the next big thing on our list is tackle the request for recommendation letters when school starts up.
Thatâs where we are in our process with 1 week before school starts for SENIOR YEAR!
Please comment. Let me know where you are in your process/ask questions/Answer questions.
If I have any information, I will gladly share it.
just knowing there are others that are as confused as I am is helpful in itself 
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FWIW - We are parents of a student thatâs in a BFA MT program, so we went through all of that 3 years ago - We can gladly offer ârear viewâ advice from what we learned, if you have any questions along that line. I feel like we were 80% successful - we have some regrets and sadness but at this point on our journey we believe it all worked out the way that it needed to for our daughter.
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Thank youâŠIm hoping others on this same path will either check in here or start a thread somewhere. When I look at CC and find an answer to something Iâm wondering, Iâll realise the thread is 15 years old.
would love to hear your top 3 regrets.
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Iâm a senior in an international school, and am also looking for something like this: there are hardly any resources for MT in my country, so any sort of guidance like this would make a huge difference!
Some of the regrets are strictly personal - I regret we didnât redo the recording of her prescreens. The quality wasnât great, video-wise. We paid for prescreen material, and the material was great but we didnât get our videos until later, and we were home by then, and it wouldâve been harder to redo them ourselves. Who knows if that wouldâve made difference or not. We were in the middle of COVID, I regret we didnât try harder to do more in-person, rather than virtual. Our daughter is much more an âin-personâ person, I donât think the virtual thing at that stage helped her. Now, though, sheâs spent 4 years perfecting it. I regret we didnât know about Moonifieds. That seems like the real ticket to get seen, a lot, early. I donât regret the work we put in - when it seems like youâre pushing too hard, youâre not. Keep pushing. I donât regret the net we cast, WIDE. Multiple tiers, safety, average, reach, and dream. Unfortunately, I am not sure our regrets really will help anyone else, but I thought I owed you a response at the least!
Donât get discouraged, itâs a marathon, not a sprint. At the end of the day, I am not exactly sure this whole process isnât just a little better than completely random. Donât get me wrong, we saw the kids that are Michigan, CMU, Baldwin Wallace, etc - they were definitely a whole other level. But the majority of everyone else were good, and different in their own ways. The schools are trying to balance their cohorts, too, so you may be good enough, but if they donât need another petite brunette that dances better than she sings, then theyâll pass you up. Itâs just the process. Iâm happy with where we ended up, sad we missed some we thought we shouldâve, but in the end it worked out. She has hopefully found her âpathâ.
One last note, to add to this rambling - The process doesnât end here. A1s. SETC. School auditions. The college process only prepared us for pushing harder non-stop to keep moving the process. Itâs not a finish line.
Thank you so much for sharing. Iâm curious for more information on the ânext levelâ kiddos you saw. My daughter wants to go to college for musical theatre, but Iâm not sure how she compares to all the others auditioning. She has had lead rolls in high school, but I assume all or most kids in this major have as well. Plus, her school is a small, private school. Is she just a big fish in a small pond? We are making a list of many levels of schools, but I want to make sure itâs even worth it for her to persuade this type of degree.
Mainly the way they carried themselves and the way they clearly were comfortable in the situations and prepared as such, it was different for several auditioners that we saw. I would encourage you to have your daughter choose and prep her materials as soon as possible. Consider finding an audition ASAP even if itâs not necessarily a school of interest, just to get the ball rolling. Cast a wide net, if itâs something she wants thereâs probably a place for her, somewhere. As we were told many times, if she can imagine doing something else, do that. The process, and life with it, are far from easy. But if itâs truly what she wants to do, she will make it somewhere.
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Thank you! She is currently a Junior, so we are beginning to prepare for next Fall. So glad to have CC as a resource to connect with other parents.
Itâs writing all of that. Iâm the original poster here, but Iâve been all over the Internet gathering information everywhere I can for the past couple of months. Whatâs so unfortunate as we know about and we sign with them specifically because of those however, it turns out my daughterâs fall happens to be the same weekend as modified and she really wants to do the play so I guess weâre just gonna be doing regular unifieds and virtual and what we can do in person. If this was mine, I would be dropping out of the place to do a modified because I would be eager to take advantage of any edge anything would provide, but she has her own path and Iâll let her take it.
She seems to be content with doing some virtual and I think itâs only because she has so many other obligations. She wants to fit everything in, but I know sheâs much more of an in person person like she hates doing coaching or any kind of classes if theyâre virtual, so itâs a little odd to me, but as I said, Iâll let her take that lead.
Right now weâre just conquering so many essays. So many essays and thinking about the wild card. She still doesnât know exactly what she wants to do with that and my video skills are very limited and editing skills so weâre trying to figure out the best way to put that together. We are getting down to crunch time for sure we did find a really good acting coach out here and we have a great musical theater song Coach and we found someone to work on the Dance videos with her so that was great because no matter how much we like the big college coach programs weâre in LA and none of them are in LA and as I said, she likes to work in person. All I know is this is going to be tough. Iâm not looking forward to getting the results of things and hoping that itâs good news.