Musical Theatre College Admission 2027

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
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Hi All! I wanted to start a discussion for this year’s college audition cycle. I’m also a member on MT parents Facebook, but I love the anonymity of this board and think it’s a great place to discuss this crazy audition process.

I’ll start with a little intro. I have a daughter who is a senior in high school pursuing a BFA MT. We’ve been researching this process for a while now, but it’s August and we already feel behind :sweat_smile: We cannot afford any of the fancy coaching services, so we’ve mostly just been doing this on our own with a little help from her voice teacher.

We have 12 schools on her list, one of them being our in-state non-audition BA Theatre. We plan to submit all prescreens virtually and then attend Chicago Unifieds if she is invited to audition. I would love to expand her list a little, but she doesn’t want to go farther than 6-8 hours from our home (however we do have 2-3 lottery schools that are farther than that).

Would love to hear from others going through this same process, and also any advice from those who have already been through it!!

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Thanks for starting this thread! My son has about 20ish schools on his list. It is extremely broad – from super-reach (MT-program-wise) highly selective (academically) schools to smaller liberal arts schools with reputable MT programs to big state flagship unis with great MT programs. Geographically, it spans coast-to-coast (heavy emphasis on East Coast).

I hope some recent BTDT parents might show up here and provide insights into actual talent and academic merit awards at specific schools. So many of the programs simply don’t list anything about that on their websites.

Looking forward to sharing the joys and challenges of the coming year!

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hi to all!

You are definitely in for a roller coaster ride. I just did this last year with my daughter. And I’m sorry to start out with what really seems to be a negative topic but I really wish I could’ve gotten somebody to admit this to me last year when I asked….So while you were all making your lists now and figuring out which schools you’d like to target keep this in mind….

Right now I’m incredibly irritated because all last year I asked a question because I had a feeling about it and I was concerned and I never seem to have gotten a straight answer and now I’m finding I was right.

Musical theater BFA is the exceptionally popular choice. Acting seems to be less so… either that or the acting students and parents just are not as interested in posting it on social media
Because of the process, whereby if you audition for both the musical theater and the acting program that you do the musical theater audition since it includes all of the components, and then you may get accepted into either one it looks as if you get accepted into acting as if it was a redirect and it is a lesser than.

Which I always feared would create the illusion that somehow the acting BFA programs were either less desirable or for the kids who couldn’t make it in musical theater
Now some schools separate their programs entirely then to never meet whatsoever completely different faculties different departments say like Penn State does that.

And some schools do not have a musical theater program at all like SUNY purchase or Rutgers
But for those schools that have both where they are within the same department but when you look things up all of the social media promotional materials, the website seems to have about 80% musical theater promotion and 20% acting.

And wonder will my child go to the school as an acting major and somehow be treated as second class citizen, or somehow not have as many opportunities or not be as respected as the musical theater majors?

The answer is yes. At some schools that is what will happen.

They will claim that isn’t the case, and that everybody has to audition for everything and just last year and acting major was actually the lead in the musical theater program…. Yet when you actually get to school, you will find that there is a pervasive attitude from the musical theater kids that somehow they are better than…. Even in the orientation, one of the teachers or group leader will stand up and say now everyone says the musical theater is better than acting, but don’t believe it if you hear that it’s just because everyone likes to be dramatic, but that is not true at all, and I don’t wanna hear anyone saying that.

SERIOUSLY?
Well, all you have to do is say that and now for sure that will be the case.

Even if the school itself doesn’t intend on it being that way, the way things are set up and the redirect from the audition process will pretty much guarantee that the musical theater kids will treat the acting kids that way eventually it might even out maybe you’ll get equally as good of an education and have many many opportunities but just know those first few weeks of school it will be uncomfortable, your child will feel uncomfortable and be envious of the MT kids who have already become the popular clique

I know for sure this is the case of two schools right now through what I’ve experienced with my daughter and talking to other parents who have kids at another school so just be very careful if you’re going to go to audition for a BFA and acting program I would suggest you pick a school that separates the programs entirely and has a lot of information on their acting program and obviously treats it with reverence and respect or a school that doesn’t have a musical theater program at all if you go for one that has a mixed program together, ask and ask again and be certain that they are capable of handling both majors with equal respect.

We’re not paying all of this money to have my kid feel as if she’s a consolation prize