@monkey13, good background on the process but I’m thinking I can make some money selling defibrillators on this site at group discounted rate.
Most females audition to 12 - 20 schools? Most is pretty all encompassing word. I saw many a student at auditions that were auditioning for only 2 or 3 waiting in the same lines as the kids applying to that many. Did they get in anywhere in the end, no idea. Were they uninformed about the odds? No idea about that either. Maybe females (or the parents of) here in CC land audition for that many, or the females working with professional coaches who represent the minority of all students auditioning are applying to that many, but “most?” Are most kids willing to fill out that many applications? Go on that many auditions? Mine was not and still would not be if she were doing it all over today.
Other than a group thespian audition in our state involving schools she wasn’t really serious about and only ultimately applied to 2 of, my daughter deliberately auditioned at 7 schools. These were all on campus because we could not do any unifide dates with the exception of 1 audition at LA unifides. Everything involved planes and hotels, maybe a rental car or taxi depending on the city. We drove to Ithaca after flying to Boston but other than that, we flew everywhere.
We probably spent $15,000 too but that was just because we totaled the rental car driving back between Ithaca and Boston which came with insurance hit, towing fees, unexpected extra nights in hotels, etc. If you take that out of the equation, we spent less than 1/3 of that all in. Is it safe to assume a $15K number includes coaching expenses? Then I get it.
You must be much more frugal than me because It would be very difficult to do 7 on campus auditions for under $5000. The cost of the app fees, ACT/SAT scores (plus audition fee that some schools charged) would be over $600. Airfare for two to 7 auditions at a meager $200/person is another $2800 (we had several that were more than this; we flew SWA with companion passes, but not everyone has that luxury), add one night at each place at a $100/nt hotel and you’ve got another $700. $100 at each audition for a rental car/gas/taxi and you only have $300 left for food, headshots, resumes, and any other expenses.
@Dusing2 MAYBE @halflokum spent less than @monkey13 to attend auditions because her D applied to less than half the number of audition programs. Further, and she surely can clarify for herself, but being on the West Coast, maybe she didn’t make a separate flight cross country for each audition, but auditioned a few schools on the same cross country trip. I don’t know. My D auditioned for 8 BFA programs. Personally, even today, I can’t see the need to audition for more than 12 schools (not counting non-audition schools on the list). Anyway, ALL of my D’s auditions were ON campus and she didn’t attend any Unifieds. We Iive in New England. Of the 8 campus auditions, we only had to take 2 flights (U of Michigan and then a flight to PA for Penn State and CMU in the same weekend). The rest were by car. Each trip involved either one or two nights in a hotel. I never added it up, but it was nowhere near $15,000. In fact, I bet it was under $5000 for the audition trips, etc. (not counting training and all that jazz)
I agree with others who say that while there are SOME applicants to BFA programs who are not competitive to be admitted, there are sooooooo many who are and the competition is stiff and even more so for girls. Instrumental music is also very competitive, at least to the top programs (though I don’t think gender and type figure in!). But as someone else said, even Ivy League schools get applicants that have no chance in the talent pool, but they still turn away highly qualified candidates in droves.
On the topic of “dream schools,” as others have noted, having a singular “dream” school in such a highly selective admissions process can be a recipe for disappointment (though that is life, and is something they can recover from). But it can be PARTLY avoided by truly exploring many schools and liking many a lot, and not focusing too much on ONE. Here is where visits can help. A student might love one school but simply isn’t aware of how much they might love several others once they know these schools better. I truly believe a student can be happy at many different schools. There isn’t just one “fit” for them out there. I think it is only natural, however, to have “favorites,” hopefully AFTER fully exploring one’s options. But I find it is better to have little “piles” of '“most favorites”, “like a real lot,” and “like enough to attend,” sort of piles. I recall my non-MT daughter having those (her admissions process was to very selective schools and so this thinking also applied. I like that she had a few favorites and also liked every school on her list and we visited all of them. For my MT daughter, she “dreamt” about NYU since she was 12,but truly didn’t know of other MT schools much, if at all, that young. I thought we would visit colleges in junior year, but when she decided to apply to college in junior year, we had not yet gotten to visit more than just a couple before finalizing the list. She decided not to do ED to NYU, because she hadn’t yet visited enough schools to be able to claim that was the best fit. More exploration was needed. And indeed throughout the admissions process and visiting every school (some twice) and doing on campus auditions, she came to like several schools and didn’t let herself focus solely on NYU. In the end, she did get into NYU and attended (and it was a great fit for her), but it was good to know that she had FULLY explored all other options before coming full circle back to the school she wanted to attend starting at age 12. For the OP, have your D take what she likes about JMU, and see what other schools come close on the same criteria and try hard to visit those too so that she can see quite a few places really fit her criteria and she will love several, and not focus on just one too heavily. Even so, most people favor some over others. But having “some” on the favorites pile is a bit easier in the long run than just ONE.
Finally, while not fully on topic, I feel compelled to respond to a comment in a post on this thread today…
I have to personally say “ouch” to the latter half of your comment. But even if it didn’t relate to me personally, I would not agree with that statement. A valedictorian who comes out of a non-competitive high school may have had less “competition” within their own high school than in a competitive high school where there is a higher amount of concentration of similarly qualified kids, but nonetheless, that valedictorian may be equally on par with top students from a competitive high school. An example: in a very competitive high school, there may be a hundred equally tippy top applicants in the senior class and in a non-competitive high school, there may be ten tippy top qualified applicants to highly selective colleges. But that doesn’t make the tippy top students from the non-competitive high school any less qualified for elite college admissions. There simply is less concentration of them in their high school environment. On a personal note, D1 was valedictorian at what you likely would call a non-competitive high school. She got into Ivy League schools and attended one. She certainly met the standards not only for admission, but once in college, received top grades and at graduation got the top award in her department (I’m only saying that to demonstrate that she met the “standards” to be admitted and to thrive at the college). She then got into numerous tippy top grad schools/Ivies, etc. for grad school. PS: she was an All-States clarinet player too.
One more thing for the OP…remind your younger D that older D didn’t get into dream school and look how happy she is where she landed! That may hit close to home.
@soozievt, I never said that halflokum’s D applied to as many programs as monkey13. I used numbers for 7 auditions (and very low estimates at that!). I do realize that they could have auditioned at multiple places on one plane ticket, but that would also increase the hotel cost a bit, and rarely can you audition at more than two in one weekend. It did sound as though they did Boston and Ithaca in one trip.
Also, the cost of auditioning is incredibly expensive for kids that do not live on the East Coast (like you) or even in the Mid-west. Not only is it a plane ride for every audition, but usually 2 nights in a hotel for each audition (for west coast kids). And if a parent works, they are also missing work. Even a couple of auditions can be expensive if you are on a very tight budget. I think parents and kids need to realize this.
@Calliene, did your D a attend multiple summer programs? I suggested that because as @soozievt just said, when they explore many schools and like many it becomes harder to focus on just one. My kid attended several programs, ArtsBridge, and numerous master classes on various campuses, and found things we liked and disliked about almost everyone. We found it was very easy to keep an open mind until the acceptances, then we were able to narrow it down and had an obvious first choice.
@Dusing2 I certainly agree it is an expensive proposition!! And agree that it is more difficult and can be more costly for those on the West Coast. Being in the Northeast, allowed some auditions (five our of eight) to be by car for us. I realize this certainly doesn’t apply to everyone!
@Calliene can answer about her daughter, but I do know that her D attended several summers at the same theater camp my D attended (but they didn’t overlap there). Though her D has done ArtsBridge, but not pre-college programs at colleges. And she is also from the same general region we are from. My D did not attend any pre-college programs, but researched schools thoroughly and we visited them all and she knew kids at most of the programs, which also helps.
I am OP , this thread took some crazy turns. lol. I had another conversation with D and I am relieved, although yes she still likes that school best, she said " I am very happy with my list and would be happy at each of them" Phew!!! Of course again that may change after we finish visiting and auditioning but great to hear. We do have a small list and its great to know she is happy with it.
Luckily most of the schools are coming to where we live, several right to her school, so we have all admission interviews scheduled, auditions scheduled, theater interviews scheduled, college essays done, visits and tours of theaters scheduled, headshots today, resume updated according to each schools requirements, hotels, flights booked…getting there and feeling better!
We had to fly to FSU (Florida in February from Boston is expensive, in case you’ve never tried to book that flight), BW, OCU, UMich, and Indiana. None of those schools did Unifieds (although UMich did Chicago Unifieds…we did NYC Unifieds). We drove to BoCo and Emerson, Ithaca and Syracuse. We did NYU on Unifieds weekend, and we did CMU, CCM, Penn State, and Ball State at Unifieds. We opted to do Tulane’s video audition. She applied to Otterbein but did not audition for them. So, yes…flying 3 people to Florida (that was the one audition my husband attended…granted, we could have left him at home and saved money), and 2 people to Ann Arbor, Cleveland, Bloomington, and Oklahoma City was very expensive. (Also remember that some schools let you know at the last minute when your audition appointment is, so you don’t have the luxury of booking your tickets months in advance and getting cheaper rates). Add in meals, cabs, and hotels. Then a train for 2 to NYC (nope, didn’t want to drive in the snow), and gas and hotels and food for the 6 hour each way drive up to Syracuse and Ithaca…indeed, it came out to $15,000. (I am including application fees, and cost associated with sending test scores, and the cost of doing prescreen videos - we hired an accompanist, and her voice teacher stood by to ensure the take was okay vocally. We also hired said accompanist to play just the tracks in a studio, bc some of her schools (like BoCo) did not have an accompanist, and no, there were no karaoke tracks of her songs b/c they were unusual. Oh, and also we had her dance teacher there when we filmed dance portions. But I filmed them all myself in our home or the dance studio.) We did not tack on any days for vacation or sightseeing. We did not stay in luxury hotels…whatever was cheapest and closest to campus. My luxury was taking cabs to and from airports, b/c I am petrified of flying and have to take Klonipan, so I could not rent a car when I landed (and my D was not old enough to rent). So, the cab to Bloomington was pretty darn expensive, but not as expensive as it would have been for me to crash the rental.
And as far as the number of schools kids apply to, I still stand by those numbers for girls. If you look at the final decision background threads, kids applied to a LOT of schools. Even taking out the outliers who apply to 26 schools (yes, that happened) or just one school, most girls, and some boys, applied to at least a dozen. At least among my D’s friends, both from high school and friends from Stagedoor and those she met at MTCA, virtually all applied to 12 or more. Some many, many more. Maybe that is a skewed sample…and I know there are girls out there who applied to 3 schools. But I really think that is the minority.
@monkey13 I can see how your audition expenses added up as they did. The fact that your D had 16 auditions and many involved flights made it even more expensive. It is expensive all the way around to do this! Some have less schools or less flights. Some do mostly Unifieds which cuts some costs.
In my experience advising MT applicants, I would say that today 10-14 auditions (average about 12) is the norm and about right (in my view). I personally think most (with some exceptions for various reasons) don’t need more than 12 audition-based schools (not counting any non-audition schools on their list). Having an appropriate list for the applicant, along with a well-balanced list, is crucial. Still, the odds are difficult. But 10-14 should do it with the “right” list, if a candidate is truly competitive for BFA admissions. It’s true that some apply to a lot more than that and some apply to a lot less. When my D applied, I think she was typical among her theater friends from around the country who went to Stagedoor and applied to 8. Today, I’d likely make that 10. But one friend from home/school applied to BFA in MT programs and only applied to 2! She got into one of the two. I wouldn’t advise that though!
Oh good morning. Yes @Dusing2, apparently we were able to audition at 9 schools more frugally. I actually have the numbers in excruciating detail. Total spent on airfare, hotels, and transportation including taxes and fees, (this includes taxes and fees but not the car crash) from a series of groupings of four trips (@soozieVT was right about that above) for 2 people each time:
round trip to Boston for Emerson Early Action
from where we live to LA then to NYC then Detroit and home for UCLA, NYU, U Mich.
round trip from where we live back to LA for UMiami at unifides.
Boston which was also a family vacation over February break but I’ll throw it in anyway including the entire week’s car rental which we only needed two days of to drive to Ithaca from Boston but I’ll include all of it. This was for BU and Ithaca auditions. The other two auditions happened at a thespian event in our state at a school I could walk to if I wanted to but I threw in $10 for gas for that. Total so far before application fees, food and headshots etc, not including the car crash damage but including an extra $123 for an unexpected second night at the Super 8 in Ithaca and $107 to rent a new car to drive it one way out of Ithaca to Logan Airport the next day so we could catch our flight home: $3,020.50
Headshots: $9.00 I took them myself and had them printed at Costco. I’m assuming $1 each for 9 schools
Application fees: I forget. 2 of the schools waived them. Let’s assume 7 schools at $75 each though I know some were less: $525.00
Audition fees: I honestly don’t think we had any audition these but sure, let’s throw in $500 for that.
ACT scores 9 scores at $15 each: $135.00
subtotal before food: $4,189.50
food: I’ve got a little over $800 left for that. We did shoot the wad for a burger at the Stardust Diner in NYC to cheer up my daughter after what she thought was a disastrous audition at her DREAM SCHOOL that she had her heart set on and is now a senior at (yay I’m finally back on subject) but other than that we stayed 3 nights in NYC at a Staybridge Suite that had a kitchen. Two of which were for fun but I’m including those charges. By then we were sick of eating out having already been in LA and I walked to a grocery store and bought pasta and salad and actually cooked it 2 nights out of 3. Breakfasts were included with all hotel stays. So no I don’t have receipts from every falafel stand or Subway sandwich we ate lunches at, but I’m pretty sure $800 will cover that including the surprisingly wonderful dinner at the Bell Tower Hotel in Ann Arbor. I think it was restaurant week. It was delicious.
Grand total estimate without the car crash and rounding up generously all over the place: $5,000.
In fairness we don’t have hotel expenses in Boston because we have family and friends there and I used frequent flyer points on trip #2 for the leg from LA to NYC. But the rest, cold hard cash with planes, trains and automobiles. But also in fairness to Monkey13’s number which sure, is for twice the auditions we did, she could drive to many of her auditions. We could not. That’s why I assumed it includes coaching fees which we did not have.
^^^@DVCmember, you have NO idea. And the joy will continue when you don’t have to ship and store everything but can instead load up the car to bring your daughter to/from college every year.
@halflokum I assumed the 7 on campus auditions you referred to were all schools that required you to travel across the country, which is how I arrived at the figure I did. It appears that only 6 of those required cross country travel, which would cut down a bit on the flight, hotel and car rental expenses that I used to arrive at my estimates.
I’m not trying to prove your numbers wrong (I really don’t care how much you spent or didn’t spend), I just think parents and students need to keep realistic expectations in mind when planning these auditions, and no matter how you do it, it is very expensive when you don’t live on the east coast (living in Ohio would also be a great way to save some money on travel expenses – lots of schools near there!).
@Dusing2, the 7 schools did all require travel including 960 miles down the West coast to get to Los Angeles. Technically not across country but far. Each school required it’s own separate trip. There was no economizing and hitting multiple schools in any location. Or perhaps you are not counting Ithaca because I drove there from Boston? That’s the one that cost me $10,000 I know you don’t care how much we spent. Why should you but you did question it so I answered.
We did all of our auditions in NYC around unifieds, which probably cost around $1500. Plus pretty close to $1000 for applications and audition fees. As I said earlier, my S made a pretty sharp u-turn from an academic BA focus to BFAs late in the game, though, and only auditioned for five programs. If we’d known how competitive even the second-tier BAs were for kids who need a lot of FA (three WLs, two rejections, one offer), I might have encouraged him to get started on the audition process sooner. By December when we started, Ithaca, the California schools and Pace were already out of the question. (He had applied at CMU early, more or less on a whim.) Weirdly, he got an athletic letter of intent from Muhlenberg his junior spring, but we had no idea that it was such a strong theater school.
I think all of these discussions just prove that we all love and encourage our children to strive for their dreams! And that we are willing to support them through audition process as best we can or can afford. There is NO right way and NO definite way to ensure acceptance but we all are doing our darndest to select programs appropriate for own kids and then to try and get them to auditions.
I had a house full of musical theater actors last night. Listening and talking to each of them, not one of them arrived at this point in their careers the same way and all had interesting stories of how they wound up in MT and at a particular college or why they didnt go to college. There is no right way. Sending support to each of you done with the process and those of us going through it now.
And it doesn’t end after the audition expenses…Just bought my D’s ticket to London for her semester there (she leaves January 3rd!), and looking at the flat prices…YIKES. London is more expensive than Ithaca…just sayin’.
But yes, @joyfulmama, the support we give is invaluable. And even if they are so caught up in the process now, with the stress and excitement, etc., they will remember how much you have given/sacrificed/cheered them on at some point. I got an emotional call from mine just a week ago thanking me for all the support H and I have given her…I don’t know what prompted the call, or the thought, but it was clear she would never forget what we have done for her (and continue to do). This business sucks, and I can’t believe they put themselves out there every day to be judged on the way they look and sound and perform…having parental support in this crazy dream helps more than we know. Remember that when they are stressed and snap at you, or roll their eyes, or scream at you. They figure out what it took for us to do what WE did to help them, and they do appreciate it. We are making it easier for them to pursue their dreams. And at least they are getting the chance to try.
And that school they are enamored with now may drop out of contention once they have the audition…and as so many have said, that school they didn’t give a second thought to may end up being the best place in the world for them. Regardless of where they end up, they are so brave for TRYING, and all of you (us) deserve a big round of applause for making it just a little bit easier for them to get where they are going. Because they will get there. Eventually. A lot of blood, sweat, tears, laughter and money later.
My D did not attend any pre-college programs, but researched schools thoroughly and we visited them all and she knew kids at most of the programs, which also helps.
I know you don’t care how much we spent. Why should you but you did question it so I answered.