<p>Ive been a lurker here for the past couple of years. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this forum. Ive learned a lot here to be able to help my daughter think through the right next steps. Since she is entering her Junior year where its the beginning of making real decisions, I expected to be more of a poster and hopefully someone who can contribute to dialogue. </p>
<pre><code>I have a lot of questions (not surprisingly) some of which Ive listed at the bottom of this post. Im not expecting an answer on all of them – though I wont complain if I get one – they are just things in my head that over the next few months I want to try to sort out.
But before I get to those, its always helpful in a discussion to know a bit about who you are having the discussion with and since Im really irrelevant to the discussion here, Ill provide a bit of background on my daughter instead. Like many of the stories Ive seen here, my daughters acting passion dates from a very young age. My most distinctive memory is having here come out of watching Monsters, Inc. and having down cold the voice and physical mannerisms of Roz at age 6. I thought that was pretty unusual but Im a patent attorney so how do I know the difference between gee my kid is really cute to having a real gift. She pushed us from an early age to take her into NYC for auditions (we live about 60 miles away) but with another young child at home it wasnt doable and I still didnt really get that she had something unique as a gift. Finally, after we got here into a local acting program at about 11 or so, and she rocketed through to the most advanced group in about 6 months – the acting teacher told us she had something special and she was ready to audition in NY.
Since then she was lucky enough land a manager who got her a couple of roles in cable TV shows and a couple of commercials. Unfortunately, at 16, shes grown herself out of the market at 59. A 16-year old girls who cant play younger is basically unmarketable because you can 18 year-old to play 16 without having to have a wrangler on the set and work them to death without violating child labor laws. Still, its been a great experience for her. Her training has also includes Frenchwoods where she got one of the leads in a drama production that got rave reviews at the camp and the Stella Adler Teen intensive this summer. She also multiple years of voice and dance training although neither skill is a natural skill like her acting is. I dont think she could ever land a Broadway part that required one of those crazy god-given voices but her voice teacher (who has been on Broadway and has students on Broadway) thinks her acting gifts and solid belt voice would give her a chance at roles like Natalie in Next to Normal that require a huge acting range.
Shes a smart girl but acting obligations and problems with migraine headaches have kept her GPA in the 3.2ish range. She has not taken the SATs or ACTs yet.
Anyways, with that too long of an intro (the proud stage Dad has trouble stopping sometimes), below are some of my questions:
(1) Ive read the advice here about having a non-audition BA school as a safety. Her Stella Adler experience this summer is comparable to a BFA type training environment and she loves every minute of it. She would hate being in a BA school. I would also be shocked if anyone would ever rate her academics better than her audition. Shes been very fortunate in that she has an enormous amount of experience auditioning. At Stella, shes the one in the group that got the most dramatic Juliette piece and shes getting trained on the monologue from a Shakespeare teacher at Stella. Its hard for me to imagine she wont excel at her auditions. Were contemplating a strategy of including enough BFA programs with some just a notch down and also perhaps adding non-degree conservatories such as Stella and AADA. The schools on her initial lists are CMU, Julliard, NYU, NCSA, SUNY-Purchase and Rutgers. I know she needs to add more. She is really attracted to the small conservatory type training environment so I would be interested to hear other suggestions particularly ones more waited to auditioning.
(2) ACT versus SAT – if she did the ACT first and did real well – do you have to take the SAT? Do some schools only take the SAT?
(3) She does not want to be in a musical theater program but would love to be able to at least have an opportunity to do some things in musical theater even if she is in an acting program. It sounds like that is an option at NYU. Does anyone know if that is true at CMU?
(4) How much do letters of recommendations help if you can get them from people more well known in the field? Her Director for her two cable TV shows loved her and she is getting a lot of praise at Stella. I would think that would help her but maybe its just audition plus grades and we should not think these letters of recommendation would make much of a difference.
(5) How much does going to a summer program help? Were thinking maybe she should look into going to CMU next summer. However, it does not look like there is an audition requirement to get in over the summer so I dont know what her chances would be to even get in without the audition piece.
Thanks all. I look forward to the discussion.
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