<p>Maril – you’ve already received some excellent advice addressing your questions. I just have one thing to add: when choosing songs, make sure the accompaniment is not too difficult – that is the reason many schools warn against Sondheim songs and certain other composers like Jason Robert Brown. At any audition, you can never be sure of the competence of the pianist. Believe me, this is not specific to college auditions – I’ve personally had problems even with professional auditions.</p>
<p>May I ask what school it is that you teach at?</p>
<h1>1erica – if you mean KatMT, I teach at James Madison University :).</h1>
<p>And if you meant me, I teach privately as a vocal and acting coach.</p>
<p>Thank you both. I was asking KatMT aftering reading what she had posted in #81. Sorry I was not more specific.</p>
<p>i’m auditioning next winter of 2010 as a transfer. currently in the process of searching for schools that might be a good “fit”. best of luck to everyone!</p>
<p>My D is at IU majoring in Theatre and looked into taking a program that would have been a double major of VP at Jacob’s. From what she told me this was an impossible situation because the BA Theatre program is under the College of Arts and Sciences and she can only take a maximum of so many credits outside this college. You might want to look into this - it might be she did not have the available extra credits outside the CAS because they were being eaten up by dance classes. </p>
<p>Echo what the poster above said about the reality of double majoring. Between acting, voice and dance classes, she has found it almost impossible to squeeze in even one elective she would like to take let alone try to accomodate classes that would fulfill a double major.</p>
<p>I just wanted to share this from a perspective of someone that went through looking at schools and programs last year just concentrating on how great the program was or the basic cost without thinking fully about all the aspects. We did consider the cost of flying back and forth between home and school. At the time 2 airlines had non-stop flights which have since been cancelled. Now they have 3 hour layovers in another city and some routes can take 6 hrs to get home. I have also learned that summer storage units go fast - as early as February - and cost $90 month during the summer. Another thing to look at is at some time whether sophomore or junior year they will probably want to move out of the dorm and into an apartment. So another factor may be availability of local rentals and cost of those rentals in the future. </p>
<p>I’d also give serious consideration to the food. It’s something they do every day and not all campus food is equal. When you have a dorm room with a refrigerator/freezer a little bigger than Playschool and a microwave you really depend on campus food and that meal plan. </p>
<p>I hope all of you end up with your dream choices when this season is over. Sometimes people end up with more than one choice of school and so I thought I’d throw this out there for consideration.</p>
<p>You raise a good point. It is important to give appropriate consideration to what I call the “Is this a place I would want to live for 4 years” factor. There are a myriad of things that go into this, from city v. more rural/suburban locations, discrete campus v. a campus spread out along the streets of a city or town, grass and trees v. all steel and concrete, what the dorm are like, availability and type of off campus housing, flexibility of the meal plans and quality of the food v. availability of off campus food sources, social life centered on campus v. off campus and travel distance and logistics from home. It’s important to keep in your sights that a college, for all practical purposes, will be a student’s home for 4 years with all that this entails, including planning for how to handle semester and summer breaks.</p>
<p>Like Hoosiermom and her D, my D and I went through the whole process last year at this time and really did NOT carefully consider distance from home as a factor. Fortunately, the “gods” were on our side, because my D chose to attend a wonderful program that is only about three-and-a-half hours away from home by car or bus and even “closer” by train. I can’t tell you how grateful we were for this when it came time to move her into her dorm in August and how grateful we have been since then, as she can hop on Megabus (for fares that are outrageously inexpensive, ranging from $1 – yes, $1!!! – to $20 one-way) for holiday travel back and forth. This means that, come summer, we can go up and load her stuff up and bring it home, rather than storing it.</p>
<p>Hi All!</p>
<p>I am going to be a senior next year and the time has come to find the right school for me! I am looking, preferably, to major in musical theatre, with theatre education as my second choice. If you could give some suggestions…that’s be great!</p>
<p>I am a…
-5’9" female
-broad shoulders and back from competative swimming for 11 years
-Chracter type: character
-mezzo-soprano. F below middle C to a high B on a good day
-Classified at a mezzo mix with belting capabilities
-Voice training from the head of music in MT at the University of Northern CO
-In the triple-threat “area” I would rank myself 1.voice, 2.acting, 3.dance
-Go to an Arts Magnet high school
-looking for a small school/program where I will be able to connect with professors and other students
-preferably somewhere in the East (I’m from Colorado…) </p>
<p>Some schools I’ve come across that I’m interested in are: Roosevelt, Illinois Weslayen, Emerson College, Illinois State University…
Are these good?</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your help!</p>
<p>Dillbird – these are all good schools. The question is, are they right for you? And you are the only one who can answer that question. Starting with – do you want a BFA or a BA program? Rural, suburban, or urban? And think about practical questions like: how far away from home do you want to be? That will be important at vacation time, or when you are in a production and want your parents to come and see it! Go to the first page of the MT section in this forum, and read through the FAQ link. Then you can go to the individual school links and read those. There is a huge amount of valuable info here which should be very helpful to you. Once you’re up to speed, I’m sure you’ll think of some more specific questions to ask. And don’t forget to add at least one non-audition school to your list as a “safety” – make sure it’s a school you would be happy to attend; this is a highly competitive process and most audition schools have an acceptance rate of under 10%.</p>
<p>And by the way, you should plan to spend the summer preparing your audition material. You will also find many helpful suggestions here on the audition process. Good luck!</p>
<p>Dillbird1453</p>
<p>If the theatre education point is critical, I would look into Wagner College in Staten Island NY. We visited Wesleyan for my daughter a couple years ago - a great school, but I’m not sure how much you’d find on the music end of things for theatre. Unless things have changed, I believe they gear more towards straight drama with musicals alternate years. However, I believe they have student groups where you might possibly find musicals performed. Good luck.</p>
<p>Dillbird: Don’t overlook some great schools and programs in the Midwest, including: Otterbein and Baldwin-Wallace (both in Ohio) in the ‘small school’ category; or CCM (Cincinnati) and University of Michigan in the ‘small program within a large university’ category. Even closer to your home in CO would be the MT program at Webster in St. Louis, MO, which is reportedly very good, comparably small, and where students get a lot of personal attention. If you don’t mind traveling to the East Coast, you may want to look into the BFA MT programs at Syracuse University and/or Ithaca College (both Upstate NY), or Elon which is in North Carolina. This list isn’t intended to be mutually exclusive, but still I hope it helps! Best of luck to you!</p>
<p>To add to onstage’s good advice and to pick up on your stated desire to attend a “small school/program”, let me offer the following comments:</p>
<ol>
<li>Probably the most important decision for you to make is whether you want a BFA or non-audition BA program. There’s been a lot written on the MT forum about the differences in the educational experiences and opportunities between the 2 approaches. Neither is better than the other; each serves different priorities, needs and interests. If you look at the FAQ thread, there is a link to a good article describing the differences. Also, do a search of the MT forum for the variety of discussions on this topic.</li>
</ol>
<p>I say that this is probably the most important initial decision to make because the outcome will heavily impact the process for your school searches and applications. If you are interested only in non-audition BA programs, then your search is going to be based on some very measurable and objective factors such as comparative gpa and SAT scores, whether a school has the programs that will fit your educational objectives, location, size and such. In addition, the application and admissions process are going to be focused primarily on more objective criteria. On the other hand, with an audition BFA program, the application and admissions process is heavily skewed towards the subjective - your audition - and therefore the process of determining a list of schools to which to apply and your preparation for the application process will be very, very different. There’s a lot of discussion on this thread and others about how to come up with a good diverse list of schools if your goal is to attend an audition based BFA program.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Probably the next most important decision for you to make is geographic area but here you may want to initially avoid being too restrictive lest you inadvertently exclude a school that may be a good match for you. I would approach it on the scale of regions of the country where you would or would not want to live for the next four years rather than on a smaller state or city scale at this point. You will have plenty of time to further refine the geographic area as you hone in on your school research and ultimately during the application and decision making phases. Your stated desire to be on the east coast will enable you to start to refine your search process although you will find there is a tremendous diversity of both BA and BFA programs on the east coast from New England down to Florida. Whether you are interested in a BA or BFA program should also influence at this point how narrowly you define your geographic area of interest in particular because the admissions process to an audition based BFA program is so competitive and subjective that you don’t want to unduly restrict potential schools to research at this juncture based on overly restrictive geographic considerations. Again, there’s plenty of time to refine the geographic area as you dig into the process more.</p></li>
<li><p>“Small school/program” - The weight to be given to this factor, at this point in your process, should again be influenced by whether you are interested in a BA or BFA program. BA programs may give you more latitude at this point to filter schools based on a size factor. BFA programs may not because of the very low admissions percentages. In this regard, keep in mind that most BFA MT programs are relatively small regardless of the size of the school in which they are located. The life and world of a BFA MT student can be rather insular because of the time demands of the structured program and related out of class obligations. Take for example University of the Arts and Syracuse, 2 schools with which I am familiar. UArts has under 3000 students and is a performing/fine /communications arts university. Syracuse is a full blown liberal arts university with over 17,000 undergrads. The typical MT class at UArts starts out at about 24 and at Syracuse at about 34. The lives of BFA MT students at both schools are markedly more similar than different with respect day to day class time, out of class time, interactions with professors and students. The vast differences in size of the schools has little impact on this, if any, due to the “encapsulated” nature of most BFA MT programs. At this point, eliminating potential BFA programs simply because of the size of the school would result in missing some great opportunities. Limiting schools at this point based on the size of the program may not be strategically appropriate due to the very low admissions rates. Again, if talking about audition based BFA programs, using size as a filter may be more appropriate once you see what kind of acceptances come in. At this point, for a BFA program, it is more important to have a diverse list of small, medium and larger schools and programs so as to maximize the opportunities for acceptances.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Keeping MichaelNKat’s typically well-considered post in mind, I would point out that the decision process isn’t always that cut and dried. For some kids, the decision could go either way between a BFA or BA. And some BA programs are such in name only, or easily lend themselves to what would normally be thought of as a BFA curriculum should one so desire to configure their electives that way.</p>
<p>There really is nothing wrong with having options, and I wouldn’t suggest forgoing one entire category of schools because of the letters attached to a particular degree. If the level of training is there, the end results are all that matters.</p>
<p>perischak makes a good point for more than 1 reason. First, even if you are absolutely sure you want a BFA, as pointed out by onstage, it is very important that you include on your list of schools a couple of non-audition BA programs that have strong MT opportunities and with which you are a strong academic match. The admissions rates for BFA MT are so low and the process so competitive and subjective that it is important to include the BA programs to maximize the opportunities for acceptances. There are a variety of very good well regarded non-audition BA schools that offer great MT opportunities and training. It is much easier to gauge the likelihood of an acceptance to such schools because the admissions criteria rely much more heavily on GPA, SAT and other definable criteria. You can look at the student profile for last year’s freshman class and get a good handle on how you stack up.</p>
<p>And as perichack suggests, it is important to really investigate the curriculum and course offerings at all schools under consideration - both BFA and BA. Not all BFA programs have the same balance and focus and some BA programs have a broader and more in depth availability of MT types of classes than others. As a general proposition, you will find that BFA programs have a more structured and sequenced curriculum than BA programs, have fewer opportunities for liberal arts, double majors or even minoring than a BA program, and that BA programs allow for greater flexibility and opportunity to structure your own curriculum with electives, minors and double majors. It’s important to really look at the curricula, degree requirements and course offerings at schools to get a handle on this. And, yes, there are many schools that can provide excellent training as a performer in the context of a liberal arts BA program.</p>
<p>At some point though, you will need to decide whether you want the focus of your application process to be a BFA program or a BA program. That decision will influence greatly how you structure the list of schools to which you apply. If you have a serious interest in BFA programs, they will need to comprise the bulk of the schools on your list because of the low odds of admissions. You can’t apply to 5 BA schools and 2 BFA programs and reasonably expect to get accepted to a BFA program. You can apply to 5 BFA programs and 2 BA schools and reasonably expect to be accepted to a BA school if you did your homework in selecting them so that you are a strong match. You can put together a list of 5 BA schools with objectively determinable safeties, matches and reaches, something that can’t be done with any BFA program. That’s why I suggested that the first thing you ought to figure out is whether your interests lie primarily with a BFA program or a BA. That is not to say that you can’t find BA programs that would give you, based on your own criteria, everything that you would want out of a BFA program. It’s just that you need to focus on these kinds of questions early on to help guide your search process.</p>
<p>So what school have “good” non audition BA - MT / Theater programs?? My son is thinking BFA, but I think he should include a few of the Non-audition schools as well. We have been foucusing our research to those big MT programs and know NOTHING about non - audition programs. Can anyone suggest s few that we can investigate?</p>
<p>A BA program that I am personally familiar with is Muhlenberg. Although it is a theater program, not MT, it is possible to take voice lessons and dance classes there. And they do a summer stock season of musicals which students can audition for. The program is very well-regarded, and is worth looking into.</p>
<p>Purple9, your CC name is already perfect for Northwestern University (!), which offers a very strong BA Theater program as well as a Musical Theater certificate (for which one needs to audition after freshman or sophomore year). The school is not a match academically for all students, but if your son is among those who might qualify, I suggest it is worth a look.</p>
<p>My son had been considering only BFA programs, as well (and was accepted into five of them), but decided on Northwestern after visiting the campus, sitting in on classes, speaking with current and former students, and meeting with the head of the Theater program. His feeling was that the level of training there rivaled that of most BFA programs but the school also offered him opportunities that might not be available in a more conservatory-type of environment.</p>