<p>Alright, I don’t frequent CC anymore, but I wanted to set the record straight as far as BU admissions goes, because I have seen misinformation about this stuff time and time again, from the slightly off to the totally false! I am a current student in the SOT (School of Theatre) and I love it. I love it so much that I wanted to be involved with admissions so I could gush about it to the next generation, so I am familiar with the specific process of being admitted to the BFA. Here is how it goes:</p>
<ol>
<li>Student applies to BU and schedules audition.</li>
<li>Student auditions for SOT faculty. Based SOLELY on the audition, the faculty makes an accept/reject/waitlist decision.</li>
<li>SOT faculty passes on their decisions to general BU admissions and students’ applications are reviewed.</li>
<li>IF student is accepted by both the SOT and BU, YAY! They’re in.</li>
<li>IF student is waitlisted by the SOT and then accepted academically by BU, then they’re waitlisted for the program.</li>
<li>IF student is accepted artistically by the SOT but her grades aren’t quite up to general BU admissions standards, the SOT faculty will pull what strings they can to get her in to BU. Sometimes this works (YAY!), but if her grades are really terrible, then it probably won’t.</li>
<li>IF student is rejected by the SOT, even with a 4.0 gpa and perfect test scores, she is rejected from BU automatically.</li>
</ol>
<p>So, yes, your grades and scores DO factor in to your admissions to BU. BUT notice that in no scenario can they get you in to the SOT without a completely separate, audition-based acceptance from the faculty. You could call this “50/50” admissions, but that implies equal weight to the two categories, when one is really a prerequisite to even be considered for the other.
Low grades should not stop anyone from auditioning at BU. High grades cannot make up for a lack of potential artistically. Of course, the best case scenario would be great grades and great audition/artistic fit (and for high test scorers, BU does give good merit aid)!</p>
<p>As a side note, though the point of this post was to show that getting in to BU is not really about grades, I will point out that one of the things that is awesome about the SOT is that ALL of my peers are brilliant, sharp, bright people. But that has nothing to do with test scores.</p>
<p>I hope this has cleared some things up and not caused any further confusion or distress! happy hunting.</p>