<p>Although my daughter has a number of acceptances, her heart has been broken with an equal number of rejections. She applied to 3 Ivies (one of which was my alma mater) and was rejected yesterday by all 3. My alma mater was her number 1 choice, so she was devastated. I definitely feel for every student and parent going through this process. It’s brutal!</p>
<p>My D had a 3 rejection, 2 WL, 1 acceptance week. The acceptance made it all better, thank goodness. Now we are all done and just have to wait on financial aid packages to figure out how we can pay for it all! Hang in there, moms and dads. Graduation is around the corner and our babies are going to college! 
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<p>Thanks everyone!!</p>
<p>@mamarose…My heart aches for your daughter and you. As moms, I think it may hurt us as much or maybe more to see our kids heartbroken and not be able to “fix” it. Hopefully she can focus on the acceptances as her silver lining. This really is a brutal career track. Hang in there! </p>
<p>@kbsmom … Thanks. It is hard to see your kid hurting. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about my alma mater the same way. It’s not that they owed me or my daughter anything. It’s just that I loved that school and I know she would have been such a good fit. But, thank goodness she got acceptances from 2 really good schools today! I think we’ll pull through, after all.</p>
<p>@mamarose and @sherryjane73 I feel your pain…the rejections are so rough especially when they are from schools you expected to get into. Many of the top colleges have less than a 10 percent acceptance rate and when you thrown in the whole audition thing it cuts it down to way below 5. Even one or two acceptances is a victory in my book. Plus it is all so random and unpredictable. Your daughters will find a school she loves where she can thrive Everything always works out in the end even though we don’t always see it…</p>
<p>We’ve had a tough week too. My daughter really had her heart set on BU. She was rejected from BU, Columbia, Northwestern, CMU and DePaul. The BU rejection was the worst–her best friend got in on another major with lower test scores and GPA. It is brutal. Fordham was a tough pill, too. The gist of the letter was that “we are thrilled to accept you to our school and we will give you a huge scholarship, but we are sad to say that you have NOT been accepted to your major of choice…we have a lovely theatre minor available to you.” D ended up with only one BFA at Chapman and she has concerns about the quality of the academics and the small size of the school. She just isn’t excited about any of her options. Sigh</p>
<p>txdramamama, my D loved Chapman! We went to their open house in the end of October, spent the whole day there, saw a show, everything was just great! I think my D would choose Chapman over many schools including maybe BU but certainly over Fordham. </p>
<p>Hi everyone, Admissions decisions have been tough for everyone this week. I’ve gotten waitlisted at Emerson (after a deferral) and then rejected from BU, USC, CMU and CalArts. However, I just got accepted at NYU Tisch. Obviously I’m so happy and relieved that I got in but I was wondering if this sort of many rejections = 1 really good outcome thing was common. What might’ve been some causes for these rejections? I’m just curious. </p>
<p>Notactingmom, I am hoping that she will warm up to some of the options she has. I told her she should take a few days to wallow in disappointment, then brush it off and evaluate her options. @rgnsc4ever, I think the auditions are just incredibly competitive. The number of slots available compared to the kids wanting in creates daunting odds. In hindsight, I wish D had gotten more coaching earlier. She came to the decision to pursue this crazy dream relatively late (junior year) so she didn’t go to a performing arts high school or do a lot of summer workshops or take extra lessons–it was just public high school theatre and I don’t think that is enough to get into these top programs. For girls, the odds are even worse. You also have to think that they are looking for “types” to fill certain spots, which makes it even harder.</p>
<p>This is SUCH a subjective process that it is really, really hard to know why one school says yes and another says no. I did notice one thing about our journey. In our case, both of my girls felt very poorly about their 1st auditions and did indeed get a no from those schools. Both my girls felt like they got better as the audition process unfolded and both did indeed get a yes from the school where they had their last audition. That isn’t very helpful to those of us whose families are done with this process, but might be informative to those who are just beginning this journey. If I had it to do over again, I would advise my kids against doing any of the early round of auditions (December vs. late January or February)</p>
<p>@rsnsc4ever, congrats on your acceptance to NYU and best of luck to you moving forward!</p>
<p>I agree with KellyLJ1, this would be my advise to those who starts this process. In case of my D, I believe applying EA to an auditioned BFA was a mistake. I am sure she’d do better in February than she did in October. And scheduling CalArts as the first audition was a huge mistake!</p>
<p>That is also consistent with our experience. She improved over time. </p>
<p>rgnsc4ever, congratulations on NYU. The Emerson waitlist is not too shabby either!</p>
<p>Two reasons someone might be accepted at Tisch but not have such good luck with other BFA programs:
- Tisch accepts more drama students than any other BFA program does.
- Factors like academic record, SAT scores, etc, are quite important at Tisch.</p>
<p>Just got home today from my SMU visit. Loved the program! Got to sit in on the main sophomore and junior acting classes. Both were taught by Yale MFA grads and the classes were amazing. I was also super impressed with the acting coming from the students in the program. They breed very intelligent actors. The theatre facilities are absolutely beautiful and the theatre students were really nice and down to earth. </p>
<p>That night, I saw part of their New Visions, New Voices festival where the Theatre Studies students present staged readings of their original plays generally directed by the directing students and performed by the actors. Both my mom and I were impressed with the quality of the play and the acting coming from the kids as well as the talkback after. In a weird but really nice turn of events, the chair of the program (who was the head of Yale Rep and Yale Drama School for 13 years) gave my mom and I a ride back to our hotel after the show. During the ride he talked about his career, how he ended up at SMU, and gave some words of wisdom. He was great. </p>
<p>I had a really great time, It’s going to be a tough decision, it’s really down to figuring out if I want a straight conservatory type program or a more well rounded liberal arts program. The other factor is that even with the scholarship from SMU, it is still almost twice the price that CCM would be for me. </p>
<p>This coming weekend I’ll be visiting CCM and I’m interested to see what I think, but I am a lot more relaxed knowing that I would be super happy in at least one of my options. </p>
<p>Sunnyakela - sorry it took me so long to get back to you - we’re on vacation and i just opened up my computer. I am glad I gave you some positive thoughts regarding Knox, it is a very special place to my family and I hope you and your daughter find it similarly impressive. I know my daughter has been crazy with the number of tours she’s had to give since coming back from Spring Break last week. She has a prospie staying with her on Thursday (I think it’s Thursday) for the Admitted Student day, things are crazy busy over there.</p>
<p>Good luck and happiness for your daughter. I’m sure things will work out practically perfectly. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.</p>
<p>So happy for you Josh!</p>
<p>@anneliesesmom
Well, my husband and I were very impressed with U Arts today. My D is keeping her cards close to her chest as they say, so I can’t speak for her yet. She’s been very quiet since her rejections came in and is obviously processing her options. We go to Northern Illinois on Thursday. Maybe after that visit she will start to open up. I’m a little worried about her to be honest. It is hard to be disappointed in one regard and have to be an huge decision at the same time.
Anyway, they put on an impressive show today. Everyone gathered in the Merriam Theatre at first and there was a slide show of student work and famous alums. Musicians were playing for us down in the pit. Then the University president spoke about the University’s philosophy. Interestingly the president is a Harvard grad and worked as the provost for Arts and Culture at Harvard. The school works to create a collaborative environment across all disciplines. As I mentioned before an acting student can also take classes in music, art, graphic design, writing, dance etc. They believe most artists are not one dimensional and often have talent and interest in other artistic disciplines and the school encourages this exploration and collobaration.
A dance ensemble performed and a couple of MT students did a number from their current show. They were very good.<br>
Students went off to their workshops and parents were left to hear a parent panel. After about an hour we got a campus tour with a junior acting student. He was a very bright and personable young man and we peppered him with questions.
The campus is in a vibrant and busy section of Philadelphia, right in the middle of theatre row and in the shadow of the beautiful historic city hall building. There are tons of restaurants and shops within walking distance.
That’s my basic summary. Do you have any specific questions? I asked a bunch. </p>
<p>txdramamama, I’m chiming in to tell you my kid is a sophomore at Chapman. The academics there are top notch. He got in to many good schools, and had very good scores/GPA in high school. I was thinking he’d choose Santa Clara or UC Santa Barbara, but he surprised me – he really clicked with Chapman on our first visit. Don’t let the So Cal vibe with palm trees and beachy scene fool you. The student body is pretty bright, classwork is not a skate.</p>
<p>Thank you, LongRangePlan. That is good to hear. Chapman is definitely a front-runner. </p>