LOL @DramaLlama18 . Wonderful news @DadOfMTboy - I am sure you’ll have more good days ahead but today must be a very happy day in your household!
@NYKaren Some schools will only invite those who are admitted academically to callbacks after prescreens. I know U-Mich does it that way, so I’m sure many others do too.
For those looking for more stories of last-minute acceptances, go read last year’s “Final Decisions” threads both here on the MTA board and on the acting board. Lots of nail biting and inspiring stories!
the campus visit thing is a catch-22… Yes, if you are accepted you need to see the campus. Going blind is crazy - although my husband (admittedly a crazy man) did just that when he decided to go to a college that was over 2000 miles away and his parents were like “ok go have fun”. but I digress…
for us, my daughter did not like the on-campus auditions. it raised the stakes too much when she fell in love with the school and had to come to grips with the fact that she had such minuscule odds of an acceptance.
We wound up doing six on-campus auditions and the rest were at NY and Chicago Unifieds. She much preferred the pace of the unified-format as opposed to the sit-around-all-day-waiting format. She liked to get into the zone for the day and stay there uninterrupted without the distractions of an on-campus visit, and Unifieds allowed her to do that.
But then you find yourself in late March with all of your options and one mere month to see them, do accepted days, sit in on classes, try to see a production, etc., all before commitment day. (not to mention the kids awaiting waitlist decisions beyond May 1st which is another whole issue) This crazy feat compounded by the fact that most kids will be in the middle of a Spring Musical during that time and maybe unable to actually do the campus visits at that point. So as I said, catch-22.
I feel like you need to get in some early tours in sophomore and junior year, get the feelers out there to determine what kind of setting appeals to your kid, see where they vibe (urban vs. non-urban… big school vs. smaller private, etc.) form your list, try to visit anyplace local enough that you won’t lay out a lot of money doing it, whilst keeping your student from falling in love with the school at the same time. It’s definitely a tricky fine line. Wish there was a manual for this stuff so we would not have to look back and count the mistakes we made along the way!
@4angels yep. If it’s a definite “no” from CCM, you will know by the Friday after audition.
Any girls heard from FSU?
Regarding campus visits we did most of ours junior year spring break (then again my D is only interested in NYC so this made it easier of course, though going on 2-3 hour tours every day was so exhausting). I highly recommend starting early in high school, even if not certian where you would apply, especially if you happen to be in or around that city/town on family trips. This takes off pressure to do so much in the next few months. I agree seeing the campus is important, my D did not apply to several schools because of the vibe she felt there.
I know 3 boys. Not sure about girls. They did offer 2 girls from their summer program. Michelle was very transparent about that.
Thanks, @DadOfMTboy and congrats to your son.
@DadOfMTboy - Congrats! As a mom of a girl waiting to hear where did he get the info others got in?
One of my daughter’s male friends just got the FSU call five minutes ago, so they may still be making calls.
He knows them. Like I’ve said before in another post, our kids will know more than us parents ever will.
Thoughts on campus visits. We were advised to visit a small, large, rural and urban school. I think this is decent advice especially if you dont know where you want to go. This did give us an idea if any type of school was a nonfit. We ended up visiting a few other schools due to auditions on campus. If we could do it over again, we would have skipped the school visits all together until after acceptances. While this doesn’t leave a lot of time for visits. It would have made a non-issue of falling in love with a school and then not even passing the prescreen.
@DramaLlama18 A “redirected” stamp works too!
We only toured campuses close to home, but now we have to to get campus tours done during spring break.
I must admit I am worried about scheduling visits. Going to be very hard with a Spring Musical.
Does anyone have advice on attending the accepted student days for the schools D will be considering? Or should we try to campus hop during Spring Break and get them all done in a week so she doesn’t miss more school?
We visited colleges when my D was a junior and we definitely did it to screen for type of school like @NoMTinMD with the addition of Conservatory/Non-Conservatory/Hybrid. Small schools were out, Conservatories were out and rural/suburban schools were out. That made choosing a balanced list difficult but it also meant we only applied to schools (even BA safeties) where we felt pretty certain she’d be happy. When it came time to visit schools she had 4 acceptances but only one BFA so we cut it down to the BFA school and her top choice BA. I don’t think you need to visit every school where you get an acceptance. We did the visits over Spring Break and it worked out well.
We did visits to colleges Spring of Junior Year and summer before Senior Year. Mostly within a 2 hour drive in Southern California. A few in NYC/Boston where my wife’s family lives. We did to educate ourselves. Found the different types of college environments to be very eye opening. Suburban campuses, urban campuses, small liberals arts schools, big state schools, big private schools. Each had pros and cons, and we now have that knowledge ready for us to make a final decision when the rest of my D’s decisions come in next month. My D did get really excited and really attached to one school she thought was perfect for her… and then got denied at the prescreen stage. What a shock, as it wasn’t even the most competitive program she applied for. But as I keep telling her, XX% acceptance rate for a school really doesn’t matter much because in the end, you either get 100% accepted or 100% denied. So yeah, that was hard. But that school was close, we didn’t spend a bunch of $$ on travel to it. We did avoid making a lot of plane trips to visit some schools she auditioned for. Put that money towards actual audition trips and Unifieds.
Thank God (and the drama teacher) my D’s spring musical will be over the week before spring break. That give us all of spring break to get campus visits in. The only campus tours we’ve done are in-state.
We also have a couple of in-state auditions and campus visits to get in before spring break, but she’ll make it back from the auditions in time for her call time.
So I wonder if they make all the phone calls in one day or two? Apparently Otterbein called yesterday and today for some kids. Wonder how FSU handles it.