@ohiomtgirl22 where is she currently?? What is she looking for in a program?
@ohiomtgirl22 - BAL to your daughter, I hope she finds her place too! Some schools may want her to start as a freshman, is that acceptable? Are there financial constraints? I would personally take Penn State (and maybe also U Miami) off her list as it is a very small, highly competitive program and I think the likelihood of them having transfer space is very low. What are her strongest talents? If money is not a problem I’d look to see if she’s competitive for Boco - great training, great location and I have heard several times about students transferring in when they weren’t getting the rigorous MT training they wanted elsewhere. The advantage to a place like BoCo is they have a pretty big class size so any student attrition allows for room for transfers.
Unless the school has a stated policy that they absolutely will not take a transfer, I wouldn’t let the idea that they might only take one or two people school you really love off your list. I know a kid who graduated from Carnegie Mellon who came in as a transfer student. Actually he transferred 2x- CMU was actually his third school. Yes schools may except a smaller number of transfers, but I think there is actually a much smaller pool of transfer applicants
Hi all! reading these posts brings back a lot of memories from last year as my daughter is now a Freshman BFA MT major. I want to send positive vibes to all of you as this process is so very challenging. I also wanted to weigh in on the presceens. My D applied to 18 schools and passed ALL her 12 prescreens. However she did not get into a single prescreen school! Looking back I would have personally preferred more no’s and saved the travel expense and the sense of “hope” that we had going into the subsequent auditions. If we had to do it over again I think we would have applied to even more “no prescreen” schools and planned for tons of walk ins at Unifides. Hang in there, stay positive and don’t overthink the process.
@ohiomtgirl22 with regard to the University of Miami, they do accept transfer students. A few transfer students have been given upper class status, but those students have typically come from other BFA programs. I would say go ahead and keep Miami on the list if you are OK with the likelihood that she will be placed with the freshman cohort, if accepted, unless her course work was comparable to the BFA freshman curricula.
@ohiomtgirl22 Depending on your D’s prior coursework, she may be able to graduate “on time” if she transfers to Viterbo. We’ve had proactive individuals come in from BA programs who have graduated in 3 years from Viterbo’s BFA MT, but YMMV. I was a transfer student to Viterbo and it has taken me 4.5 years to graduate, haha (although I had a double major AND I took a year away from campus to perform on a national tour, so I’m certainly not the norm!).
@CanadianMTgirl That is very exciting for you! Thank you for your information! We are not worried about her having to start over, it is inevitable!
@janact Thank you! As I said, we know she will probably hav to start over, and we’re kind of keeping it on there as a reach school!
@CaMom13 Thank you!! We’re totally open to her starting over, it’s part of the process! As of right now there are no financial restraints so any suggestions are welcome! We will look into BoCo!
@ohiomtgirl22 Lucky for you that there are so many good programs in your state
@SAS0792 - I wish I could love your post. Prescreens were the worst, my D didn’t pass a bunch and at the end I was grateful for it because it saved us travel time and expense and stress. She ended up with 6 Unified-weekend auditions and her best audition experiences / top schools after auditions were both non-prescreened.
@ohiomtgirl22 Missouri State has a BFA MT program specifically for transfers. I’m not sure of how it works, but many kids can complete their degree in 3 years!
Any tips on scheduling at Unifieds? Some schools like CMU scheduled my D for 4 hour slot and then we just got an audition time at Unifieds for 3:46 PM slot with no further info? I am confused. Any clarification would be deeply appreciated.
I shouldmake my last most more clear…a 3:46 PM slot “from another school”.
@KAT67 I know that is super frustrating. It’s not easy when schools want you to block huge amounts of time. I would recommend that you allot the requested amount of time for CMU. There will be other schools that ask for similar blocks of time. I would avoid overlapping auditions if you possibly can by calling school #2 and asking for a different time-frame. If you are lucky enough to be done early in the 4 hour block, you can try to get a walk-in or just take a break. My son didn’t apply to CMU, but I know Emerson had the 4 hour block request. They did their dance call first and then had kids in groups of 5 wait to do their audition. He was lucky enough to make it into the first group of 5 so he was done in about 90 minutes, but I’m guessing others were there for close to the 4 hour time-frame. NYU had all the kids busy for a full 4 hours at their audition as they split them into groups for dance call and then sent them different directions for song and mono auditions, etc.
CMU doesn’t have a dance call. We had a tight “overlap” between BU and CMU and the nice people at BU asked if people had conflicts and took them first. CMU takes a while - there’s a lot of waiting - but if your slot is 12-4 you should be fine for a 3:46 time slot elsewhere. We tried to do one afternoon one morning slot per day but we ended up with closely scheduled slots on two days and it was fine.
Most are understanding that you have other auditions. Make sure you know which ones are offsite because they aren’t as easy to juggle (like NYU was in chicago) Ithaca has a large timeframe because they have a presentation that you have to sign in before but then there is a list for the 5 minute audition so you can get an idea if you have a 2 hour wait. If you aren’t there when your name comes up they will let you in when you get there - we had another that afternoon so she could go do that and come back. Pace takes awhile but after the dance they let the kids that had another audition later that morning go first. She did 9 auditions (some had separate dance calls so more slots really) in 3 days so we could leave Tuesday.
Thanks for the input everyone! It really helps to have you all explain things!
One more note on NYU. My son did their audition first at Unifieds. It was his first audition at a school where he had not done a summer program so they were the first unfamiliar school - and he was nervous. The audition was on Saturday - which was nice as it was our only one that day which made being at a different location easier and less stressful. If your child is auditioning at NYU and can make that audition their first, I would recommend it. The audition experience with them was incredibly positive. They were warm and welcoming, and made it fun for the kids. They met with kids and parents together first and then sent the parents away for the next few hours. It killed the nerves my son felt going into unifieds, and he had a great time with the auditions after that.
If schools like CCM and BW fill up in September did you have your child’s teacher references and transcripts from the high school in JUNE? How does that work? We don’t go back to school till after Labor Day.