Yes - it all adds up. Application fees, pre-screen fees, audition travel, coach fees (if you use one - we didn’t) college visit travel during the decision process. We did not visit schools (other than the one where my son did a summer program) until after acceptances. I’m not sure how much we spent specifically on aps and pre-screens, but my husband who does the finances floated an approximate “all-up” number to me. We kept travel to a minimum. S did two on-campus auditions and the rest at unifieds. We drove for all of those keeping our costs to a minimum. After acceptances, we did a 2 day trip to NYC to visit his two top choices - this was the only flight. We spent close to $8K. I think it’s pretty normal to spend more if you travel to more campuses and apply to more schools. (Applied to 11, did walk-ins at 3 and applied to 2 after the fact - one of which waived their ap fee.)
On average, how much would you say the application process alone (school app + department specific fees) costs per school? In @speezagmom’s summary above, it could be as high as $500 or $600. Is that accurate?
@MTDad2025 From what I put together for my S, we’re looking at about $1000-$1200 for applications/auditions to 15 schools. I may be missing a fee or two which is why I have the range.
@MTDad2025 application fees range anywhere from $25 to $120, so again it depends on school applying to. Then auditon fees are $30 to $90. We have a spreadsheet with all the info listed for the schools my daughter is planning on applying to and it currently totals $1595 for app and audition fees. Now of course you have to add to this any travel cost for auditions, but again that is very personalized not only to your list but whether you drive, fly, do only unifieds, etc
I think @speezagmom 's figure included those travel costs
Yes - I included our travel costs. I think the most expensive program we had was NYU with $100 application fee and $100 audition fee. I want to say the cheapest was around $40 for application for a school with no pre-screen. There could be others out there that are cheaper - just not ones my son applied to. BW was the biggest surprise at $0 for application fee - but then they had a $75 audition fee. Every school is different.
I misread how much travel costed you, @speezagmom. Thanks for the clarification. I can now step back from the ledge.
Some app fees will be waved if you can prove financial need. Same with getacceptd fees.
We sent out SAT reports this morning to all of the schools S19 knows he will apply to and he’s dropping off transcript requests at the high school right now. I don’t think I budgeted enough for that, lol! We’re really hoping to get many of the applications done before school starts so he can focus on prescreens. I think he felt a little overwhelmed by how many times he has had to retype the same info and how much additional writing there is for schools not on the common app - I believe the word he used was “mind numbing.”
Ok… I have what may be a dumb question… for monologues, when it says ‘from a play’, does that include musicals?
@lithpool it means monologue from a play not a musical and published and performed not just monologues from a monologue book. Have one dramatic, one comedic and maybe one Shakespeare if the school is an acting first school.
Is the college application season starting to get stressful or is it just me? xD
@slumbermachine in NY school hasn’t even started so we can start common app but nothing from school like transcript or reccs…luckily D who is a senior is NOT the MT kid thats D who is junior so at least for no we aren’t stressing, but maybe around the country where school is already in session? nothing we can really do here in NY.
@MomofMTBoy Thank you. That’s what I figured, but thought I’d ask, just in case.
@slumbermachine I’m raising my hand over here! Lol. I don’t think S is as stressed as I am, but maybe that’s because he doesn’t realize just how much he still has to do!! Sigh… just going to breathe…
Applications are going okay here… most that are available are done as my D set her own deadline for the first day of school (tomorrow for us). I guess we are lucky…our counselors work year round so we were able to get transcripts and recommendations as needed. Still several applications are not available until September. I am stressing more over the thought of filming pre-screens. We didn’t get great video for either of her summer program auditions. To stop it all off she’s decided she’s tired of her monologues and wants to find new ones. Oh and there is the minor stress of how we are going to pay for everything! 
@MomofMTBoy I’d also recommend looking at the requirements on the school sites and seeing if you can line up requirements on the monologues. Some of the schools require that you have monologues from different time periods. I know we scrambled at unifieds to find a play, have my son read it, and work the monologue in the hotel room as we figured out late that we had one school that required a monologue from a different timeframe than the other schools he was auditioning at.
Ugh…my D needs to take the SAT on Oct 6th. She has a mediocre ACT score she could submit, but we really want to see what the SAT results bring in. Since we need to submit early, should we just submit the mediocre ACT and hope SAT score is high and update the app? Or wait to submit all together?
^^^my D submitted everything except her test scores and followed up once it was clear which score she wanted to submit.
off topic, is there a certain number of posts one needs to be able to pm?
@NYYFanNowMTdad - You need to have 15 posts in order to pm. Looks like you only have one to go! 
@ohmom2017 guess im there now thanks