<p>@compadv, it sounds like we had a very similar experience (ED to NU, rejected, hustling to catch up), and I’m glad your son was able to recover and redirect and have a successful outcome. </p>
<p>So proud of you daniellececelia! It’s pretty crazy how our paths have crossed on TWO websites. It was great going through this journey with you! :)>- </p>
<p>@jkellynh17 wow, small world. I am having trouble keeping track of everyone…has your son/daughter decided yet or are they already in a program?</p>
<p>He’s at CCPA, just finishing his first year. Maybe they’ll cross paths later in some midwestern theater. </p>
<p>I actually think statistically Northwestern accepts a much larger proportion from ED; so statistically you have a higher chance. But you’re right–it’s hard to say who is applying ED. Are they a more highly qualified subset? I don’t think we can know. My own D applied RD because we have limited funds and she didn’t want to commit to one college early on before financial awards came in. The fact is all top BA programs (and BFA programs) are crapshots. She was rejected from others. She was a NMF (and high stats in general) and I’m guessing that helped with Northwestern, but that didn’t seem to mean a thing with auditioned programs. </p>
<p>As a side note: Since she was my third,and I had learned the hard way, I actually pre-tested her for the PSATs, determined it was possible for her to score high, and then tutored her for the PSAT to increase her chances of an NMF. (I’m an SAT tutor & she actually allowed me to tutor her…) Our state is the second hardest state to get an NMF so I knew it would be hard, but that strategy definitely paid off. </p>
<p>Financially, you really have to have the same sort of range as admissions–safeties, matches, reaches ( only financially). You can find this out by looking at their stated policy (some schools say they are need blind, some schools have a policy of meeting need with grants/scholarships, although fewer do with the financial crisis), and their endowment. Know however that you cannot ever predict whether the school will award you a scholarship–I know one person who was awarded a $40,000 scholarship/year for a top BFA program that isn’t known to award scholarships. My own S was awarded a large scholarship from Tisch which people say they ‘never’ do. So those sorts of schools can be ‘reaches’ financially, but you can still apply.</p>
<p>@connections Congrats to your daughter on NMF! Thats a great strategy and glad it paid off. Congrats to your S on a Tisch scholarship. I guess you do never know. You made some good points about scholarships and financial aid. My S has been working really hard applying for every scholarship he can find and hopefully some will pan out. </p>
<p>@jkellynh17 I hear Roosevelt has a great program…hope he is enjoying it. Chicago is a small town so our paths may undoubtedly cross :)</p>
<p>He’s so happy, it’s unbelievable. And yes, Chicago, I really think it’s the best place in America to start a theater career. There are a lot of non-equity auditions, even top theaters like Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare have open calls. And from what I hear from my son, they don’t tolerate divas. He says you get your first job on talent, but your second, third, fourth etc. is talent plus work ethic/being a good guy (or girl). </p>
<p>We didn’t do the audition coach thing, didn’t even know it existed. I’m not sure we would have even if we could have found one in our small-town, USA location. Summer program might have been good, but my son was working for a local farmer this last summer, an experience in hard work and earning money we value a lot so not sure I would change that either.<br>
He has spent his school years for the past three years doing play after play… two or three a year, and that seemed like enough. Also, he has spent the last two years working with a director who has her MFA from Evansville. She heads up our drama department in the schools and has been working to grow our theatre department here. My son has benefited greatly in many ways from working with her. He hasn’t had coaching per say but he has done several high caliber productions and I suspect, he’s gotten a lot of the same support a kid with a coach might get. </p>
<p>I’m surprised to hear that applying early to Northwestern is a bad idea. We didn’t do that, and thought we probably should have! We knew so little going in that my son applied ED to CMU. The system let us, but then sent us an email explaining why that wouldn’t make a difference. </p>
<p>The biggest thing I wish I’d done differently is find CC about 9 month sooner than I did! 
The collective wisdom and support here are invaluable and have helped us more than any other single thing.</p>
<p>I too also wish I had found CC last year, and not just a short while ago. </p>
<p>@riptide and @octiviar Agreed on CC It has been a tremendous support and wealth of information. Will rely on it heavily for navigating financial aid and for D’s dance college process…</p>
<p>@jkellynh Agreed on Chicgao being a great theatre town. So many opportunities and great shows. So glad to hear your S is so happy :)</p>
<p>If I were to go through this process again I would change quite a few things. First off, I wouldn’t sell myself so short—I chickened out of applying to U Mich and am now left to wonder what my result would’ve been. I didn’t have the academic stats to get in as a regular undergrad, but I certainly wasn’t too far behind.</p>
<p>I also wouldn’t have wasted my time on auditioning for the free application schools. I applied to Fordham simply because it was free, but when I went to audition I was physically perturbed by the school and the program.</p>
<p>I also would’ve applied to less safeties. I applied to three safety schools that I really had no interest in attending. I really only needed one sure thing on my list. I also would have preferred that to be a stronger and non auditioned acting school.</p>
<p>One last piece of advice; don’t apply to schools merely based on reputation. For example, I applied to Ithaca because I knew it was a good program, but in the long run it really wasn’t a good fit for me. You really have to look at other things besides the acting program itself; do I want to live here for four years?</p>
<p>All in all, I am someone with a success story. Miraculously, I was admitted to NYU Tisch and Marymount Manhattan, and waitlisted at both Syracuse and DePaul. I am happy to say that I’m headed to the big apple to spend 4 years at NYU!</p>
<p>There are SO many things we would have done differently. My D did not go to a performing arts high school nor do we have a strong or inclusive community theater network here. My D discovered her passion for theater as a freshman in high school so we came very late to the game and has only done high school theater. She attended a few summer theater camps - not the elite ones mentioned often on here - including an audition “bootcamp,” but we had no idea she’d be up against kids that have been working with private audition coaches and the like. And unfortunately, we didn’t discover CC until mid-audition season.<br>
But thank goodness we did (!) as we were previously unaware of the walk-in opportunities at Unifieds - which ended up producing some great acceptances for her. Given that we were so uninformed and naïve, I guess we were really lucky that she received any acceptances at all. </p>
<p>Definitely think interview prep is just as important as monologue prep! Would have D focus on this aspect to a greater degree if we could do it all over again for sure. I think certain schools also want to see a level of maturity which can only be conveyed in an interview. I would have three questions ready for each school at minimum that are specific to their program.</p>
<p>@characteractress Congrats on NYU…enjoy the Big Apple! I also agree on only one safety and going by fit and not reputation. </p>
<p>I guess I would disagree a bit on the “only one safety” idea. It really depends on what you’re considering as safeties, right? My advise would be to thoroughly vet those schools relied on as safeties and ask yourself if you would actually want to attend if things don’t go as planned. If you can honestly answer yes, then include them - maybe a couple. If not, you guys are right, it’s a waste of time and effort.
And I concur on not getting caught up on reputation and thereby excluding schools with outstanding, competitive programs because they are not the Hollywood Reporter list or whatnot. It’s really, truly about fit for your kid. </p>
<p>The safeties–assuming you mean non-auditioned academic safeties–were one place I insisted on having a cushion. They’re easy, inexpensive applications, and my son had three that were all either EA or rolling admissions. That was also the one place I did NOT insist on visits in advance; if it had come down to the safeties, he would’ve visited in spring, so I wanted him to have options. Because it was no big deal to apply to them, it seemed to make sense to have at least two! But yes, as you say, it was also important that they were schools that, at least based on what you could learn without visiting, he would consider attending. (bad sentence but hopefully it made sense.)</p>
<p>Short answer…start researching earlier so that I would have found CC (and all of you) earlier.</p>
<p>Long answer…it’s complicated. </p>
<p>First, I don’t want anyone to think I’m not thrilled with my son’s acceptances, his theatre teacher or his guidance counselor. That’s not the point, and I’m sure EVERYONE involved did his/her best with the info we had available at the time.</p>
<p>This may work best as the story of how things DID happen.</p>
<p>My son has been saying for several years that he wants to be an actor and that his drama teacher/director at his HS told him that BFA, then MFA was the only way to go. We researched “top” schools and two Spring Breaks ago, my H started taking my S to visit schools…first on West coast, last year, East coast.</p>
<p>We questioned the BFA only route, but I would say our FIRST mistake was not meeting with his theatre teacher immediately to discuss that particular concern. We did meet to ask him, “Does S have what it takes?”, and didn’t come away much more confident that he did. I think the final word was something like, “I’m sure he would probably get into a program somewhere…he works hard and he’s an adequate actor…he should try for a BFA program.”</p>
<p>We tend to let our kids do everything they possibly can by and for themselves, so other than taking our S to visit schools, we wanted to allow the journey to be his. It seems they have a “tradition” in his theatre dept. at school that the director “chooses your monologues”. SECOND mistake was accepting this as “the way it is done”. We waited and waited for son’s monologues to be chosen for him. Then he didn’t want to tell us what they were until he had them memorized. In the meantime, I was beginning to panic and research and found CC, you theatre/drama parents and the recommendation to read, “I Got In”, by Mary Anna Dennard. It was only about a month before his first audition date that he finally did his monologues for us. YIKES. Problem number THREE! They contained profanity. And I’m not a prude, but IMO, this was unacceptable profanity. They were not contrasting in that the “tone” of both his comedic and dramatic were quite similar (frustrated, angry). Luckily, I had the research to back me up that this was NOT GOOD. Unluckily, my S chose this time to dig in his heels and become the stubborn child I had not seen since he was in his terrible twos. He absolutely refused to change his monologues. He insisted he loved them and they were chosen especially “for him” and that he was NOT going to change them…even though I was madly researching and purchasing plays and communicating privately with an amazing person I met on CC who took much personal time to give me guidance, copy and email monologues, etc. We had another meeting with teacher at this point who defended his monologue choices, but admitted that he had never even had a student apply to most of the schools at which S was applying (meaning highly selective BFA programs).</p>
<p>My H enlisted the help of a friend who is a professional videographer to film S’s prescreen video and when they arrived at HS blackbox to film, realized that S and teacher had no idea what the time limits were, and my H had to argue with them to get them to adjust the monologue to fit the limits (I mean, they were 2 minutes over) while kind professional friend waited for over an hour for them to get their stuff together. So even though I had worked with S to make a spreadsheet detailing each audition and what was required, he and teacher had decided they did not really need to adhere to these guidelines. This is about the time where I totally freaked out…it seemed like a TRAIN WRECK was bound to happen, and I didn’t quite know how to prevent it.</p>
<p>In a stroke of brilliance (if I do say so myself), I hired (for a very modest $ amount) my yoga instructor who is an aspiring local actress who works closely with a local casting director and I asked her to help my son prepare for auditions. Amazingly, my S agreed to meet with her and actually liked her and took direction from her. It may not have hurt that she is a gorgeous, young actress. She worked with him several times, and although she was not able to get him to switch monologues, she managed to get him to work them many different ways, with many crazy adjustments, etc. He also agreed to practice a modified (sans profanity) version in case it seemed the prudent way to perform it at a certain audition (can you say Jesuit?) A week before auditions, we (my yoga teacher, my H, me and my younger S) did mock auditions with him…he had to pretend to audition for each of his 13 schools, do additional monologues (until his repertoire was exhausted), do adjustments, sing, dance, and answer interview questions. We responded in a myriad of different ways…sometimes basically ignoring him, sometimes grilling him relentlessly. And a few days later we made him do it all again. He did this grudgingly, still insisting that his teacher was giving him all the instruction necessary. But I was beginning to be able to breathe again. It seemed he just might really, finally be prepared for auditions.</p>
<p>I’m not going to second-guess any of the rest of it…his list of schools, how we scheduled auditions, or the fact that he needed to miss almost two weeks of school to fit all of his auditions in. It was what it was. And he has an amazing list of acceptances from which to choose. But I do believe with all my heart that if I had researched sooner and managed to understand what he needed (on top of what was being provided at school), he might have even been able to gain acceptance to a few of his high reach programs.</p>
<p>End result…he is THRILLED! Maybe nothing I did made any difference. But I am happy that I found CC and I’m happy that S2 thinks he wants to go into Engineering. So I won’t be going anywhere…this is where the knowledge is and I’ll feel much more confident and prepared as S2 begins this journey…which begins about…NOW! </p>
<p>Oh, and definitely set up an email acct. for all college correspondence to which both student and parents have access. It was really difficult not knowing what was going on at first…until S got into the habit of checking his emails.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone here who helped me through this process. Your knowledge and camaraderie has been invaluable and unparalleled. And good luck to everyone beginning this journey. There is a wealth of knowledge on this thread. I hope it makes for smooth sailing.</p>
<p>I think I would have stocked up on valium. </p>
<p>Hahahah, annelisesmom! Hindsight is 20/20. I may still need some to get me through the “decision process”…but after that we’re home free, right?</p>
<p>Oh no there’s plenty of drama to come, @MsMommy. It’ll just be long distance and you won’t hear about until the last possible minute and it will be much, much harder to do anything about it. (ahem, also having a rough day, sorry…)</p>