Hi @MidwestMTMom! Boy, can I relate to what your struggling with. My D is in 8th grade and goes to a PA school, and one of her teachers told me about this board last year. I’m not sure whether I’m happy or unhappy about discovering it, LOL – happy because I’m learning so much NOW instead of when it’s too late, but unhappy because I’m getting so stressed out about trying to make sure that the experiences and training my daughter has over the next 4 years will make her a desirable candidate for BFA programs.
We are struggling with the same issue of training vs performance time and how to balance that. We live in a major metropolitan area that doesn’t have many professional theater opportunities for kids, but has a lot of Youth Theaters, plus of course shows at D’s school. Last year she was pretty much in a show the entire school year, and while that was fun and exciting for her, we learned that all Youth Theaters are not created equally, and not all are good learning experiences. So this spring my D decided to take a break from shows for the rest of the school year and concentrate on taking more dance classes. She resisted taking dance when she was younger, but has learned since attending her PA school that it’s really important, so now she is trying to play catch-up, and it is hard. Between private dance, group dance classes, voice lessons, piano lessons (so she can learn to read music and plunk out songs for herself), and her extended school day at her PA school, it’s a very tight schedule, and not everything fits in it when a show rehearsal schedule is added on top of all of that. 
Since we’re new to this too, I don’t have any advice other than to keep reading CC and maybe to check out Mary Anna Dennard’s book “Before I Got In”, which has advice on what your child should be doing to help prepare them for the BFA audition process. Good luck, and know that you’re not alone in this. 