I thought it would be nice to condense in a topic thread the one or two most helpful pieces of advice to those coming into this next year. D is finished for the season but I realize some are still waiting.
If you want, please list the biggest thing you wished you’d known or done before you began.
I’ll start:
Get your grades up!
It doesn’t matter if you get into every program in existence if you can’t afford it. We encouraged D to get up from a 3.3 to a 3.6 or above. That seems to be the cut off for getting some of the MOST money allotted by financial aid scholarships. A lot of programs would have been affordable to D if she had just raised her grades. She didn’t believe that or was distracted or whatever but it was easily doable for her and yet she, well, didn’t. Also know 2 friends who got in nowhere perhaps due to their 2.2 and 2.3 grades?? Who knows.
We thought we had a well rounded field.
How it broke down for us:
0 aid from Fasfa in loans, grants or whatever. We knew that going in.
5 schools she applied to were schools we could afford without aid. Rejected by each. Bummer.
11 schools she applied to were schools we needed aid to afford. Accepted by 5. Two gave no aid. Three gave far too little though we know they give a lot to students who are better academically so she missed the mark.
She got talent money from 2 of those schools but even in combo it was less than 25% off sticker price.
And on 2 more of those 11 she was waitlisted. Considering what has happened so far with aid, we will see.
Yes, of course we asked for more but it wasn’t forthcoming.
My parting advice would be that the audition process is only the first part. Money is a very important factor and great grades are the ticket to more options!! I never thought we could be closed out of the game on this but it did happen. Don’t make the same mistake! Better grades or find 10-15 schools you can afford without aid. I realize this applies to only a minority segment of the college population but for those who can relate-be warned!
Just a comment…academics are important, and not just for scholarship money, but a better academic record opens up more colleges where a fine academic record is needed to be accepted. Academics still count in the BFA admissions process.
This was not a problem we had - but make sure that you actually like/want to attend the schools on you audition for. I have read so many times about kids not liking their acceptances, and it always makes me wonder- then why was that school on your list?
@toowonderful I sooooo agree with that. I am befuddled when kids say they don’t like the schools they were accepted to. I have to wonder why these schools are on their list. While it is only natural to have some favorites, applicants should like every school on their list enough to attend. Building a college list is one of the crucial aspects of this process.
@toowonderful, I think schools end up on the list because students are unable or unwilling to visit prior to auditioning. Also, in an ideal world, we would see a complete picture before choosing schools for the list–full disclosure of cost (grants vs loans). Since we all believe in our kids’ talent and we all hear about huge talent awards, it’s easy to slide into thinking that not only will your kid pass the audition, but will get talent award too. (Rejections are a wake-up call.) The websites are often very appealing, making you believe this might happen. It’s not until a student visits that they really think hard about urban vs country setting. And, if you’re on a budget, it’s hard to visit a lot of schools.
But we read of students who still haven’t visited who simply don’t want to attend the schools that accepted them and not due to the lack of a FA award. They simply don’t seem interested or happy about those acceptances. I think that is what @toowonderful meant and I mean too.
For example, I have a current advisee and when I was told of one of her recent acceptances to a college, her mom told me the daughter has no interest in going there (thus not at all excited to be accepted) and they haven’t visited. Why did it land on the list?
My own children would have gone to any of the schools on their list. They had some that they preferred over others but each school was on their list due to some interest in attending, if accepted.
Without knowing who is rejecting or accepting their offers, they don’t know if they will have more money to negotiate with. Patience is a virtue and timing is critical in negotiations.
@soozievt, I think last-minute panic has a lot to do with schools ending up on lists. Probably by the parents, rather than the kids. I remember getting nervous at Unifieds, hearing how many kids were auditioning at 20 or more schools. I tried to get my son to do a few walk-ins, but (with one notable exception) he put his foot down. He was also determined not to visit too many schools before auditioning, since he didn’t want to get to like any particular campus when so much hinged on a two-minute audition. We do plan on visiting the schools where he is accepted/waitlisted. The kid is way better at this game than I am!
I think schools that kids don’t want to attend end up on lists for three reasons: 1) the kids put them on without knowing much about them (like what @claire74 said); 2) the kids THINK they will like the school, but then something happens at the audition/campus visit that makes them dislike it (this happened to my D at a top tier school…after the audition, she said she would rather take a gap year than go to that school); and 3) the kids put a school on their list, but then hear other kids dis the school and say something bad about it, and they lose interest.
Hopefully, nobody is putting schools on their list that they know from the get-go they would never attend. Our coaches told my D not to include ANY schools that she wouldn’t be happy to attend. That’s what the list started as…but by the end of auditions, there were at least 3 (out of 16) that she would never, ever go to.
@monkey13 - I have a 4th reason - the parents make the kids put it on their list because it’s their alma mater, and know that big academic $$ is available. (real life - she cancelled that audition once we parents finally got a clue.)
Or “everyone else” is applying there so I should apply there.
I have to say I was shocked by the number of kids going to every room at unifieds to see if they could do a walk-in audition. There is no way those kids knew about all those programs and wanted to go to every one of those schools. It was almost like it was the thing to do (how many schools can you audition for) or they were in panic mode and wanted to increase their chances of getting an acceptance.
My S also had a similar experience to others where he thought he applied to a school that he was definitely interested in and then walked out of the audition saying he wouldn’t go there if he was accepted because he didn’t think it was a fit for him - just a “vibe” he got.
My S was never thrilled with the two schools that were on his list as safeties, but he needed safeties on his list. He would only go to them if they were the only places he was accepted. He would have been fine at them, but he would not have been happy during this point of the process if those were his only acceptances. As a side note, he was accepted academically to one of those schools and as soon as he received his first BFA MT acceptance, he declined the college acceptance and cancelled his audition for the BFA MT program at that school. He was fortunate to have options early enough to do that.
Adding to what @Bisouu said --Make certain the safety you love is also a safety you absolutely can afford! I had a panic attack on or about March 1 on this very topic. We since lucked out with a solid BFA that is affordable but it could have easily gone the other way. I would work on that safety a little more with our D if I were to do it again.
@toowonderful and @soozievt I’m actually relieved that we added schools that my daughter was "absolutely"not interested in. Some kids know exactly what they want in the beginning of this process and others think they know, and soon realize they want something completely different. My daughter was completely fickle throughout this process. She flipped from “I will only go to a school in a big city”, to “forget that, I want a real college campus experience!” We visited this one school with a great reputation during her junior year, and she said it was absolutely not for her. She resisted applying, but I encouraged her (begged), and after a few of her senior friends got in and started sharing what an incredible school it was on social media, it rose up to the top of her list. When she auditioned on campus, she saw it through a whole new light and was thrilled she had applied. I’ve seen some amazingly talented kids rejected from all but 1-2 schools, or sit on a dozen wait lists until May 1. I say keep an open mind and apply to as many schools with great MT programs as you can and your opinions on them may change once those rejections and acceptances start rolling in. So many people here were asking so late in the process if there were any schools that were still taking applications. I say toss out a wide net in the beginning, just in case.
@Autmlvs615 - I don’t think there is anything wrong with a diverse list of schools. My D had city/rural, LAC/Big 10, an ivy- really all types. She did have a strong idea of what she wanted (and it turned out to be what she chose) but I wanted her to have options. And yet, all the schools fell within a specific set of criteria. And I will confess that we did end up with a “all my friends are auditioning there” school- which did NOT fit any of our other criteria- so it was an outlier. One negative side of the way we did things was that D adamantly refused to do walk-ins at Unifieds - and I know lots of people have found great programs that way. We had spent so much time researching, D was NOT willing to dive into the unknown.