Which programs most surprised you or impressed you?

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
1

<p>Hello Everyone!</p>

<p>I’m new to CC and already addicted. I’m an MT Coach and so excited/proud to have kids in many top programs. We all could talk forever about these “top programs”, but what I want to know about are the programs that really surprised you or impressed you during the college audition process? Was there a school that moved from the bottom of your list to the top? Did you do a walk in audition at a unified and then fall in love with the school? Did you audition for a school “just because you needed another school” and then find out it was the perfect place for you?</p>

<p>I’m so excited to learn about new and exciting programs to pass on to my students for next year. CC has helped me so much in a short period of time. Thank you so much for all you contribute. You are now helping a whole new crop of kids!</p>

2

<p>I am not a student but a parent and I LOVE this question. For my daughter, it was by far Coastal Carolina University!. We had literally never even heard of it or the program prior to Unifieds. For her process, we tried to do as many on campus auditions and we could work out so that she could visit the schools as well as attend her audition. We only scheduled 2 schools for Chicago Unifieds because of that. The first one didn’t go well, she probably chose the wrong song for one of her pieces and then during her monologue, she knocked over the chair she was using and the seat came loose and rolled across the room. The auditioner, instead of being good humored about the incident, was a real jerk to her. She was feeling down and frustrated, so I suggested she try a “walk in” like many of the kids were doing. She did not want to audition for ANY program she wouldn’t ultimately consider attending so she spent the evening researching some of the schools that were in attendance. She came up with 4 that seemed like a fit from their websites. Coastal was first, they just happened to have a spot right then and she went in and auditioned. She had an awesome experience and the time they spent with her actually made her next (already scheduled audition) even better from their advice. She was called back to audition at the school, we flew down there in a whirl wind 36 hour trip and she absolutely fell in love with the program, faculty and school. She was accepted and it is among her top choices for her final decision. Still waiting to hear back from 4 schools, but it’s going to be tough to knock CCU out of that top spot after her experience there!</p>

3

<p>I know my D was very impressed with Ball State as was my better half. The faculty were very warm, engaged with parents and students a lot during the audition visit, very upbeat. They could tell they really care about he individual growth of each student. Of the ones I visited with my D, I really liked Western Michigan and Illinois Wesleyan. Again the atmosphere at each was very welcoming, the faculty were very friendly and you could tell they really care about their students. The students there were all very excited and happy with their programs. The three of these programs all offer a very good balance of dance, acting, and voice, and just the overall atmosphere at each feels like you’d get a great overall college experience I’d be delighted for my D to attend any of the three.</p>

4

<p>I am from MI and I will admit we passed over Western because it has a reputation here of being a huge party school. I know they have a pretty good reputation for their performing arts (both instrumental and theater) though.</p>

5

<p>Definitely! What a nice question.</p>

<p>As far as a school that moved from the bottom of my list to the top, Roosevelt/CCPA was somewhere towards the bottom of my list before my audition at Chicago Unifieds, mostly because I had never heard much about the school except from my voice teacher, who said it was nice but it wasn’t a fit for her daughter, and the website wasn’t very detailed about the program itself. I auditioned for BFA Musical Theatre / Dance Emphasis, which is a new program this year, and the dance call was great! The man who ran the dance call was Luis Perez, which was a pleasant surprise (okay so maybe I didn’t look very hard at the list of faculty), and it felt more like a class and less like an audition. He walked around the room and gave us all critiques as we rehearsed the combination, and they really clicked with me. The next day was my singing/acting portion, and the voice teacher who warmed me up was very friendly and personable, and her exercises helped me quite a bit more than my own warm-ups, which was another pleasant surprise. Then, the auditor for the actual audition portion responded very well (I noticed one school’s auditors were emotionless statues) and was also very friendly and professional.</p>

<p>As far as a school that I had never heard of until Unifieds, Cornish falls into that category. I did quite a few walk-ins - around 8 or 9, I believe - but most of them were just to pass the time or practice for a scheduled audition afterwards. I had been talking to some people in the lobby on the first night I arrived, and upon my mentioning Seattle, they suggested I audition for Cornish, so I scheduled a walk-in the next day. The audition was so unlike any other that I had experienced: the warm-ups were very interactive and spontaneous and involved a lot of improvisation and feeding off of each other’s energy. The auditor’s description of the program was very detailed - it seemed like a somewhat edgy program with a focus on artistic and spiritual identity and creation of collaborative artwork, and the interview questions were very interesting. All this combined with its location in Seattle and the friendliness and professionalism of the auditor was enough for it to jump to another one of my top choices.</p>

<p>I found that Unifieds was a great place to really learn about programs. I could tell which ones would fit me and which ones wouldn’t within the first minute or so in the audition room! Roosevelt is now one of my top choices as well, and I received an acceptance letter from Cornish about a month after my audition. Just waiting on the final few schools before I can make a decision!</p>

6

<p>I have to second the Coastal Carolina!! I felt like we should have paid for a day of workshops when we went to the on campus auditions! The faculty and students really make you feel like it is a place your child would want to spend four years and get amazing training!! The program is awesome and the show we saw was great! My D also loved Point Park and Michael M. (voice). We are so thrilled she has acceptances from CCU and Point Park-- very different schools so a decision will be very difficult!</p>

7

<p>This is a fun topic! </p>

<p>My son’s first choice was a school he had spent time at over the summer, and never wavered from the top spot - and many of the schools high on his list to start with stayed there as we went along…but there were actually three schools that stand out in my mind as having ended up higher on his list than expected. We did not know much about Otterbein going into the process, so it’s not that our opinion changed, but just that it really stood out in a positive way once we learned about it first hand. Listening to Dr. Stefano speak about the program and their training as well as how he views “success” in their grads really impressed us in the audition process. Point Park was on our list - but moved up significantly when we learned more about the program first hand…and then when we visited and spent time there we found that we loved the area of Pittsburgh where the school is, as well as the whole Pittsburgh theatre scene. They were really accommodating during our visit, and students and faculty were all very friendly. And lastly, Elon was a school we auditioned for early in the process just to get our feet wet and get one under our belts. Didn’t we end up loving it? Loved the area, the campus, the faculty, the program and philosophy…and then we saw a show there that was phenomenal. Word to the wise…pick your first “trial audition” school carefully, lest you end up adoring it! ;-)</p>

<p>There is another school that I prefer not to name, just because I know other people will jump all over me and say they had the best audition day, etc. (Which just goes to show you how highly individualized this whole process is)…but it was high on his list to begin with and just about fell right off after the audition day. It felt very disorganized and disjointed. The students working the “welcome” table seemed like they could not be bothered - no one volunteered any information, we had to ask questions to figure anything out. There was no place to wait, no holding area, etc. and it was very crowded and cold and rainy that day. I am sure that the weather contributed to our overall negative impression - but it was cold and gray when we were at Elon, and we loved it there. Really it was only a very positive interaction with one particular faculty member that even kept this school on my son’s list. I was planning to make him go spend a day at this school to give it another chance, but that audition day was a real turn-off for us. I know that you didn’t specifically ask about schools that went down on your list - but I just wanted to show that that can happen as well.</p>

8

<p>Back story: My son attended the VTA (Virginia Theater Association) conference in the fall, and was able to participate in an audition in front of representatives of over 20 colleges and universities, most but not all from Virginia. The schools posted callbacks for the selected students to come talk to them later in the day. It was essentially a recruiting tool for the colleges, but an excellent opportunity for the students as a kick-off to the audition season.</p>

<p>At VTA, my son completely changed his view about which Virginia schools interested him. One where he had expected to apply, VCU, turned him off completely. Unexpectedly, though, he was really wowed by Shenandoah. Both the head of their MT program and the new head of their acting program were there, and took a lot of time with him talking about their approach to training. He was very interested and impressed, decided to audition for Shenandoah, and was admitted. </p>

<p>Shenandoah is not on everybody’s radar screen, it’s one of the “hidden gems.” They don’t participate in the Unifieds, preferring to hold all auditions on campus. I have noticed that the schools with particularly nice campuses are inclined to do this, knowing that their campus is a powerful recruitment tool!</p>

9

<p>theatremom2013-I am from Michigan as well and all schools in some sense are big party schools. The same could be said of UM. I know several students at each school and you can find a party scene anywhere. My D auditioned at Western yesterday just to give me an instate school. We almost took it off our list because she was tired of auditioning and didn’t want to miss school again. She was glad we went, even though we visited prior, and she felt it was nice she still wanted to get out of the state. After spending the time auditioning and with all the students that were helping she really liked it. She felt the program was good with the elements she is looking for.</p>

10

<p>My D had the same experience at Cornish as Performerporter - you explained that perfectly. After that audition it moved up on her list. She also loved Utah after working with Denny and David-our visit is after Easter so we will know more then. </p>

<p>Elon was not really on my D’s radar but it was on mine. After the audition it jumped to the top and the students talking to them all day was really a big part of that, along with the feel of the school and faculty.</p>

<p>Same thing with Shenandoah-doing the audition on campus was great and the meeting with the faculty was great. It didn’t go to the top of her list but it went from first audition school to one we would consider.</p>

<p>Like MTMama2013 we had a top school lose lots of points after the audition. She didn’t have a bad audition in fact it went well but the faculty came off as arrogant, it could have been run better and the show that evening was not very impressive. This school had been at the top since our visit years ago, so it was a surprise.</p>

11

<p>We had a couple of pleasant surprises at auditions. Otterbein we had visited before, so we expected that to be good–and it was a wonderful audition experience. But there were two schools that my S wanted to take off his list and then was glad he didn’t, just because the on-campus auditions gave such a good impression. Both Hartt and JMU had great facilities and very friendly, bright, informative students who contributed to well-run audition days. </p>

<p>Like several others, we also had a school where the unfriendly audition environment and flat-out rudeness of one of the auditors made it a total non-contender. We had visited in the summer and liked it enough (despite unappealing location and “meh” campus) to keep it in the middle if the list, but the audition killed it. The students who were there to “help” spent most of their time chatting among themselves (I overheard a long, sarcastic, negative anecdote about the department chair) and stared at the prospective kids and families like we had just landed from Mars. Very illuminating! This was really an anomaly, though; in general, because we had done so much advance research, the auditions yielded only pleasant surprises and the feeling that we had picked a pretty good list!</p>

12

<p>I will say that we made a mistake when going to see a few bigger universities that would have been safeties. We just signed up for the general tour, and not a Fine Arts department tour, because the programs were not BFAs (I thought S would like to see the entire campus). Very difficult to be the only theatre kid. Lots of athletes, and at one spot, a load of nursing students - okay, so S didn’t think that was too bad ;). So, needless to say, the schools were perceived poorly by S. </p>

<p>I think if we had met with the department, it would have been much better, and maybe we could have been pleasantly surprised.</p>

13

<p>I will also say - I LOVE THIS THREAD TOPIC! so helpful & positive :-)</p>

<p>New to posting, but have read these threads for a while now … and we are also new to visiting schools.</p>

<p>My daughter received some helpful/positive feedback from the chair of USI during a performing arts-specific college fair in the fall of 2012. She wrote him an email, asking for information on visiting soon during an upcoming performance. He called me (my cell was the number my D had given him in her email) and we talked for some time about their program. He followed up with emails to me and the admissions office, as well as the box office, where he provided comp tickets to their next show, and info on local accommodations.</p>

<p>We visited and met with him, the head of the faculty, a couple of students, and my D was able to sit in on a class and take a tour. We absolutely loved their black box production and my D said, “why does nobody talk about this place?” … and this is a kid who sees shows almost every weekend and attends a performing arts high school.</p>

<p>The school is a medium-sized state school, and the campus does not wow you, necessarily. What DID wow us was the customer service of the chair, the faculty, and the entire admissions office. We felt like, “whoa”, this place sincerely is interested in my kid’s experiences here. </p>

<p>The chair of the department took my kid into his office and sat with her and answered questions for half an hour…and described to her in great detail the relationship between USI and the local theatre (New Harmony), with which the university has a very unique, summer stock-professional type of relationship. He acted like he had all the time in the world for us, as did the teachers and the students we met.</p>

<p>Besides the customer service aspect, there was also a huge plus on the horizon in the form of a multi-million dollar new theatre being built on campus for 2014. State of the art everything.</p>

<p>The customer service received and the new theatre, though, would not have sold it if we didn’t feel the show wasn’t also top-notch.</p>

<p>So, even though we’re pretty new to this process (current junior), she HAS visited several schools and we didn’t feel nearly as welcomed or like “real people, not stats” as we did at USI.</p>

14

<p>For those interested in the topic, there is at least one thread on “hidden gems” either here or on the Theater/Drama Majors board.</p>

<p>Chaptertwo, is USI the University of Southern Illinois?</p>

15

<p>It is the University of Southern Indiana.</p>

<p>I should also clarify that I am usually on the theatre-specific forum, not the MT forum…and USI’s program does not seem to be wholly focused on MT. </p>

<p>My daughter is more focused on straight theatre than MT.</p>

<p>That said, I know USI does perform musicals, and the local theatre to which I referred, New Harmony, also does both in the summer.</p>

<p>Hope this helps!</p>

16

<p>Times3, I had to laugh at your second paragraph. I think my D must have been at that same audition.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, I was unable to attend most of my D’s auditions because of work, but I was able to attend the BoCo audition, which was well-run and friendly. I also visited Pace with her last spring and they were wonderful. </p>

<p>None of this is surprising. My reason for posting is that after reading this thread and so many others on CC, I hope others who have sons and daughters in MT who are Juniors now will not do what we did wrong–not enough auditions. Currently my D has one option. So many of the schools she didn’t consider seem to offer so much and whether she chose them or not over her current option, at least she may have had choices and may have felt better about where she will likely go because she chose it, and not because it was her only option. </p>

<p>Our family was prepared for the audition season and hopeful and thought we had made the right choices. What were were totally unprepared for was the decision part of the process. It has been heartbreaking and I think unnecessarily so. I love seeing all the comments about programs we didn’t even consider. I apologize if I’m a little off-topic but I just wanted to chime in here and congratulate those of you who went outside of those programs we all know, and now have some wonderful choices.</p>

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<p>Littleviking, I definitely hear you when it comes to wishing you had applied to a few more. As things turned out, our list was fine, and my son does have choices–and bear in mind, he’s a boy! If I’d had been going through this with a daughter, I would have insisted on exploring a few more “hidden gem” programs, especially places like Coastal and Shenandoah that have sparked so many warm and enthusiastic comments on CC. However, as everyone points out: you can only go to ONE school! I’m so glad that your daughter has a destination (it isn’t clear whether she is waiting to hear from more places?) and I’m betting that by this time next year, she’ll be so happy with where she landed!</p>

18

<p>What an interesting and useful topic as we all begin to reflect upon the audition season now over (or for most of us anyway!). Going into the process, my S had one favorite top school that he dreamed of attending. He had been accepted to their summer preparatory program and had great vibes from faculty. I don’t want to name it, but its rather centrally located in the country and has a great reputation for selectivity and producing top (already trained, really) performers.</p>

<p>At the audition, it dropped off my list completely, although he still hoped of attending there. The location of the school and the vibe of the audition day just seemed negative to me. Because we got this one out of the way quickly, we were able to look to other schools with a different eye…</p>

<p>and that’s where it got interesting. We had some stellar experiences - my S chose not to do Unified and so we made eight trips total and visited 15 campuses over those weekends. Schools that had not really been seriously on his list moved to the top—especially Point Park and Roosevelt – both of whom were gracious, fun, engaging, well-run and you could tell the students themselves were enthusiastic about their schools. Some campuses we visited ranged from clique-ish to downright rude.</p>

<p>The most important thing we learned? the time together as a family with our son passing into adulthood is a pearl beyond price…and yes, he can only attend ONE school. He has some great acceptances, so now we are just waiting to see what else shakes out of the bag. However, he emerged from this process with very clear favorites as a result of the on-campus experiences. I know Unifieds is a great option for many; but I am happy my son was able to do it this way. You learn a lot about a school by how this process is run.</p>

<p>Thanks for the topic!</p>

19

<p>Indiana University surprised me the most because I didn’t know much about their program and I had never really heard of them before, but I wanted to audition anyways because I love the school. That audition day was my best experience by far, they had an amazing info session with really impressive faculty. They did an acting class for students which was great and it really felt like they cared and wanted to get to know us. I really loved it there but I didn’t expect to! Also Ohio Northern I was really impressed with, I did a walk in at Unifieds and spent about 20 minutes with the faculty. It was great for someone to care to get to you know you and also to get to know the faculty! Again, I didn’t know much about it beforehand, but I got an amazing feeling from that school and am strongly considering attending.</p>

20

<p>^^Mcpcwhite, I just want to hit a “like” button for your post. The process was incredibly valuable, not just for learning about schools but for my son to learn about himself. We auditioned on-site for all but one school and are SO grateful we were able to do it (although I’m not sure I’ll ever recover, financially or physically/psychologically, from all the travel!). My son ended up coming full circle in a way–he “fell in love” with a number of schools where he would’ve been happy to go, but always ended up returning to his original first choice (where he was lucky enough to be accepted)–but that process of comparing it over and over to other places was crucial. His senior year has been a true rite of passage!</p>