<p>Last year my wife and I attended a talk given by the department chair of a very good program, with a number of parents and aspiring MT kids in attendance. The first thing he said to the kids was that they have to keep their grades up, as they have to meet the general criteria for acceptance to the university to be considered for a place in the MT program. He talked about one student from last year that they really wanted in the program, but they couldn’t get her accepted because her grades were too far below the standard for general acceptance. This is the norm for any college from what I understand (and using core classes GPA is also the norm as I understand it) regardless of the program you’re applying for, so I don’t think it should be surprising that can happen to MT kids. The HS college/guidance counselors should have been more helpful in this regard.</p>
<p>For those coming up next year, make sure you know exactly what your child’s adjusted GPA is, then make sure the schools he or she is looking at are consistent with the GPA. And tell them to study for the SAT/ACT!</p>
<p>The school is Illinois Wesleyan. I’m still in shock that this happened. Zonolo, my own son’s unweighted GPA is in the 2.75 range - which while it is not stellar, was good enough to get him academically to all but one of the 15 he applied to - he has a solid ACT score, lots of extracurriculars and strong letters of recommendation. Recalculating the GPA of a performing arts kids to remove all of his artistic electives (you know, where they truly excel) is baffling to me…but not NEARLY as baffling as prescreening and inviting a kid to travel across the country to audition at enormous expense…only to be told, oops you don’t qualify academically. Very very disappointing. And I’m pretty sure it affects at least one other person we know as well - same thing at the same school.</p>
<p>I’m sorry your son had that experience at IWU. I’m curious if he had gone over his academics with a college counselor at his HS before applying, and if he had submitted his application to the school well in advance of his audition. If they were still reviewing his application at the time he auditioned, it could very well be that they did not know about his GPA and other academics prior to the audition. It sounds like unfortunate timing of when things were reviewed, etc. </p>
<p>As for the recalculation of GPAs, my wife works in a college counseling office and that is fairly common among colleges now. They have to normalize scores for comparison, so they only look at core classes that all kids are required to take. And then they set minimums for admittance. And with a school like IWU where the class size is low and a lot apply, the required grades are generally higher. I think their average incoming class GPA was 3.7-3.8 last year. </p>
<p>So again I feel terrible that you went though this, but your story does serve as a good reminder to those applying for next year to make absolutely sure they do their homework well in advance as far as academics.</p>
<p>I agree with jeffandann’s points. Applying to college, even for a BFA, requires building a balanced college list that appropriately fits an applicant’s artistic level AND their academic qualifications. I see too many people build a college list of BFA in MT schools without any regard to finding schools in their academic range. Academic and artistic qualifications matter in admissions. And yes, academic core classes are what a college is going to look at in terms of the grades.</p>
<p>mcpcwhite, while you say that your son’s other schools accepted him, you can’t compare apples to oranges. The schools you have listed on the acceptance thread have a lower academic threshold in terms of selectivity than Illinois Wesleyan. They are not in the same ballpark.</p>
<p>Yes as a higher ed person myself, I made sure we did all the right things and they had his transcripts well in advance…over 3 months actually. Not only did we know to build a balanced list, we obviously did so succesafully. There is no excuse for this given the follow uo work I did before we traveled.</p>
<p>Maybe I didn’t make it clear that I called the school well before we traveled after he received an invitation to audition. We knew going in that this one was an academic reach so I was careful to follow up. That was my whole point!</p>
<p>I think that we are all told to apply for the reach school as well as the safety schools both academically and with the MT programs. It sounds that mcpcwhite did everything right including his followup phone call once invited for the audition. Personally, I think it is very irresponsible to have invited his son only to deny him an academic spot AFTER he has auditioned.
I have seen students accepted into a MT program and academically into a school that they were not actually academically within the standards that they list. It certainly happens with athletes often. Perhaps, all the other stuff made the difference…extra curriculars, SATS, and recommendations all of which mcpcwhite’s son had. He would have no reason to think that his son would not have at least a chance to get in academically especially since he was invited to audition.<br>
I think this raised some good awareness for parents to absolutely be sure that there is an academic acceptance verbally or in writing before embarking on an audition.</p>
<p>My son’s list ran the gamut — we included schools that were “reach” in terms of academic and artistic – along with a good number of schools with lower academic standards – plus some straight up safety schools that were non-audition BA programs with academic standards compatible with his transcripts and ACT score (which was 26 by the way). I am no dummy and knew this would be a challenge in some schools…and some were not even on his list because of this.
Having said that, IWU was an academic reach school and we knew it, but I also knew from the phone call I made that my son was considered within the range of what they accept so we proceeded to the audition. I have been a college professor for nearly 20 years and I am aware that schools routinely re-calculate GPAS, but every school has a little different formula for this and not all schools exclude electives. This is particularly true of fine arts programs, many of whom want to see the “whole” student and take this into consideration. I am also aware of many schools (including the one where I teach) that adjust GPAs to a ten-point scale (my son is in a high school that uses a 7 point scale). That makes a huge difference as well - and actually works in his favor as this changes the ballgame completely. All that aside, it seems to me that the obligation weighs heavily on the school…this was certainly not a case of parents and/or student not knowing what the lay of the land was.
My point was – and still is – as zonolo understands, an invitation to audition after you’ve been assured of academic prescreening should never end this way.</p>
<p>Here’s another gem: Montclair State University. We visited today and I was sooo impressed. It is such an up-and-coming program. They’ve hired more faculty this year and the students LOVE them. We met one of the new professors and he was the nicest guy on earth, with great credentials!!! The head of the program, Clay James, is VERY invested in having a serious MT conservatory – 12 miles away from NYC – I think the ONLY MT BFA conservatory program close to the City (correct me if I’m wrong). VERY strong dance. Several kids on leave on National Tours. Real conservatory-style program. Clay said that 8 years ago when they started the program they had 47 applicants, and this year they had nearly 700. They take about 20 a year, so the program is small. Those teachers knew each of those kids REALLY well. Very friendly students, too. And there are new gorgeous dorms and housing is now guaranteed! And there is a train station right on campus that goes to NYC! Way more impressed than I expected to be!!!</p>
<p>NYU and Pace are BFA MT programs in the city, but Montclair is the next closest as far as I know It’s a well known and well respected program here in the NYC area but I know that outside of this area people don’t know about it, so it’s a really great addition to the list!</p>
<p>That’s terrible, MCPCWhite… I am going to hope that it really was a singular case, where the theater dept was so interested in him that they were sure they could convince the academic admissions.</p>
<p>MTCoachNYC but NYU and Pace are not conservatory-style, both are quite heavy on liberal arts. At least I know Pace does not describe itself as a conservatory. Montclair is very conservatory- style, with way fewer Gen-Ed requirements than NYU or Pace.</p>
<p>NYU requires 50% of classes to be academic. I think this might be the highest percentage of any of the MT programs my D applied to. Calliene - I was hoping you would report back on Montclair. We hope to go see it in April. How many credits or percentage of the program is academics there? Do you know?</p>
<p>Please also note that NYU accepts AP class credits with appropriate levels reached on AP exams. My d, who is in Vocal Performance MT at Steinhardt, is not having to take any math or science, and just took 2 semesters of essay writing (and it was quite advanced!) to satisfy the English requirement. This summer she is traveling to the NYU campus in Paris to fulfill the language requirement. Then she will be done with academic requirements. She will be getting a minor in “Music Business” which not only fulfills any other academic requirements but may, perhaps, open the way to a day job!</p>
<p>prntosome, I thought Montclaire was a great program! I adored Clay James who is the head of MT, and we also spent a lot of time with Mark Hardy, new there this year, who was awesome. Another new MT faculty who was not there was clearly beloved by the students. The program is VERY strong in dance. There are multiple really NICE performance spaces and they do 3-5 musicals a year. The students are allowed to audition (and it sounds like they do, a lot) but they MUST tell Clay they are going to do it. They want to check it out, make sure it’s not a scam, and keep kids safe. The students there were very friendly, and they all seemed very serious! They intentionally keep the program small (20 new kids a year) so it feels like a family. There is a train station and a bus station right on campus with transportation hourly to NYC. You can see the NYC skyline from the campus. There are a lot of new buildings and new dorms, fitness building to die for and even an ice skating rink on campus, and skating is free during non-hockey times. The campus is biggish – and we saw the supposedly worse dorm and it was nice! Voice lessons are 1 hour with accompanist and you get the accompanist 1 hour extra a week for whatever you need them for. Cost is $400 per semester. So I was overall very impressed. And cost is way less than most.</p>
It’s a well known and well respected program here in the NYC area but I know that outside of this area people don’t know about it, so it’s a really great addition to the list!</p>