Reflection post: Final Decision; BACKGROUND

SO one of the threads I linked from College Confidential is the great and terrible Final Decision with Background threat. As I have made my final decision (!!!), I finally got to make my entry yesterday. The format is usually applications, prescreens, auditions, where you were accepted, training/coaching, decision and then what you learned. So here is mine.

WOW I've been waiting to make an entry in this thread for 2 years! I originally intended to go right for a BFA MT but then had second thoughts, first because I got my SAT scores back and seriously considered liberal arts schools and then because I am secondarily interested in management/producing/casting so I considered programs for that specifically. Here comes my very convoluted, indecisive, crazy-a** journey/process/year.

Prescreens: Texas State, Baldwin Wallace, Otterbein, Coastal Carolina, Pace, UArts, Indiana BFA, Ithaca (theatre management)
Passed Ithaca and UArts. I didn't count any of the ones I didn't pass as applications because I never completed them (some didn't require an app to send a prescreen and I didn't send SAT scores to the rest. I eventually withdrew from all but Indiana where I applied intending to be considered for the BA).

APPLICATIONS
Theatre Performance/audition somewhere: UArts, Webster, NYU, BU, Marymount Manhattan, Cornish, Hartt, Emerson, American (double major Business and Entertainment/Musical Theatre) and Columbia College Chicago
Management/interview: Ithaca, DePaul, half of American
Liberal arts/non-audition: IU BA, Northwestern, Brandeis, Sarah Lawrence

AUDITIONS
Auditioned at Unifieds: UArts, Webster, Cornish, did walk-ins for U of Utah Acting and SCAD but never applied
Auditioned on campus: NYU, BU, Hartt, Emerson, Marymount Manhattan

RESULTS
Accepted (in chronological order!): Columbia College Chicago BA-->BFA MT (would have auditioned as a freshman), IU BA Theatre & Drama, UArts BFA MT, Cornish BFA Theatre/MT concentration, Ithaca BS Theatre Arts Management, DePaul BFA Theatre Management, Sarah Lawrence BA Theatre, Brandeis BA Theatre
Wait-listed: American (would have auditioned as a freshman but never put myself on the wait list because I assumed I wouldn't get enough aid from them to be competitive with other schools)
Accepted academically but not to theatre dept: U of Hartford, Webster, Marymount Manhattan

TRAINING
Circle in the Square Summer MT Intensive 2014 (summer before sr. year), voice teacher does a week-long summer intensive of his own where he brings up his old NYC buddies and they teach us. It's intense and I did it twice.
Local acting classes/workshops through middle and high school. My school offers wonderful acting classes taught by a wonderful woman, and we have an organization nearby that has regular workshops and show choir, which I did until junior year. My voice teacher also brings people from NY up to do workshops.
Voice lessons since 6th grade, switched in 9th grade to more serious MT voice teacher
Dance since middle school at local studio that I love (3 years of ballet, 2 tap, 2 hip-hop, 1 lyrical, a bunch of jazz). They are very good about having beginner teen/adult classes and everyone is welcome.
No college audition coach (I did do a few MTCA dance classes over the summer and I tried to hook up with them for prescreen things but they never e-mailed me back) but the CITS song interp teacher specializes in college auditions so she picked my material and worked one of my songs which I also sang for the showcase. She was great. Also, a local director whose daughter goes to Ithaca for MT did a seminar on college auditions the winter of my sophomore year. That totally changed my life and kick-started my research.

I was kind of floored when the second sitting of the SAT I semi-impulsively took and did not study for fall of senior year (after spending the night at a friend's house and getting 4 hours of sleep) resulted in a perfect 800 in critical reading. That made my superscore a 2200 and actually kind of threw me into an existential panic over the choices I was making and whether I was ready to say goodbye to challenging liberal arts. Hence the applications to those kinds of schools, and my only doing 8 live auditions without walk-ins. UArts was my first acceptance that felt "real" and it happened a week after Unifieds. I was floored and so excited. I even did the whole "there's been a mistake" bit. I loved, loved, loved my audition. I mentioned that I was also interested in theatre management and it just so happened that the woman who was interviewing me was the head of theatre management and teaches casting and business of the business classes! They seemed really supportive of my interest in that, which I didn't get from every school. I absolutely adored BU and had the greatest audition of my life and totally bonded with the auditor...and then a few weeks later, I got an e-mail saying that they loved me and wanted me to interview for Production and Design. Production=/=producing. That was a really tough rejection to take, and it was the only one I was properly sad about. Once all the acceptances were in, it felt like a choice between liberal arts/BFA MT/theatre management. I pretty quickly ruled out theatre management because it would mean giving up performing as my primary thing, and I wasn't okay with that. Later I might work in a casting office or something and not perform at all, but I'm not ready for that now. I have so much more to do. My parents didn't want me to go to Cornish because it was far away, and Brandeis and Sarah Lawrence were SO expensive. I was really close to going to Brandeis, and I might have if the price tag hadn't been so high. I'm glad that I had the option, but I was going to do theatre regardless and it didn't make sense to plunge myself and my family into debt for 30 years. UArts gave me a giant scholarship right away, and more in my aid package. And it actually made a dent. The only other school that was comparable in price was Ithaca, and I had pretty much decided against theatre management by that point. So UArts seemed like an obvious choice...until my dad decided I should go to a better academic school and said he would refuse to pay for it. There was a lot of family turmoil towards the end. But just before I left to visit schools, my parents sat down and my mom showed my dad what it would take for me to go to Brandeis or Sarah Lawrence. And she reminded him that I'm going to end up in theatre no matter what I do for undergrad! And he totally changed his mind. So after we unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the Brandeis aid office, and visited UArts and loved Philly and all the people there, AND they didn't take away any extra aid because of my grandpa's higher education fund for me, it was a no-brainer. I just committed today as soon as I got home. I might not get a brand-name education, but I'll be doing what I love in a cool city with cool people, and I'll learn a ton, and I'll be able to take those classes with my auditor in casting and business of the business. I'm so excited to start at UArts in the fall, SAT score be damned! (And you know what, I don't feel like I'm "wasting" my brains or whatever because that's part of the reason we can pay for it! And because theatre is a LOT more intellectual/academic than people realize.)


HERE ARE SOME FUN THINGS I LEARNED:

1. Knowing what to expect well in advance was key. I did a lot of the data gathering on my own, which was my decision. I love to research. It's important to me to know things. I'm the kid who knows all the obscure material and begs her friends to sing it because she is the wrong gender/type/ethnicity/doesn't have those notes! My mom and I made spreadsheets, and they were useful for audition material, but in terms of general school information it was easier just to keep brochures around than type tuition numbers into Excel.

2. Do your prescreens right. I was away for two whole months at Circle in the Square, and though I grew a lot as an actor and met some cool people I definitely lost out on prep time. I closed down the drama bookshop every day, and I found monologues, but at the end of August they still weren't coached and I was having to think about prescreen requirements. My prescreens were a mess. I hired a professional videographer who I had worked with at a restaurant. He was great, but the scheduling was so crunched that I ended up not really rehearsing my songs with my voice teacher who was accompanying me, not having the right sheet music, not having any help choreographing or cleaning my dance, not taking good enough care of my hair/make-up/wardrobe, not having enough coaching on my monologues...and it all showed. My voice prescreens had better lighting, but the monologue ones made me look absolutely hideous and even though I originally planned on sending them to nine schools (switched to management at Ithaca and never sent it to Shenandoah), I didn't redo them because the video guy was so expensive. I could have done so many things better on my prescreens. I'm rambling, but it's my biggest regret. I truly wish I hadn't rushed to get them done.

3. It is so important to consider the entire school/area as well as the MT program. I knew exactly what I wanted out of the program, but I didn't realize that location is absolutely paramount for me until I went to visit Ithaca and hated it. The people were lovely, but I just wouldn't be happy in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, excluding prescreens I didn't pass, all of my other schools were in or near major cities. I also came to realize that I don't want to be in the South or on the West Coast. And I didn't want a school with big football or too much partying. This all came a lot later than it should have, because I was overfocused on BFA MT programs.

4. Don't overlook a non-audition BA program! If you can afford it. Lots of liberal arts schools have really solid theatre departments. Also, the degree means nothing. A lot of college theatre books ask "do you want a BA or BFA?" I'd recommend having more of a percentage of classes in the major that would be okay to you. Mine was about 60-80%, but flexible.

5. Stress is a thing and having a light schedule senior year is not giving up. I went through a LOT of health issues this year, brought upon by stress. This is a huge deal and really had an effect on how my whole year went--I don't know why I didn't mention it. Anyway, I developed gastritis in early January and brought it to all my auditions. It's an inflammation of the stomach lining and basically made me feel constantly like I was going to be sick for about three months. At first I thought it was a flu, so I didn't do anything about it until after Unifieds. Almost all of my auditions were in the two weeks surrounding Unifieds; in fact, all of them were except for two. So while I was unaffected vocally (and I think as long as I had under 4 auditions in a day, my auditions were probably better because I did so many in such a short time--my first and last, both a month removed from those two weeks, were my worst), I actually got so sick in a walk-in that I had to leave the room. At Emerson, I was literally lying down on the bench outside the audition room. It made dance calls a lot of fun as well. Ugh. I missed so much more school than I would have for auditions. I could have kept it to a couple of Fridays and one Tuesday if not for gastritis. UGH. I was trying to juggle a job 3 days a week, the same courseload I had junior year including number of APs, and dance/voice outside of school. And all of them had to go January through March.

6. The last show I did was January of junior year. I totally ditched my high school's musical senior year, and because I was away at a summer program I couldn't do anything then. My resume was honestly pretty tiny in terms of shows, but I had a lot of training. And I didn't feel like I was judged heavily on that. In retrospect, it was a pretty good decision. The fact is, there just aren't opportunities to be in shows 24/7, and I was picky about which ones I would do. Because if I wasn't learning something, what was the point? I tried to be in shows with serious people who I would learn from, and because of that combined with eliminating shows completely come second semester of junior year, I didn't get a lot of leads. I worried about that a lot, but fear not, high school not-stars! It has nothing to do with your talent.

7. How you look matters and the fact is, I'm not a naturally good-looking person. I'm not an unnaturally good-looking person, either. Unfortunately. In like a kind of Tracy Turnblad way (read: I'm the opposite of thin). A lot of extremely good-looking people do musical theatre. That was intimidating. I don't know that my size or look hurt me, except in my terrible prescreens, but I took extra care to make sure that all of my material was type appropriate. I might have gone to far with that because I didn't show a legit soprano AT ALL (those songs are all so ingenue-y!), but I felt like my material really supported who I am inside and out. So did my wardrobe. I actually made my audition dress because I couldn't find anything that was perfect. Highly recommend; it's a great conversation starter! Anyway, I'd heard that not being attractive would make it harder. I honestly don't know whether it did. I'd be curious to hear about other peoples' experiences though.

Anyway, I enjoyed the process greatly. It was bonding time for me and my mom. I got to go on road trips, stay in hotels, eat out, meet new people and perform for people who really know the craft/industry and get feedback. In many ways, it was a dream come true. In others (mostly health-related), it was a nightmare! If any juniors have any more questions (especially about UArts as the program is undergoing a lot of change and it's hard to find current info), please feel free to private message me or check out the blog I kept through the process: thatyeariauditionedforcollege.blogspot.com.

It has been a pleasure to go through this with all of you! I'm going to sleep now.

Here is what I posted on Facebook, and finally revealed my blog to the public:

It has been a bizarrely trying year of too many college applications and auditions and health issues to count, but I am so happy to announce that this process is OVER and I will be attending The University of the Arts for musical theatre next year!
Throughout this year I have chronicled the whole crazy, convoluted process on a private blog, which I am now going to make public for the whole internet to read, complete with ups and downs and ins and outs and all my twelve million changes of heart. If you want to read any of it, thatyeariauditionedforcollege.blogspot.com.
I never could have done this without my amazing mom (and I knew she would kill me if I didn't include her in this because I owe her that much!). She paid and drove and morally supported like freaking crazy and I'm incredibly grateful.
Also thanks so much to my voice and acting teachers and dance studio for teaching me pretty much everything I know about acting, singing, dancing and myself, and to all my theatre teachers here and at Circle in the Square. You all have kept me from going insane many a time.
Lastly, if any sophomores or juniors are thinking about going to school for theatre (audition or not, BA or BFA or hell, even BM), PLEASE LET ME SHARE MY KNOWLEDGE. Message me, text me, talk to me in person. I have amassed books and notes and brochures like you would not believe. This is a really special process to me and I want to pass on everything I learned from the past 2+ years.
THANKS FOR READING IF YOU READ. LOVE YOU ALL.

— celebrating because it's about time I picked a college.

April Break Part 2: UArts

Pro tip: Airbnb is a godsend for college auditions, visits and other weekend trips. And if you own your apartment, it's a GREAT way to make a little extra cash. We stayed at a lovely apartment that came with a cat and was really close to UArts.
In the morning, I went on the tour. You walked in and they were like "are you accepted? Have a T-shirt AND sweatshirt!" It was performing arts specific, which was nice. I walked into the room and saw a girl I know from school/my voice studio at home! She is a junior and was touring UArts. She was like, "you're going here, right?" and I was like "I don't know, probably!" We would have been on the same tour but they separated out the accepted students. There were four families. We saw dorm rooms (they are HUGE! and every room has a kitchenette!), the dining hall (the food looks awful and unhealthy and I was really worried), and all the beautiful theaters. We also went around the theatre and liberal arts floor. UArts is on threeish blocks of Broad Street, and so are like five theaters and the Philadelphia Orchestra. And there is sushi nearby and it's really good (as we all know, that would be a must if I ever auditioned for anything!).
I also sat in on two classes the first day. The first one was a beginning jazz dance class. It was very modern and I really liked the teacher. The students were so nice and they all ran over to talk to me when they found out I was an accepted student. I saw a ton of people I recognized from, um, stalking YouTube and Twitter. Oops. Anyway, the class looked hard physically but super fun. I imagine you would learn a lot from going to a class like that every week! The dance class was ALL girls. I was like "so there are boys in the program...right?" Not because I have any romantic ideas (I pretty much gave up on getting married right out of college at the Brandeis financial aid meeting) but because of casting! They assured me there are boys in the program. It's not equal though, based on what I saw in other classes. They don't do the "we take 10 boys and 10 girls" thing. I think you can't really do that when you are getting a yield. It makes sense that it would be lower for boys. Oh well! The next class I sat in on did have two and one performed. It was a musical theatre performance class. All the people who performed were FANTASTIC. The acting was so good and the last few songs were so sad. I was nearly crying by the end. The teacher was beautiful and wonderful and such a mentor to the kids and her husband is on Broadway right now and she told a story about Harvey Fierstein. I left the second class like, this is it, this is real, this is me, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be now. (Gonna let the light shiiine on meee!)
Anyway, one of the other girls on the tour had also watched the class and I walked back with her and her mother and we took pictures on the steps under the big UArts banner in our free T-shirts!
I came back again the next morning to watch one more class. It was an acting studio, with freshman MT and acting majors. They were doing a really cool interpretation of Macbeth where they switched characters really often. So like one girl was Lady Macbeth in the out damn spot scene and then became Macbeth for his death scene. I thought the first Macbeth was INCREDIBLE. They had rehearsed it a lot and they were worried about it getting stale but it was fresh to me so I can't really judge. It seems like the program is still finding its footing because of the recent change in leadership, and I'm really excited to see how it ends up. And be a part of it. They seem to be pretty good about getting feedback from students as well.

My mom's financial aid meeting went so much better than Brandeis. UArts won't hold Grandpa's money against us and won't take away my scholarships if I make money. They are very accommodating, which is refreshing! 

So my "decision" basically made itself. I have a couple of giant posts summing up the entire process that are coming soon. I paid the deposit as soon as I got home yesterday. It feels SO GOOD to be done.
UArts really has it all, and for the right price. I can take management and casting classes through the Directing, Playwriting and Production program, plus business classes from the college across the street. And I get to perform first. I pointed out that it was exactly what I had in mind last summer: like Circle, a conservatory BFA in a city, but tenured professors so the program feels like a cohesive entity and then, like, maybe one English class a semester.
So there you have it! The journey is done! UARTS BFA MT CLASS OF 2019!

April Break Part 1: Brandeis

I was very sick again all last week (high fever and now cough) but this week we had to go on the road for the dreaded accepted student visits! As it turns out, my dad looked at the money again and did a total 180. So at the beginning of break, I was leaning toward Brandeis and both my parents were leaning towards UArts (or, in dad's case, Ithaca, but we don't talk about that). Anyway, I got to Brandeis on Sunday morning and went to a bunch of admitted student panels. All the kids were super accomplished and really cool. And then there were a bunch of different tours. They told us to "divide and conquer" so my mom went on an arts tour and I went on a residential tour. Apparently the arts tour was amazing. The girl leading it had showed me around when I visited last year, and my mom loved going to the museum on campus and meeting a theatre design professor. My tour was pretty disappointing. There were so many of us that they had to split us in half, which was still a LOT of people. They didn't really know what to do with us. They just had us walk through one hall and room, single file. It was a single which made all the parents VERY angry. They were all comparing the Brandeis dorms to the other schools their kids were considering and making passive aggressive comments about the tour. It was gross. The whole thing took about 20 minutes and I had to wait an HOUR for mom to finish her tour. I got to chat with the theatre professor at the lunch though, and she was great. She helped arrange for me to observe classes. Also, mom asked her about UArts (she wants to get everyone's opinion) and she said her husband had gone there for music and that she loved the school! So that was good too. After lunch we went to this financial aid talk. The lady just pretty much outlined all the different types of loans we could choose to pay off for the next 30 years at 7.6% interest. My mother was highly discouraged. She was especially pissed to learn that work study doesn't go towards tuition; it is paid directly to the students for spending money and books. She scheduled a private meeting with the representative for the next day. I came back with her at noon and met a friend who I know from Young Judea. She took me to the dining hall, which was AMAZING, and I got to meet her friends who were all really cool. She had also housed a prospective student the night before, and that girl was also a theater major, and we found out we were sitting in on the same directing class! I was supposed to go to the voice lesson of the arts tour guide so I invited her along. The voice teacher was really cool. She worked a lot on acting, which was a relief. I had been afraid that the voice teachers from the music department would be totally classical. As it turns out, there is also a singing class through the theatre department. You can do a lot of musical theatre without being a music major with the MTP concentration. I went to directing next and it was amazing. We started out watching final projects because it's almost the end of the semester. Then they did a debrief, which was really educational. I've never taken a class in directing, but now I want to! The teacher was very accommodating and answered all our questions. He's done a lot of theatre and is, for lack of a better phrase, the real deal. Unfortunately, my mom's meeting did not go well. They take away some aid if you make any more than $5000...so we couldn't use the money my grandpa set aside for my education. Or if we did, I wouldn't be able to work in the summers. And my parents really don't want me to have unsubsidized loans. Basically, there was no way to get out of paying $40,000, which we cannot pay. It is a real shame. I would have loved to go there. But after I heard everything from my mom in the car on the way to Philadelphia, I knew I had to move on. I just started to get in the UArts frame of mind. 

Update 4/12

My family is having a big discussion about college today. My dad is finally coming home after his trip and we are getting right down to it. Meanwhile, I'm totally stressing about liberal arts and management and whether I could get enough at UArts and whether I would miss it (honestly I'm not sure I would) and whether I could dance at all at Brandeis and how hard it would be to graduate from there without connections in the field and affording an MFA program and trying to transfer to some other school that does have everything and whether that would be acting or musical theatre or what and whether I could get into a really tough academic school as a transfer student and whether I should get a coach to go over this with me and how American fit me so well but I never even put myself on the wait list because I assumed I wouldn't get enough aid and blah blah blah. I am so exhausted. I feel like any decision would be wrong at this point. I can't do anything. This sucks. Transferring sounds kind of good.

Update 4/9: The Semifinals

So since my last update, I got my final two rejections from NYU (3/27) and Webster (4/1)...which means all the results are in and I can start deciding! Unfortunately, I also got my financial aid package from Brandeis, and although they gave me over $20,000 in scholarship (the most of any school), it is still 15k more than UArts and Ithaca. Sarah Lawrence is the only school more expensive. Surprise! I've actually pretty much narrowed it to Brandeis and UArts. DePaul and Ithaca don't really allow for performance training, and I'm honestly not ready to give that up. It has to be a combination. Cornish is far away and small. Sarah Lawrence is also small, and very project-based. I don't think I'm self-directed enough to take that on at this point in my life. I need more structure. So that's why I have narrowed it to two WILDLY different schools, one of which we can't afford and one of which my father has deemed worthless. You guess which is which! I made some pro-con lists, off the top of my head, without doing any research. I'll be visiting both schools in a couple of weeks, and supposedly won't be able to know which is right for me until then. Honestly I think they're both right for me. I could go either way. It's just the money and the parental disapproval. UArts just called and told me they're giving me another $3000 and that they want me. That makes them cheaper than all the other schools. My parents are doing some rethinking of the way they handle money (they have separate accounts and may combine) and my dad is sill being stubborn about the value of an education or whatever. To be honest, he's having a lot of trouble right now and although I know it's not my fault, it is sort of about me. He is away on business right now, and when he comes back I think we might FINALLY discuss it rationally. He might be mad that my mom and I didn't involve him in the process more. It's so weird that I haven't dealt with the unsupportive parent thing until now. I'm feeling relatively chill about where I end up—I don't think I'll be unhappy at either place. I'm going to end up doing the same thing regardless. Undergrad is not a huge deal. It just kind of stinks that I have to choose either academic or artistic connections/prestige. UArts is what I had in mind at the beginning; Brandeis is what I had in mind at the very beginning. It's just so weird that it's come down to the schools that are the very extremes of my list! I feel like I can't go wrong but I also can't totally go right.