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.