College Applications: Budgets and Ball Busters

At the moment my family is prepping for the granddaddy of “lean times.” Yes, I’m talking about the college years. For any MT mom who has gone through the college applications process, you know. Send wine and all your leftover Xanax. Because at the moment WE are up to OUR necks in it. I say WE because for an MT kid, college apps have to be a group effort. The level of submission requirements for these kids is nuts. F’ing. NUTS. Anyone who has gone through college apps for other majors and is claiming you’ve had it worse, I challenge you.

How can it be so much worse than what every other hopeful college kid endures? Oh honey, it can… and exponentially worse. Consider this:

Most of the top MT programs get a couple thousand and take 12 to 25 kids in their freshman classes. Are you doing the math in your head? Let’s just say those are some pretty scary odds, my friend. So these kids are applying to 15-20 schools, IF they’re smart. And they are. Smart, I mean. Some are 4.0+ kids with perfect SAT/ACT. BUT even THAT doesn’t guarantee they’re going to the school of their choice… or ANY musical theater school for that matter. For most of these schools it comes down to one audition. It doesn’t matter if a kid has been the lead in every play since first grade. If you have a bad audition, cross that school off the list.

For this they have to be smart about where they apply:

There are super-reach schools… the almost impossible to get into schools;

the reach schools that are only slightly less impossible;

the fit schools that offer a glimmer of hope;

and the safety programs that don’t require an audition for admission.

These kids are advised to put together a list of a combination of these levels of programs, obviously weighted with fewer of the crazy-hard ones to get into. My MT kid’s list currently includes sixteen schools.

If you’ve never gone through college applications before, or it’s been a while since you yourself filled out yours, let me tell you… applying to sixteen schools is not cheap. First off each school requires you to fill out the regular student application which hovers around the $70-$100 mark. But you’re not done there. Most MT/theater/performing arts programs within the universities have their own application and audition fees which have been averaging $50 per program audition. Applying to two programs, perhaps acting and MT, double the financial fun. So before we’re even invited to audition in-person, we’ve already forked over more than $2,000.

What does that investment get you? It gets you the guarantee that they’ll read your kid’s application and watch an audition. Boom. That’s it. Are you wondering why I didn’t force my kid to be a community college theater major yet? Mmmmhmmm.

But wait.  We’re not done. Just like the other majors, these kids have to submit the standard 500 word essay. Why you are awesome, blah blah blah. And for MT kids, an essay on their artist endeavors, goals etc. Most schools want to know something different from the next. So they’re ending up writing two, sometimes three essays for every school application… 15-20 schools. Are you seeing the insanity? But we’re still not done.

How else can we make this more grueling? This is just getting started. Some of the top schools require prescreen auditions. Which, for most is a set of short videos—usually two monologues and two contrasting song clips, a dance prescreen, and for some, a “wildcard” to show your personality. Now, each school requests something different… some from the musical theater genre, pre ’65, post ’70, pop, a contemporary monologue, or comedy, classic era… your puzzle to solve. If you’re lucky most of your schools will align and you’ll only have to shoot one or two variations of each of your songs, whether it be a 16- or 32-bar cut, and one or two monologue cuts, trimmed to specified lengths, as well as a dance prescreen. Oh, and let us not forget that some request your slate (stating your name and piece being presented) be done in a specific way. I’ve got a spreadsheet just to track what each school needs for their prescreens as well as in-person auditions.

Super fun, right? AND once these little gems are recorded, each school has a different upload method, whether it’s getaccept.com, decisiondesk.com (which decided to go out of business in the middle of app season this year) or the school’s own online portal. Just figuring each one out is a charm.

And let us not neglect to mention the psychological turmoil involved in deciding if your prescreen is “good enough” yet. Record as many times as you like. But what artist is ever 100% happy with his/her own performance? You can of course record your own prescreen video, but a lot of parents opt to pay to have them recorded. I can say, we did not. I set up a backdrop and lighting and let my daughter record her own on an iPhone until she was happy with them. I’m honestly not sure if she ended up 100% happy with them, or if it came down to, “F* it, it’s good enough, I’m over this sh*t.” We saved our dollars on the actual video, and splurged on the coaching to prep. This is a whole post of its own, which you can find here.

Once prescreens are done and uploaded, you wait. Some schools will get back to you with academic acceptances fairly quickly. That part is nice. Because at least you know if you don’t pass that hurdle, you don’t need to worry about the audition requirements. Within a week to a month post-prescreen upload and application submission, you start hearing back with callbacks. Happy to report, even with my makeshift, non professional set up, she passed all of her prescreens. Excitement and relief last only a moment… on to the in-person audition prep.

The cost of the applications alone is sometimes more than many families can afford. I have no idea how some can swing it. Because in-person auditions require travel. Yes, there are regional audition junkets in January and February, called Unifieds… in NY, Chicago and LA. Some schools participate, some expect you to come to their schools. When auditioning for as many schools as these kids have to in order to play the odds, the travel alone is daunting. We are actually doing a combination of NY and LA Unifieds with travel to four individual schools’ audition dates.

Oh and the juggling of the in-person audition scheduling is super fun. Wait did I say fun? Don’t listen to me. That’s the hysteria talking. It’s like nailing a handful  of Jello to the wall. It’s messy. Unifieds are typically two days… three if you’re talking about some schools that piggy back on the weekend. Ideally you want to squeeze two schools into one of each of the days. Mind you, each school will give you a voice/acting slot and an hour to hour and a half dance-call slot. Some also have “info sessions.” So with two schools you’re scheduling four to six slots usually between 9am and 5pm, with neither of the two schools coordinating with one another. It gets ugly. And there is a lot of juggling/rescheduling.

Why is my kid not doing all this for herself? Ideally that would be the best thing… learning how to deal with all your own shit. But for this mom, I am spending an insane amount of money on fees and coaching, I’m choosing to avert incremental meltdowns and have her focus on her acting and song coaching to prep for her in-person auditions. As a parent you can handle it as you will. But I only get to be the mom for a bit longer. I’m picking my battles. This is my gift to her.

This is not to say that this is a walk in the park for my kid. She’s needing to focus every day on practicing her songs and monologues. Not so much that they become tired and she loses their feeling, but just enough that they begin to live in her and she can act them as she is living the character. It’s a fine line. No kid can get too comfortable with this, because complacency in musical theater is death. Does it sound like psychological warfare? It is. As parents we are the support while at the same time being the ball busters. *whip crack noise*

We are heading into auditions with hope and draining bank accounts. And we still get to look forward to somehow paying for college. Yay us. Two flights to NY, one to the midwest, a road trip to one school, and a three-day stay in LA. By my guesstimation we will have spent around $15k on tutoring, coaching, fees and travel before she’s even accepted anywhere.

Auditions are coming up. Ready or not.

So if you’re one of those parents who has a kid applying to six schools to be a (not musical theater) major, and has complained to me about how rough all those applications, essays, letters of rec and standardized score sending was, and I looked at you like you had a booger in your nose, it was nothing personal. That was just my glazed over look of envy and yearning to have it so easy.