Dear Parents,
My thoughts are with you this Fall, even though I don’t know any of you. Last year, I was in your shoes and I had no idea what I was in for! We survived; you will survive too. Many people really enjoy audition/travel season and the closeness it brings between the supporting parent and the MT applicant – I hope you ALL experience that closeness and treasure it. I hope your child ends up at exactly the right school for them. I hope neither of you go crazy, because that is a distinct possibility. This process is HARD and here’s a few thoughts for you from my “one whole year out” perspective.
Be prepared for the work. This is a year filled with tasks you will never do again – picking out headshots, filming prescreens from home (how can home lighting be this bad?!), running your kid across town or across the country for auditions, dealing with impossible logistics, high emotions and unexpected results. It’s a LOT of work, make time in your schedule and try not to stress if it’s all not perfect. All of us had imperfect prescreens, schedules and monologues too. Hold tight to your sense of humor about the problems you encounter, you'll need it.
Prepare your kid (and yourself) for the randomness of results. For each school, there is a logical, reasonable process for applicant selection. But from the applicant’s view, acceptances seem completely random. Accept that and embrace it – accept that you don’t/can’t know what will happen. Don’t overthink how to get into A school or B school… pick a wide school list, let your performer do their best for each audition and cope with the results. There will be rejections and they will hurt. For every kid who rejoices in multiple offers there are 100+ who get back mostly “regrets”. My daughter passed a prescreen at one of the top MT programs in the country and had the same prescreen rejected by the lowest tier program she applied to. Why? I have ideas but I will never know and it’s a waste of time to even think about. The programs know what they want. Your performer’s job is to put themselves out there – your job is to help them cope with the bad times and celebrate the good.
Let go. Parents are naturally control freaks but you can’t “make” good things happen for them here. Let go of the idea that you can game the system or that any admissions result is a failure on anyone’s part. Admissions results are random (see above), you have no control over how things go and you can’t make things work out for your child, no matter how hard you try - sometimes it feels like a loving parent’s worst nightmare. It gets easier if you recognize what your role is – you aren’t in charge, you are support staff. Help your kid pick a good, wide school list and support them so they can do their best. That’s all you can do.
Do get help. GET HELP! Seriously, get help. Whether you use an online MT coach or a local teacher who has been through this before, get someone who knows what they are doing to help guide you through this next 6 months. Your college counselor will probably not be the helper you need.
Have a good back-up plan and talk about it. Each year a few students get unexpected results but if they prepared well enough, they are fine. There simply aren’t enough spaces for all of the applicants at most well-known programs so having a back-up plan is common sense. If that back-up is a gap year for training, talk it out and be prepared that this is an okay result. If the back-up is a BA program, make sure your actor loves the school and knows what it has to offer. Set your plan so there is no failure, only good options and better options.
Above all - have faith in the wacky process and don’t get discouraged. Finding a fit for a performing arts kid is difficult but when they start at a school where they finally fit.. they blossom and they shine. And it’s wonderful. Despite the stress, the sadness, the work involved in applications – it is all worth it when your child is happy and thriving as an artist. The parents from last year’s board have freshmen who are uniformly very happy with their programs! Only 12 months from now, you’ll be the one writing this letter.
Hang on tight and I wish you all the best on this rocky ride.
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