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Does University of Michigan place significant weight on academics as well as audition for acceptance into the Musical Theater Program? How many students are accepted into the MT program? When to apply?

Basic info:

GPA 4.0 Unweighted 4.65 Weighted
ACT 34 SAT 1470
AP: Eur. His 4, Chem 3, Am. His. 5, Eng. Comp 5
SAT II 760 Writing/ 760 Math/ 660 Am. History

HS Dance Troupe/ 4 yrs/ Capt. 3 yrs
Showchoir/ 3 yrs/ Dance Capt. 3 yrs/ Choreography 2 yrs./ Outstanding Freshman/ Outstanding Leadership/ Outstanding Performer
Drama 3 yrs (2 IB)/ Asst. Director, Choreographer, cast in 3 of 4 productions (support and lead)/ Best Supporting Actress/ Director's Award
Drama Club 4 yrs, Secretary, VP
Interact Club, 2 yrs, Publicity, Secretary
HOBY
Multiple youth dance companies as part of adult company

Attended K-8 magnet school for Visual and Performing Arts- multiple productions etc.

Instruments: Piano (1 yr), Guitar (2 yr), Trumpet (3 yr)
Dance: Jazz (12y), Ballet (12y), Tap (10 yr), Acrobatics (12 yr), Hip Hop (3 yr), MT (2 yr), Lyrical (12y)
Voice (2 yr)

There's more but enough is enough. What are the odds if auditions are ok?

By Stuckat410 (Stuckat410) on Thursday, September 09, 2004 - 08:14 pm: Edit

i heard auditions for theater program is EXTREMELY competitive.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i heard that they accept only about 25 people out of close to 500? and i think that they don't put AS MUCH weight on academics if you go into theater/music...

but don't take my word for it- but this is what i believe i have heard

By Fosselover (Fosselover) on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - 06:39 pm: Edit

bump

By Soozievt (Soozievt) on Friday, September 24, 2004 - 12:03 pm: Edit

Does University of Michigan place significant weight on academics as well as audition for acceptance into the Musical Theater Program? How many students are accepted into the MT program? When to apply?

Fosselover, my daughter is an applicant to UMichigan for musical theater and we just returned from a thorough visit there. UMichigan indeed considers your child's academic qualifications when applying for the BFA program. First, your child's application will be reviewed by general admissions as well as admissions at the School of Music, and if she passes through that, she will be invited to audition. In other words, her general qualifications matter and they do not bother to audition kids who do not meet the academic qualifications. However, your daughter's "record" as noted above, does appear to be very good for this school. She sounds a lot like my own kid actually.

Last year they invited over 300 kids to audition for MT after the academic review. At that point, the audition indeed counts a lot. It is highly competitive, as is the case at most BFA programs in this field. I was told they accepted 10 boys for 10 slots and 12 girls for 10 slots. That is a total of 20 kids. As you can see, the admit rate is very very selective.

As far as when to apply, Michigan is rolling admissions so on the academic piece, the sooner you apply the better. You cannot be invited to audition at UM or get an audition appointment until you pass through the academic review. From what I know getting your application by early October is a good strategy. The application has two components...one for general admissions and another set of stuff required for the School of Music. It takes a bunch of work. My daughter is part way through and hopes to submit materials in the next two weeks.

Hope that helps. Maybe we will see you at auditions.

Susan