REPLAY: Top Ten Most Affordable Schools

[music] Welcome to the College Audition Pro's podcast, where we help you get ready, get set, get accepted. My name is Drew Boudreau, the founder of College Audition Pro's, and let's get going. [music] The top 10 most affordable and best schools you've never heard of. Okay, so today we're going to talk about why affordability is more important than all most anything. How to stick to a relaxing and efficient timeline, or those of you who are sophomores and parents of sophomores and juniors, this is going to be extremely beneficial for you, your wallet, and your mental health. How to support your child during this process as well? How to work with coaches? How to work without a coach? Everyone is going the same routes we want to give everyone as many tools as we can along the way. And a rising school, you must have on your list. I am not kidding. When I put that in caps, this school is going to blow your mind what it does and how much it costs. I'm going to save that for the very, very end. So a little about me and Cap, I've been an actor since I can remember. This is my headshot from a high school. So like your students, this is my passion, this is what I do, this is what I love to do. And I did theater all through high school. And in the college, that's me on the left playing Lady Bracknell, the importance of being earnest. And I graduated college and I graduated as a stage manager. Because you don't know if stage manager is the person who runs the big shows at a, you know, like they, oh, hi, Heidi. Hello, hello, hello, hi. Hi, I'm Alain. Hi, Andrea. I'm going to see the comments. There we go. So a stage manager is the person who, who runs the shows, okay? And that's what I did. I graduated and I went to work for the Walt Disney company and I had a great time, saw the world, made a few friends along the way like this guy. And I really deep in my heart, I wanted to be a performer because that's what I've always done. Why did I go into stage management? It was safe. It was less scary. It was less at risk and I just didn't have the confidence to think that I could make it. But you know, the heart wants what it wants and it will find a way to get it. And there was one show I was doing for Disney. If you've ever seen a live Disney show, especially on the cruise lines, you know that they're just a very, very thin plot to get from what hits hit song to the next hit song, right? And the plot of this show that I was working on was, there was a character who was a stage manager, right? Who was trying to keep the crazy show all together, but deep in her heart, she wanted to be a performer. So there I am as the actual stage manager who just wants to be a performer. And at the end of the show, every night she steps into her own self and she leaves fear behind. She's like, I've done it and she's so happy. And every night I was like, and I had to suck a tear back into my eyeball and be like, no, no, then finally I was like, I can't take this anymore. I got to do what I want to do. And so I got off the ship and I opened up my copy of Backstage and I was like, I have an audition in 10 years and I saw a post for Oklahoma that needed an alley hack him with Peddler man. And I was like, okay, what the heck? And I sent it in and they said, great. Can you be here tomorrow? We open in two weeks. And that was the last time I ever stage managed. And since then, I have been following what I love to do, which is perform. I played alley hack him a number of times. Hey, Haley, this was off Broadway, Game of Thrones, The Musical. And I've had a great time doing the national tour of Rudolph the Red Nose Rangier for several several years. And I knew that I wanted to also help the next generation of artists do what I could not, which was have faith in myself, have believed in myself. So I wanted to give that to the next generation of artists. So I started teaching at OSHA, the Orange County School of the Arts. And about that same time when I started college audition pros and it has been absolutely the most rewarding thing of my entire life. I love, love, love what I do. And we've had great success. We've had students get into their audition schools 98% of the time, including schools like NYU and Boco and Baldwin Wallace and Syracuse, Missouri State and Texas State University of Arizona, Texas State twice. And these are great big schools with great big names. But I also love getting students into schools that aren't as well known, but are absolutely perfect for them. Because maybe they want a double major, maybe studying abroad is important. Whatever it is, finding a school that really fits student like San Diego State. So I want to tell you a little bit about the students who just finished working with me and then we'll get right into our schools. That I just, you know, I got to manage my stress instead of stressing all at once. So it was pretty great just having to work with people who really care about how this is going to go. I had no idea coming into this what I was looking for and what these schools were offering, but Drew helped me find the right schools for me and the ones that I would have a better chance of getting accepted to. And he literally just broke it down and said, "This is what this school has, this is what this school has." And just like that, we narrowed down the list and it looks pretty good. Finding schools with Drew was really easy. It was really nice having an organized list and having all the information and being able to get the help on the research because sometimes you don't really know what you're looking for. I would have been completely lost if Drew never helped me find schools. We talked a lot about how the schools just give their money to a marketing team and no other schools that people apply to. And I'm really happy that I had Drew to help me find schools that weren't as well known because I feel like those are the schools that I kind of personally feel more connected to. And Drew was great about kind of keeping my interest in what was important to me at the very top rather than just, okay, this school has a better state of program to go there. I was more about the things that were important to me. Having Drew helped me with my contemporary monologues was so, so helpful. Last year I didn't have the grade on a campus he did with actors' insight and really finding the connection of the person that I'm acting with. So given that, I think it was super beneficial just because I really do now have a connection to my mom alongs and I'm going to find that those auditors will see that connection to. Having a life of this was great. You really have a connection with it while you're singing. You really want to look for monologues. All I find is team depressed and it's the same type of monologues. So I'm glad it was able to work with Drew and find new monologues. I'm so excited for callbacks. I'm literally, I can't stress enough how much I think CAP is really helping me and I think a lot of my schools are going to see this great work that they put in and how it's going to be so, let me come to their school because of that. Rachel said that look on your face, a proud papa, that is exactly what I am. All of these students are narrow. Now narrowing down your schools they've been accepted to and I love it. You know, this whole conversation is so, there we go. So let's talk, so that's who I am. Let's talk about who you are, right? You are a parent of a student who was pursuing theater in college and they hoped to pursue it beyond college. So you want them to follow their passion and you also want them to have the financial freedom after graduation to pursue what they want and not have to worry about immense loans and debt. You want them to be able to make a living doing what they love. And with the rest of your life happening around you with college stuff, you want this process to be easy. Well, I have good news. It is totally possible for this process to be easy and to not cost a lot. Hello, hi, Jay Craig. Good to see you. Good to see you. So you need time, so just now time to learn what you need to do to make college affordable, bring talk about making the audition process easy and maximizing admissions to your affordable schools. Okay. So let's talk about staying on target with your timeline. School selection starts in March of your junior year. So juniors were only in like the barely the second week of April. If you haven't started yet, totally okay. Sophomores, this is for future reference. Why do we do this now because you still have a year of visiting schools and the faculty hasn't turned over that much. So the people that you fell in love with who work at the school will likely still be there. Okay. Materials. Now, I'm going to go a little bit faster than I normally would through this stuff because I want to get to the affordable schools. But I do want to make sure that you also walk away with an idea of what you should have. Three songs, three monologues and one Shakespeare selected ideally by the end of June 1st. That way you have a lot of time over summer to work it and still make gains never have backslides, but still have vacations. Okay. I coach monologues with students in July, June July and August. We have around 10 meetings over the course of the summer, sometimes 12 or 14 depending on what the student wants and maybe what I can provide them. For a student as artists, we are our harshest critics. So your child, their temptation is gonna be to overwork. But if we are working on the same piece every week, they might notice it becoming stale or I might notice it becoming stale. And that's when they or I will say, "Hey, let's pull back on working on it." Prescreens is what happens the second week of September. That's when you videotape your auditions to send them in to then be invited to audition for them in person. Okay? We film in the second week of September because that's when schools have updated their audition requirements. You might hear from some groups that, "Oh, you want to film in July? You want to film in August? Don't do that." It's a bad idea because then you'll probably have to re-film in September after they've updated. So only film around the second week of September, okay? You have everything submitted by October 15th. Now, a lot of your early decision deadlines aren't gonna be until November 1st. So you'll still have time for early decision. Some early decisions aren't until December 1st. And for regular admission, you have returning it in super early, which is great. And then make it simple for yourself, turn it on your academic info by October 15th as well, foreign new test scores. Okay? Students, here's a free gift to you. Get on your letters of rec ASAP. First day of senior year, go to the people who you want to write your letters of rec, eight o'clock in the morning and be like, write the letters of rec because it's the one thing that's out of your hands. It's the one thing that you cannot control. You can submit your test scores, you can write your essay as you can do your auditions, but someone else is writing your letters and they're probably writing 200 other letters as well. So ask first. Okay. Once you've done your pre-screens, take time off until after Thanksgiving break. You don't wanna rehearse too much. Focus on that big last academic semester. Enjoy your last fall production, enjoy homecoming and stuff. And that way it also keeps your material fresh. So we'll brush up around December. Just shake some of that rust off, get loose, get limber. And we'll do a couple more sessions in January. We do our mock auditions in January right before the New York Unified. So mock auditions, why do we do these mock auditions? If you're going to school for theater, obviously you've done a million shows and you've done all these auditions. So why do we do mock auditions? The reason is because high school auditions and Broadway auditions are really similar compared to college auditions. Broadway auditions and high school auditions are, are you right for this part? And if you are, I have to work with you for a couple of weeks and then I'm out. College auditions are, are you right as a member of our community? And I have to mentor you five days a week for four years. That's a much different set of criteria. So we try and get you ready for that specific audition. And it ensures that your first audition counts. You don't want your first audition to be like the test balloon. You want to do the test balloon in the mock audition. And then in the first room, you take that scholarship, you take that admission. The unified is when all the schools come to the same city at the same time. Now there's an asterisk here. Some schools don't come, but many, many schools do come. They come to New York, they come to Chicago and they come to Los Angeles as well. By the way, you will, they're very, very small chance. You'll need to go to all three. I've never had a student go to all three. Two is two and one are the common ones, okay? So this is about the virtual auditions, which I don't think we're gonna have as our only option this year, which is great. Okay, after you do your unifies, there are gonna be a couple schools that are still gonna say, we're not gonna come to unifies. You have to come to us. So those will be the last ones typically on your schedule. And those will be in March. And then luckily after that, you have a couple of months to look over your financial aid offers to look at what the school's offering and then decide by May 1st. Let's talk about knowing your why. Why do you wanna come into a school? That's what's really important. What does the school give you financially? What does it give you career wise? And then this is often overlooked for students. What does it give you in terms of personal enjoyment? Now, you gotta, you gotta speak your truth. You know that you like a temperature that is temperate, or you know that you like to be in the snow. You know that you like to be able to stage your own plays, or that it's in a city that you love, right? No, no why you love it. When you do know your why for a school, you are most on top of your game. So every school on your list, including the ones I'm gonna share with you, should have a why for you. Because your auditions will be stronger and your organization will be better, your stress will be lower. Because your subconscious clicks on, and says, I know why I'm here. So I'm gonna do extra hard work. I'm gonna be extra on my game. Now, if you have schools that are impressive names, but you don't have a why for them, then you're auditioning out of FOMO, fear of missing out. And auditioning because you don't wanna miss out is not a great place to be. Versus, whoa, this could be a great place that I could end up, really healthy approach, all right? So one is not a great approach, one is stellar. So I'm gonna go over real quickly the three types of theater programs because our affordable colleges here do cover these. So the big one that you think about, when you think about musical theater degrees, typically a BFA or a Bachelor of Fine Arts, okay? Being 70% or more of your college classes are in your discipline. So for every 10 classes you take, seven to eight of them are going to be in theater, okay? It's a really narrow focus on your specific discipline. And it's focused on acting and empty or vocal music or dance with a few general eds that you have to take to graduate thrown in there. But it really is a pre-professional training program. With the exception of just a couple of schools around the country, you have to audition for BFA programs. A BA is what most people have. Most college degrees are BA programs. And what that means for you theater folks means that only 50% of your college classes are in your discipline. So for every 10 classes you take in college, only five of them are going to be theater. So you get a more broad understanding of theater with more eclectic classes that you don't take with a training program like a BFA. You get directing and play writing, you get tech like, you know, light sound, carpentry, electric, criticism, text analysis, really cool stuff. And you don't have to audition for the program. And then the last one is a professional training program. This means 100% of your classes are in your discipline. 10 for 10. This is as close to Hogwarts as you get. No math, no science, just magic. Okay, it's an exclusive focus just on your specific discipline. Okay, what it means is that now these typically are not BFA or BFA, they're just professional training programs. The word that shall not be named back up plan, back up plan is a naughty word, back up plan, sabotages, your students success because you start with, if you don't succeed at this and you would never say that to a non arts profession, right? It implies that you believe the odds of career ending failure are so high that your student needs to be planning to change professions before they even be gone. It is a clear lack of confidence and the below is palpable. Now I know why you want to back up plan, which is you want your child to be financially successful and independent and be able to take care of themselves, of course. So let's go in that direction. There are some federal alternatives here. Instead, achieve the same results using a different approach. Learning additional money making skills that your student can employ themselves with is awesome. So the ones that I recommend here are video editing, sound editing and HTML coding, right? These achieve the same results as having a backup plan except that you're not implying failure. Instead, you're saying, hey, you can follow your dreams and make money while you do it. Video editing is great for an actor because everyone's making movies, everyone's making indie projects and they need someone to edit it. And editors are not cheap. So if you learn that skill, you can always be in demand. Same with sound editing and especially HTML coding, both for making your website, for other actors websites, and you can have a part-time job working in tech from home or from wherever you get a gig. Let's say you're a little anxious and you don't know what the next step is, you don't know what to believe about a school you heard about because a fax are an antidote to anxiety, right? Anxiety comes from not knowing. So get the fax about a school that you're worried about and get off of college confidential. It is a boiling cauldron of anxiety. It is a sauna of anxiety. It's like going onto WebMD when you have a stubbed toe. You will be convinced you have minutes to live [BLANK_AUDIO] you read enough and your mind just like goes off to the races. Instead, if you are wondering about something, just call the school. Find out about it. Is what I've heard true or call a coach like me. I'm always happy to answer those emails. For free. If you just want some guidance, if you heard, if you heard something about a school and you want clarification, I am happy to do that for you. Supporting your kids, all right, kids leave the room. We're talking about lawn care maintenance. So it gets overwhelming for your kids. So offer them assistance with applications and other academic elements. Doesn't mean that you have to do that for them, but let them know that you are there to offer assistance if they need it. Sometimes it can be so overwhelming for them when they feel like they're alone. Offer them verbal expressions, care and love. We know our parents care about us, obviously, but in high pressure situations when it can feel like our world's spinning out of control, it's really important to hear it from our parents. Meredith Tully, laughing so hard about the anxiety college confidential. So true. Verbal expressions of support and belief. There will be times when your student thinks that they can't manage the audition and the application and the essay and all that kind of stuff. Reminding them that they are doing a very typical thing and they're doing it well is important for them to hear because they might lose confidence and think, oh my gosh, I can't do this this basic thing. They need to be reminded. It's not basic. It's very challenging and that they are doing a good job pulling through. Give me some, give me some hearts, give me some thumbs up for giving your kids verbal affirmation that they are doing a good job when things are hard. Supporting your parents. So if I have any students in the room, remember that for many of your parents, it is their first time helping their kids through college and it's much different than it was when they were teenagers. So remember that when your parents offer assistance, remember that it is out of love and appreciate each effort your parents make for you. Okay. For nearly all of your parents, it is definitely the first time they're helping a theater kid get into college and your parents are working so hard to support you, but they might just be a fish out of water who want to help. So be patient with your parents and be thankful to them. Most of your parents work full time or they stay at home parents, which is a full time job. Most of the time your parents are exhausted and they often don't have the mental bandwidth they would like to help you and they do want to help you. Kay says, just had the you're doing amazing at hard math combo today. It applies many instances absolutely. That's a great point, Katie. Verbal affirmation to your parents goes a long way. You'd be surprised how just telling your parents that you appreciate them can make them cry. I had mom maybe two years ago called me in tears like red faced hot tears streaming down her face crying. Be like, you won't believe what Andrew just said to me and I was like, oh my god, he call you like a bad word or something and he she goes, no, he said that he appreciates me helping him. That's all it takes students like just let him know that you appreciate each effort they make. Give me some hearts and likes for students giving their parents some of that verbal affirmation back to them. If you're feeling overwhelmed ask your parents if there are specific action items they can help with. I know it sounds like I'm asking you to put your parents to work, but what you're doing is a mealier rating a burst pipe from a procrastination backlog. Right? Your parents' brains are split in as many different directions as yours are. Right? An easy gift to give them is sharing your schedule early. Have a shared schedule of your college auditions and applications. Red flags to watch out for as you're along this process. Okay? If you're working with a coach, if you have a coach or a drama teacher and they just give you a single monologue, slap it in your hand, give you a single song and they say, hey, this is perfect for you. Get a second opinion. That should be a big red flag because that may be their choice of a monologue and a song, but you're in the room. It's your audition. You got to make sure that you love it. Okay? Because often the thing that holds a student back from nailing that audition, looking as good as they can and feeling as good as they can, is they're missing a connection with the material. So do not compromise on your material. I tell students that I'm working one-on-one with. If we go through these 20 monologues and you still haven't connected to one, it just means that we need to keep looking. We don't stop until you're happy. If a coach doesn't give you notes, if they just go darling, you're wonderful, you're beautiful, you're perfect. That's not helping. If you're just getting compliments, it's not helping your performance. Obviously, if you've even known me for five minutes, I am a very positive person, but I also give direct notes. Like I'll say, wow, that was really awesome. In the end there, that kind of sucked though, right? And students will be like, yeah, I was afraid to say it. Why did it suck? And then we can work on it, right? So just make sure that they are being honest with you. Michelle says, helping each other and you helping along the way. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Michelle, how to work with a coach. Look at Lil Zach Efron here. He was so tiny. How to work with a coach? Well, first shop around, find somebody who fits your budget, who fits your energy. Not all college coaches are alike. A lot of us, you know, we're as different as people can be. Some are very structured and corporate and fancy and some of us are me. And I'm like, cool, let's focus on you as an individual and like, let's have fun. Also focus on, how about coach who focuses on your specific needs? Sometimes coaches are like, these are the schools for you. And you're like, yeah, but I also want to double major in site. Help me find that. Keep those communications open between you and your coach, right? About your school list, your school list can absolutely change. It's liquid. It's there for you. Your audition material, if you get bored of your pieces and you want to find new stuff, cool. About how often you work, sometimes you might want to say, hey, I want to work twice a week or I want to work less. That's cool. And what else you would like help with? And remember, we work for you. Okay, so only work with a single coach because you want to protect your confidence. Now, what do I mean by that? Art is so subjective. So subjective, right? So if you're working with someone on your monologue and it's perfect and then you come to me for like a second look, I might see something totally different than your coach. And I'm going to say that out loud. And then your left feeling confused and your confidence plummets don't put yourself in that situation. So if you're working with someone, only work with them. If you're working with me, only work with me. Both of us want the best for you. So that means that we can't both be working on it. It's like having a pasta chef and a pastry chef working on the same dish. You're not going to get pasta or a cake. You're going to get pasta cake and nobody wants that. Give yourself lots of time and patience if you're doing this on your own. I've had students who have done a lot of it on their own. It just takes more time. It just takes more planning. So researching schools on your own is time consuming, especially if you are looking for something in particular in regards to budget and in regards to training and location. So give yourself a dedicated work schedule to find your schools between 12 and 20. I'll leave this up here for a minute in case you want to take notes. I recommend between 12 and 20 schools with two included safeties. And when I say a safety, it is similar but different to what your academic counselor might mean by a safety school. What I mean is you can walk on the campus and say, I'm Katie. I want to be a theater major and they go, great, you're in. No audition. And also make sure that you know your grades are good enough. Like it isn't all around iron, clad, safe school. Give yourself more time to work on your audition requirements. I'll be honest, this takes so much time because it's just going website to website to website and gathering information. And the schools do not make it easy to find everything on one page. So you have to like just sort of take shots in the dark to find what year they want the monologues from. How long they're supposed to be when's everything do? And for 20 schools, it takes some time weeks. If you are not a theater parent, let your child do this because it's like reading Sanskrit. It's so much inside baseball, okay? If you're working with how to coach, how do you find monologues? Find monologues in monologue books. That's cool. As long as those monologues are from plays, right? So like I can take a monologue book that has like the best play, the best monologues from new plays on Broadway. Super cool. I can't take a monologue book that's like the best monologues written specifically for this book and aren't from plays. Can't do that. Let me just go back and make sure is that clear to everybody? Give me give me hearts and likes to make sure that I'm making sense. You can also read plays. My secret is I read well-known playwrights, lesser-known stuff. Every playwright, every big playwright has had plays that have tanked or just haven't done very well, but there's great material in there. How do you find songs? The How Leonard Audition Books are a great place to start. Essentially, they're like monologue books for songs. They're songs from Broadway shows. YouTube's great place to find songs too. The 54 Below channel. 54 Below Finds Dines is a is like a separate club in New York City that there's a lot of musical theater. They have a lot of great material on their YouTube page. I also look up well-known composers, lesser-known work. Same thing as playwrights. And then don't worry about overdone. You might hear this phrase as you go along that a song is overdone. Don't do it because it's overdone, meaning it's performed too much. That comes from a really toxic place within musical theater culture of people who are insecure about themselves and want to feel better and smarter than somebody else. So they'll tell them their song is overdone. Very, very few songs are actually overdone. Songs can be very recognizable, but not overdone. I've had students get into their colleges with I can't say no from Oklahoma with defined gravity. If it's not done a ton in a particular season, it's not overdone. Being recognized is totally fine. Okay, so how to work without a coach when you need coaching. What do you do? Well, you'll get some coaching. Typically students get it from their drama teacher or a director that you work with. Don't have zero coaching because then you're just setting yourself up for like a tremendous waste of energy and money and time. Okay. Make sure your teacher times you that you're within the time limit of your audition requirements. This is most important for the prescreen because if you're saving like your best moment in the monologue or that money note in the song and it's past the time that the school asks for, they're going to stop watching, right? So make sure that you are well within that time limit. All right, tangible steps to increase admissions. How do we get into colleges more often? Number one, academics. Okay. Your GPA and your essay have the biggest impact for admission and financial aid considerations. Now, not every school offers merit scholarships, but the ones who do take this into account. If there is a subject that's difficult for you in high school, get a tutor. I cannot say this enough how easy this is to increase your admissions to your dream colleges. If you are not a math person, like I'm not, get a tutor. If you can find a college student who's majoring in math, they cost 15 bucks an hour and you can bring your grade up from a D to a B, my goodness, that's going to be huge. So make sure that you get that kind of tutelage for the subjects that you maybe need some help in. And then do whatever APs you can. You don't have to go bananas, but A, to look good on your transcript, it boosts up your GPA. And the nice thing is it frees up time in your college experience. If you if you have a credit for English or math or whatever it is, then you can take an elective. It's great. All right. Now, who's ready to talk about saving money on college? Woo-woo-woo. All right. Save money to save your mental health. When you graduate, the amount of debt that you have after college directly impacts how much you can audition. Let me say it again. When you graduate, the amount of debt that you have impacts how much you can audition. So if you have to pay back $100,000 in loans, you are going to be working more jobs and you are going to be auditioning less. It's just the fact of the matter. Whereas if you have little to no debt, you have the time and the income to be in class and audition. If you have little to no debt, you have time and income to be in class, acting, voice and dance class, and to audition. The majority of my peers, my friends on Broadway and national tours and stuff, the majority of my peers who have quit the business have had lots of loans. The majority of my friends working professionally have had little to no loans. Because the people who have so many loans from going to their dream school, that was very expensive, that they couldn't afford. They had to work four and five jobs and they couldn't audition. They were so racked with stress about money that they couldn't do the very thing they went to school for. Whereas going to maybe a state school, all of a sudden you have more time to go to class and audition. Ravina asks does test optional really mean test optional? That is a great question. Not always. So that is something that you need to call the schools who list themselves as test optional. Call their admissions office and get a straight answer from them. Because they might say yes, test optional, but we would really love to see a test. So that's something that you have to get a direct answer from. That's a great question. Ravina, if you're in the cap parents support page, by the way, if you're not in the cap parents support page yet, just say that you want in in the comments. It's my own group where all of us all the parents and me we take care of each other. We help each other with tips. We dispel myths. It's a stress free super supportive place to help parents get through this process. I would love to have you as members absolutely free. Just let me know that you want in and I will invite you. If you Ravina, if you're not in, please request that because that was a great, great question. Second thing is the school you graduate from doesn't matter. The tools matter. The point of any theater school is to teach you technique and craft so that you can work. You as an artist, you marry the technique of the voice and the acting of the dance to sharpen your already god-given artistic talent. Graduating without debt is another huge tool in your toolbox. So your tools are voice technique, acting technique, dance technique and graduating without debt. Those are your four tools. Where you graduated from matters for like half an hour after you graduate. Then everyone's at the same starting line. But they'll have to work five jobs and you won't because you don't have all that debt. I talk about this all the time. Tom Brady was drafted like 199th or something and then he went on to become, you know, arguably the greatest quarterback in the NFL. Doesn't matter where he went to school. He worked his butt off and then he got to where he was. Anyone from anywhere can work their butt off and get to where they want to go and it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Give me some hearts and likes for that for saving money and getting to Broadway. And now the access you've been waiting for. The top 10 and most affordable and best schools you've never heard of. Now don't come at me if you've heard of these schools. All right. I'm just counting on the fact that most everybody hasn't heard of these schools. Okay. And stick around because I am saving the best for last. Okay. It is a school that is on the rise. That's crazy affordable and everyone should be applying to it this year. And if you're a parent of a sophomore, keep it on your radar because I feel like with me blowing it like this and telling everybody about it, it's going to go from like a medium fit school to a reach school pretty soon. Number one, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. What is it? It's a BFA in musical theater and it's a heavy emphasis on voice and music. So you're taking acting classes and dance classes, but you're taking a lot more voice, private voice, music theory and like music, ecology and stuff. And by keeping the class small, students have significant opportunities within class, in musicals, plays, operas, so many opportunities to work professionally. And what's this? Bam, no out-of-state fees. So if you are not from Illinois, guess what? It doesn't matter. You get the same rate as the students from Illinois. $29,000 for everything per year. Now you're going to see these numbers of dollars for the next few schools. Know that that number is tuition room board fees with no help. Okay? So Jeff Bezos is paying $29,000. You're not paying $29,000. Okay? So know that the numbers I give you are like sticker price on a car in a lot. $29,000 is ridiculous for the kind of education you get at a place like Southern Illinois. I'm seeing all the, all the requests to be in the parent group. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will drop a invite on every one of your comments. Number two, Northern Kentucky University. Now this is right underneath Cincinnati. It's like five miles from Cincinnati as far as I can tell on the Google maps. Some of you who are watching who may be in Ohio or Kentucky. Maybe you might be more specific about that. How about this BFA Mt BFA acting BFA played writing BFA stage management. And if you're in BFA Mt, it's a really heavy acting focus. Yay, this is why I say yay. Your student when they graduate is, you know, you're going to make some money doing musical theater. But acting is always the most important component. Why? Because a good actor singing a song is so much more thrilling than a beautiful singer who can't act a song. Right. And that's what gets jobs. Second, a lot of your money is going to come from independent films and commercials and industrials and television and films. So you want to make sure that you have solid acting training, right. $28,000 for everything. Now here's why I listed the other BFA even if you're not going into play writing or stage management. The fact that they have those BFA's meaning you are working with some really heavy hitter professionals and your shows are going to look great. Number three, the University of Southern Maine. This is our first non BFA. It's B.M. It's a bachelor of music in musical theater, which is expectedly very voice and music focused. So if you have a student who wants to go to music, who wants to go to college for a musical theater and they are primarily a singer, this is for them. $35,000 a year for everything. But take note. It offers merit based aid. So I was fiddling around on the net price calculators, which if you don't know what they are every school has one Google the name your school and net price calculator. You tell them how much you make a little bit about your family and they'll give you a rough estimate of how much your your schooling will cost schools that have merit based aid will also ask for your GPA for your test scores and stuff like that. I put in some pretty average stuff for University of Southern Maine and I got some pretty good bang for my buck. Number four, University of Minnesota Duluth. Nine BFA is a musical theater. Like you thought I was going nuts over the four, nine different BFA's in theater, okay, including empty and acting. Some of these BFA's are like costuming design lighting. That tells me that your shows are an absolute professional grade. This is so awesome. Not everyone gets to experience this in college, but this is there's not a lot there's not a lot of these, but this is one of those universities where you may not have a better performing experience in terms of like everything that goes into the show. In terms of like professional dressers professional electricians and designers like it's top notch. And as a performer and empty it's triple threat focused. So you're taking hardcore acting voice and dance private voice lots of acting classes lots lots of classes 30,000 dollars a year for everything. Number five, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. That sounds like it's two places at once. I know there's a city in Pennsylvania called Indiana. So this is like, Indiana, a school in Pennsylvania and in Indiana. It's as confusing as was at University of Miami, Ohio. So this is a B a in music theater. So remember a B a is means only half of your credits are going to be in your major. So if you want to save some money and you want a double major. This is it. All right, you can get a musical theater education. And by the way, I looked at curriculum and it's not as intense as a BFA, but it's pretty, it's pretty complete for a B a. It's more voice and music focused and for someone who does want a double major or study abroad. This is a perfect fit. Number six, University of Wisconsin, Steven's point BFA musical theater triple threat program acting singing, dancing, $24,000 a year. And so that most of the sticker prices for a BFA. The average is about $45,000, $50,000. This is half of that a full half for tuition, room and board. Let's give it up with hearts and likes and shock faces for the fact that these unbelievable, unbelievable pre professional schools are half the cost of the other ones. Number seven, Southeast Missouri State. Now, I know some of you may know the school already. It's it has been up and coming for the last couple of years. Hey, Jen, I see you. I will absolutely invite to the parents group. This has been up and coming for a couple of years. It is a rad BFA musical theater program. I know a couple of the faculty here and they're great. They really care about their kids. It's a triple threat program and it's $24,100. So it's it's 100 bucks more than University of Wisconsin at at Steven's point. It's it's half an iPad more than the other school and it's great. It's a great awesome. Number eight, Shawnee State. BFA MT and again, it's a triple threat program. Y'all, even even the big name schools don't always have a triple threat program. This is a triple threat program for $29,000 a year. This is such a bargain. Number nine, Vel Dosta State. This is in Georgia. This is a BFA and MT with a triple threat program. It's it's the curriculum. I was very impressed by it's it's similar to a lot of other programs that are bigger named almost identical 30,000 dollars a year for everything. And here's why it's important is it's in Georgia. Georgia is now become the second leading state for television and film production behind California. Because of that, you have some great actors, great acting teachers who are now based in Georgia. You also have a lot more equity professional musical theaters popping up in Georgia. So the quality of faculty you're going to get is going to be awesome. So before you learn about the awesomeness of number 10. Take a minute to ask yourself how easy can this be? The truth is this can be really easy. So it can be really easy with the cat flagship program. Take it through what cat provides. We start with a school match, which is the custom targeted collection of school recommendations based on your your priorities and your criteria like training and networking opportunities. So you can also get the cost, the exposure to the industry, your career goals, what you want to school to do for you. Remember that when you're auditioning for schools, you're also auditioning them. So a quick stat on school match success. Families without a targeted school list that start around now on average tend to spend around to grand more in travel and a hotel because they're booking so much more last minute. Then we do the audition requirements. So I told you before that the other requirements are very labor intensive to do on your own. This is every audition requirement for every school, including the prescreens for the, the monologues and songs and for in person. This also includes the due dates and the locations when you'll have to be and where you'll have to be. It saves on average. I suspect about three weeks worth of time monologues selection. We provide you with the monologues that connect to you and that completely elevates your performance in the room versus feeling like, I guess this is good. Now you want to make sure that your monologue really connects to you. And that you find the pieces that are uniquely yours. Both your contemporaries and your Shakespeare's there is no one size fits all for a monologues artists are unique one from the next. Song selection. So if you don't have an audition book or you've got a Bible songs because you do a lot of musical theater shows choosing your song it really doesn't have to be stressful. I mean it. So we'll help you select the songs in your book that pair bash with your monologues to showcase you as a complete performer working side by side with your voice teacher. So we're not going to get between you and your voice teacher. And if you don't have songs, then we get to do the most fun thing in the world, which is listen to show tunes that might be good for you. And then you get to pick the ones that you want to add your book. So foundations is school match audition requirements. Mon-- log selection, song selections for 1,400. Training package, this is kind of the meat and potatoes the whole thing. This is monologue coaching. It's working consistently, like we said, over a few months in the summertime, and we're going to elevate your performance each time, always games, never vacs lies. So training over a long period of time allows for greater discovery, as an actor and more comfort, you get to take more risks, find more things out, and a stronger performance. You'll be working on two contemporary monologues, one backup contemporary, just in case somebody does your monologue, right before you go in, you have an option to switch out, and one Shakespeare. Song coaching. So you'll be spending a lot of time with your voice teacher, which is good, and we absolutely encourage that. But the acting in your songs is still the most important thing, not by a lot, but it still is. So like a monologue, songs have stakes and story arcs, tactics, and objectives. Linda, I gotcha. I will invite you to the group too. You'll build the muscles, you'll need in the audition room with your songs. Shakespeare, you can feel confident with Billy Shakes, even if you've never done Shakespeare before, in your life. Russ Marshan is my Shakespeare coach, and he is just wonderful. He is from the school of the Larte School of Physical Theater, and his whole background is Shakespeare. He also played the Genie at California Adventures Aladdin for a long, long time. So he's also very familiar with musical theater. Russ helps you cut through the text on your piece, and transfers it from Shakespeare to just your monologue, which is a really cool feeling. This is the greatest review we've ever had from our student Natalie, who said, coming from musical theater, I was terrified of Shakespeare, and now my classical monologue is my favorite one to do on auditions, which is what we just love to hear. The training package is the monologue coaching of 20 sessions, song coaching, five sessions, Shakespeare coaching for 10 sessions for total value of 52-50. Audition ready happens in the fall. Starts in the fall. You'll film your pre-screen, that's the video audition with me and Russ, in person. So having your coaches filming you and coach you is an absolute game changer because we get to capture your best performance on film and send that one to the school. We will also have the audition requirements on hand, so we won't have to overlook anything and we do anything. It's one clean go at it. We provide the accompanist in the studio lighting and the camera and the backdrop. It's all included. It's all stuff we bring. All you bring is yourself and your talent, maybe a change. And then we're going to edit those takes after you're done. We're going to find the ones that show you off best and then we'll sort of curate it for you. Be like, here's all the takes that you need for this school. Here's all the takes you need for this school. And then we'll send you a drop box link. All you have to do is click and drag. Super easy. Kim, not a problem. I will also invite you as well. The mock audition. So we talked about this before that Broadway and high school are a lot more similar than college. So we want to make sure that you are ready for that kind of criteria so that you're not like looking around all, well, what's going on? You've done it before. You're cool. You're relaxed. You're calm. And you can take that admission. Take that scholarship. Okay. Unified's coaching. So remember, we talked about unified's being the thing that you do in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles to all the schools come to. Well, guess what? We'll be coming along too. We typically rent out the big suite on the top floor as like our own work studio. So before you go into your auditions with your jet lag and your time zone change and your hungry and your grumpy don't go in like that to your auditions. Come warm up with us. Discover that artistic center again. Find the stakes in your monologue. Warm up your voice. And then go kick butt, right? You don't want to come all that way. I spend all that money and not be ready to go. We'll also help you crash walk-in auditions. Walk-in auditions are where there's a school that you haven't even applied to. But they're taking auditions from people whoever wants to come in. And we may find there's a school that's great for you that wasn't even on your list. Hey, costs 30 bucks to go audition. Yeah, great. It might be a school you fall in love with. So audition ready is the pre-screen, the mock audition, the Unified's coaching for total value of 1250. And then the postseason guidance. This is what I'm doing right now with my students who graduate from high school in a month, right? So you might want to have extra auditions, right? You'll make audition appointments in the spur of the moment. Sometimes you'll finish all the schools that you had in your list. And then be like, oh, shoot, I just discovered this audition, right? Well, we don't want you to go in cold and not ready. So make sure that you have us to help you go through it. Because sometimes it's been weeks since you've worked and you don't want to go in cold. Make every audition count. We also have mental health check-ins, right? Because you're going to need someone to tell you that you can do this, especially when you're looking at all these schools, you're still waiting to hear back from some schools, you're nervous that you're not going to get in anywhere. Just having someone there to help is really, really awesome. It helps you stop whirling around in your head and get your feet back on the ground. You know, it helps you process big decisions your way. You know, you might be stuck between two or three schools and you don't know what to do. Come talk it out with us. Tell us what you're looking for. Tell us what it costs and we can help work it out like what might benefit you long-term. You know, or things like, okay, do I take this show, my spring musical, or do I audition for this school? Everyone's different. And everyone's going to need to sort that out on their own. We can actually help you with that. You need someone also to remind you that you're doing the hardest thing you've ever done in your life and you're doing great. And I mentioned this, it's important for parents to say that. And I have discovered from listening to parents that sometimes when parents speak to their teenagers and give me hearts and likes, if this room's true, sometimes teenagers are like, I will listen to anyone but you, mother and father. I will, I will believe anyone except you. And so sometimes having a coach or a mentor give them that same advice, same boost to confidence really, really goes a long way for them. Parent meetings, we also do in the postseason guidance. Parents, as things come up, you're going to want to check in with someone. You might say, hey, my students just went in for this. The audition felt weird. Do you know this person? What do you know about the school? We don't want to commit until we know more about it. You might go, my student just got four rejections on the same day. Help or my student just got four acceptances on the same day. Help. You might want to be interested in adding or taking away schools during the auditions season. Happy to help you with that. But you do want to make sure that you do it with some guidance. Sort of like, you don't want to go off your medication without a doctor's, you know. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]