Being a senior in high school has its own challenges, rewards, and the all-too-familiar topic of college admissions. For Danielle Gendron, a typical high school senior college admissions brought an added level of stress in preparing for her college musical theater auditions at Oklahoma City University, Florida State University, Elon University, Webster Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University after a summer at the prestigious Broadway Theatre Project. The Charlotte, North Carolina teenager didn’t rest on her laurels when it came to her college auditions.
Gendron sought outside help to prepare for this trying time. Gendron said, “My acting teacher helped with my monologues,” “and my voice teacher helped me with cutting my songs into 16 bar, 32 bar, 1 minute, and 2 minute selections. Everyone is so particular nowadays!” The audition process brought an unexpected twist for Gendron as well-she planned to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater, but at her first-choice school, Oklahoma City University, she was given two different options outside of Musical Theater due to the high praise she received in the acting portion of her audition as well as her demonstrated musicianship.
“They kept mentioning their Bachelor of Fine Arts Acting major and the faculty, said I could really go far in my acting if I chose the BFA program, but I was also offered a spot in the Bachelor of Arts in Music, which was surprising-they were the only school who offered me a spot in their music program.” After weighing her options, Danielle will be in the O.C.U. Bachelor of Fine Arts Acting class of 2012, with specialty courses in piano and voice to supplement her conservatory training.
Morgan McLaughlin, a sophomore BFA Acting student at O.C.U. from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma employed the same kind of help Gendron did when auditioning for the class of 2011 last year. “My drama instructor from Broken Arrow High School coached me on my monologues and I went to my vocal coach in Broken Arrow to help me choose songs for my O.C.U. and the University of Tulsa auditions.” In the end, McLaughlin’s support system at O.C.U. was what appealed most. “Although I got a talent scholarship at T.U., I chose O.C.U. because the school and the faculty were very genuine, welcoming, and I liked the atmosphere. The faculty all really care about the individual success of their students.”
Danielle and McLaughlin are just two of thousands of high school seniors each year that vie for a few hundred spots in college performing arts programs across the nation, and while many rely mainly on feedback from their friends and family to prepare for the 5-10 minute window of opportunity, others like Gendron and McLaughlin enlist the help of coaches across the nation who specialize in monologue preparation, song selection, and even vocal health during the college audition season.
The business of college preparation has become such a hot commodity that dozens of reviews on the best performing arts colleges in the United States are published every year by The Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times recently ran an article in their Education Life section on April 20, 2008 about the Carnegie Mellon audition process, and a new business sector of college preparation has extended outside SAT prep classes and extracurricular activities; performing arts studios, individual coaches, and guidance counselors have gained clients for the sole purpose of college audition preparation and mentoring, both in person and through the internet like CollegeConfidential.com and MTCollegeAuditions.com.
Vocal coach Peisha McPhee, mother to “American Idol” 5th season runner-up Katharine McPhee, coaches professional musicians and vocalist as well as specializing in college audition preparation. McPhee draws on her experiences as a cabaret artist and performing in the national tours of “Showboat,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” among others to coach in various areas of vocal music, including musical theater, cabaret, and contemporary pop music. When meeting with a client to prepare for colleges auditions, McPhee explains, “In a voice lesson, we build a repertoire along with exercises that strengthen and build the voice with specific technique. I know all of the conservatories across the nation and know what they’re looking for, so I give them exact advice on what material to perform, how long it should be, and I coach the performance as well. It takes time, patience and a commitment to learn; if a person has been taking voice lessons for 4 years, there is going to be a night and day difference between that person and the one who has no training in an audition.”
She also knows how competitive musical theatre programs have become since her time in the musical theater program at Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado, and even since her daughters Katharine and Adriana auditioned and attended Boston Conservatory and Webster Conservatory, respectively. “I coached my daughters and picked their audition material, and it was competitive when [they] went to college, but it is very, very competitive nowadays to be placed in the top musical theater conservatories-you must train throughout high school to be prepared for the process.” McPhee’s college preparation program has paid off for her students-this year alone she had acceptances to UCLA, NYU Steinhardt School of Music, UC Berkeley, and Emerson School of Music, and has had students gain acceptance to Berklee School of Music, USC, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Yale Graduate School of Music, and Syracuse University, among many others.
For Gendron, however, instead of attending another summer intensive program to get a head start on her imminent conservatory training, she’s taking a different route to count down to move-in day. “I’m going to Australia with my sister in July. I asked my mom if I could go for graduation if I kept my grades up, and now I’ll be going with a group of 40 other kids this summer.”
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