Arts Students Face the Music in Applying to College
By Andrew Ricardo ’10
News Staff Reporter
High school seniors across the country face a momentous task each year when applying to colleges. When filling out applications and forming resumes, college-bound upperclassmen must put together all of their grades, accomplishments, and extracurricular activities in order to show colleges what they have to offer. Choate’s arts concentration students, however, face one more job: showing schools their proficiency in the art they study. Schools with arts programs have different ways of evaluating prospective arts students, and visual arts, musical arts, and theater are all very subjective crafts. So, what different challenges do Choate’s senior arts concentration students face when applying to college?
For any student applying to college, it’s important to have some idea of what he or she wants out of the college experience. For arts students, this means choosing the degree to which they want to pursue their skills in school. Arts programs in colleges range from the very low-key to the very serious; there are many different programs in between the intensity of a famed conservatory and the minor program of a lesser school.
The recognized status of a school can play a smaller role in an arts student’s search for a school than it would in an average search, as even some Ivy League schools have somewhat unimpressive arts programs. Jen Bashian ’08, an arts concentration student focusing in theater, says, “For a student in the arts, the college process becomes a different species. The Ivies and schools of a similar caliber have their perks, but most of their theater programs are virtually non-existent.”
With the variation among colleges in the arts, some students remain ambiguous or open-minded about what they’ll be doing in college. Violinist and arts concentration student Tessa Sacramone ’08 explains, “For some schools, I applied to the arts-sciences college but didn’t specify myself as a music major, but other schools… are specifically for music performance.”
Bashian remarks “I’m looking at programs of all types, from a liberal arts curriculum to a conservatory acting program.”
Schools differ in what they expect their applicants to prepare for them. Most schools expect some sort of portfolio or recording of a student’s work to be included with an application, but some require students to audition. Sacramone, who sent a CD recording of herself playing several symphonic movements to colleges, recalls, “I sent the CD out to every school that I applied to except for the ones that want you to audition… each school has its own requirement for what they want to see.”
Paul Tines, executive arts director at Choate, feels that actual auditions give a far better feel for what a student can really do: “I actually think that at the end of the day, auditioning is much better… a performance tells us so much more about a student’s ability as a musician or an actor.”
As students go through the application process, one question that arises is whether Choate’s arts concentration program fully prepares its students for the competitive nature of admission for arts students. According to Sacramone, the answer seems to be a definite yes: “It gives me the time to practice after school, which is great, and I have orchestra and chamber music experience through the requirements of taking music theory classes.”
Bashian agrees that the classes required through the arts concentration program have prepared her for the college process: “Casting our own scenes in directing class has shown me that the audition process has very little to do with talent and a lot to do with chance. There were so many talented people who got turned away, and the experience taught me that colleges may reject me even if my audition and applications are perfect.”
Clearly, the experience students get through Choate’s arts concentration program prepares them in many ways for what lies ahead. Choate’s arts students, after working through the rigorous arts concentration program, have less to worry about than others as they move forward with their college pursuits.
