Dance training and College Applications

[dance1soccer1]

I do some college admissions counseling and also want to remind parents of the need, as college (non-dance) admissions get more selective and scholarships get harder to come by - for the academically successful child, dance training shows that they are not just "brains", but its value is even greater for the less academic kid - on applications, stressing that s/he danced X number of hours a week, was involved in X productions, enhanced musicality, creativity, teamwork skills (corps roles), leadership skills (solos), artwork (costume/props), musical education, technology skills (managing the sound system, lights in a studio or show), travel, peer tutoring (taught steps to classmates), met and befriended students from other countries (SI's), goes a long way to enhancing a less than stellar academic child's resume and attractiveness for a college. It's all "spin", but it's also giving an actual WORTH to the training outside the obvious. Your dancers are doing something of value, even if they never dance a professional step in their lives.

[Myers]

I do some college admissions counseling and also want to remind parents of the need, as college (non-dance) admissions get more selective and scholarships get harder to come by - for the academically successful child, dance training shows that they are not just "brains", but its value is even greater for the less academic kid

 

 

This topic may belong in another thread but I was interested to hear of dance1soccer1's experience with collage admissions and the possible value of dance training on an applicants resume. My DD goes to a very competitive public school system, where many kids are high achievers. As we all know, getting into a collage of your choice, if it is in the upper tier, is very difficult.

 

The conventional wisdom is that doing "sports" will enhance a student's application. While I do not believe in doing any extracurricular activity unless ones' heart is in it, I am unclear on how collage admissions view an activity like dance, which is separate from a school sport activity.

My DD loves dance, and devotes many hours a week to it--this is OK as her grades are excellent. It would be nice to know that her commitment to dance would be a plus in the hyper-competitive world of collage admissions.

[Taradriver]

Colleges will view an applicant's dance background positively, however, you may have to lead them to it in some cases. Including a dance resume and even a good video, can enhance an application.

 

That said, the buzz is that applications to private universities may be down, owing to the economy, and apps to public universities are expected to be up, making them more competitive. Some public universities don't accept supplemental material (such as dance resumes, videos, etc) with their applications.

[dance1soccer1]

Taradriver is right, your Ivy and top tier and even second tier private schools are going to have to be "sold" on ballet as an art and a sport. Those schools usually have a place in applications (if you're using the Common Application) or on the paper application to insert "extraordinary activities" or "scientific research", etc. Use that as a place to attach your dance resume and explanation of what you did/do, including all plans to continue in whatever fashion during/after college. Now, this is all information for a non-dance major, non-dance application. I have zero experience in getting a dance major accepted to a dance college. I mostly deal in top tier private school admissions or academic scholarships for such schools.

[Taradriver]

If one is applying as a dance major, the dance department will have its own supplemental material requirements. DD was required to include a dance resume in her departmental applications; she chose to add it to enhance her private university applications.

[dancemaven]

I have split this discussion from " The 'worth' of dance training" thread. This topic really has its own focus.

 

Once it has been seen by interested parties, I will move it to the Higher Education General Discussion Forum.

[gogators]

As a parent of a HS senior who's in the midst of applying to different colleges, I can share at least our experiences so far with admissions and how dd's ballet training & experiences have played into it:

 

At least for small, liberal arts colleges (less than 5,000), those schools definitely "get it" when it comes to ballet, music or other non-sport endeavor that requires a significant amount of time. (But I have a feeling larger schools "get it" too.)

 

Most schools nowadays use the online Common Application (https://www.commonapp.org) for student applications. But the Common App also has a separate Arts Supplement form of which the student can choose to submit online or via paper. I strongly recommend that if your dk spends a significant amount of time with ballet (or other arts interest), to complete this form and submit it and include the required associated materials. My dd included a DVD showing a selection of different performances (formal, informal and in-studio), a dance resume (which includes her performances, SI programs, past teachers, etc.), a photo sheet with different dance photos (all but one wearing simple black leo), and a signed recommendation letter from her ballet school's director (who was one of her teachers for the past 4 years and knew her well). Using the Arts Supplement will allow your dk to demonstrate the depth of his/her ballet pursuit, and it will set them apart from those who say they danced but at a rec. studio.

 

IMHO, most colleges don't necessarily evaluate the dk's level of talent in ballet, but their level of interest & passion and the amount of time devoted to ballet. These schools appreciate kids who delve deeply in a single interest, whether it's ballet, music, theatre, or even stamp collecting -- versus spreading themselves thinly across multiple, brief interests to pad their college app. They like kids who are passionate about something, no matter what it is.

 

Dd is applying to some schools of which her test scores do not reside in the median SAT range. But because of her ballet pursuits she has a better chance to get accepted (and has already been accepted to one school whose "average" admitted class stats are higher than hers). It also helps if your dk has pursued a challenging course of academics all 4 years, including English, math, lab science, history and a language.

[gav]

I don't know much about US college applications, but I can comment from my experience with a liberal arts-type undergraduate program in Canada with very competitive admissions. I applied and was admitted, and I subsequently evaluated applications as a senior student in the program. The program requires each applicant to submit a supplementary application form, which is evaluated by senior students and program faculty regardless of and apart from the students' grades.

 

The point of the supplementary application is not really to allow students to boast about their accomplishments, but to evaluate their ability to engage in critical thinking, to reason and to write. For example, when I was evaluating the applications, the students were asked which book they had read outside of school made a significant impact on them and why. I read more than one application where the book selected was the Bible, which in itself is neither here nor there. Some applicants explained the "why" exceptionally well, some did not. You can guess which student's answer got the better score. When I applied, I had to write about something I'd done that was meaningful to me. I always participated in many activities, so I could have written about figure skating three days each week, the summer I spent volunteering at a hospital, or an emotional trip to several WWII death camps in Poland, but I chose to write about my part-time job teaching swimming. (I hadn't taken up ballet yet!) It was meaningful to me, and I think I explained the "why" pretty well by explaining the value it had to me, my skill in it, what I learned from it, and why I enjoyed it.

 

My point is that serious dance training, like anything (even something that doesn't take a lot of time), has a lot to offer its students. But the benefit to students comes only when they are able to take what it is that the training has to offer and begin to value those benefits themselves. Once they are able to do that and really "get it", they will be able to sell ballet to colleges, like dance1soccer1 and Taradriver suggest. After all, in my opinion, that type of thinking is what a college education is all about.

[gogators]

Totally agree with gav -- and I forgot to include that all of the schools dd is applying to require the applicants to write additional essays to answer questions in a supplement application required by each school. And each supplement application is somewhat unique with different questions. One school even required dd submit a graded essay as part of her application, complete with her teacher's written comments.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say (in my poorly written post here :-) ) is similar to gav's experience in Canada, in the U.S. an applicant's writing ability is an important part of the application, and maybe even more so than test scores. (And the trend is SAT/ACT scores are now optional for many schools, which means the student's writing ability becomes even more scrutinized by the admissions people.)

[mom2]

I can't say with absolute certainty that my daughter's dance training made a difference in her University acceptances (Canadian Universities) - but I THINK that it did, at least for the ones which required an essay of some kind. The others wouldn't have known about it. She attended a ballet residency program for five years and lived away from home during this time - so she spoke about this experience in her application essays. In her case perhaps the level of independence and initiative required for such an endeavor was also a factor...we'll never know for sure. At any rate, she was accepted into all the programs she applied to - sadly turning down nice scholarship offers to go to the school she now attends.

 

Four years later she is on the application trail again, and from the essays she did let me see I can tell that her time at the ballet school is still something that she sees as pivotal in her development as a student, and as a person.

[Myers]

"IMHO, most colleges don't necessarily evaluate the dk's level of talent in ballet, but their level of interest & passion and the amount of time devoted to ballet. These schools appreciate kids who delve deeply in a single interest, whether it's ballet, music, theatre, or even stamp collecting -- versus spreading themselves thinly across multiple, brief interests to pad their college app. They like kids who are passionate about something, no matter what it is."

 

 

That is a very interesting observation, and is consistent with a very well written article I saw in the NYTimes a while ago about the college selection process. While all colleges say they want students with diverse interests, what they really want are a population of students that represent various interests (arts, sports, etc). They don't necessarily want an individual student with many talents, but rather students with extraordinary, albeit limited interests. It is like taking a bunch of baskets (lacrosse, soccer, writer, dance) and they fill these "baskets" with students who many not be particularly diversified in their pursuits (a little of everything), but have one pursuit they have concentrated on. In this way the collage achieves a diverse student body in a patchwork sort of manner.

 

If ballet was a competitive team sport, played at a collage level, that brought tailgaiting alums with cash in their pocket, dancers would be sought after similar to basketball players and soccer players!

[dancemaven]

While all colleges say they want students with diverse interests, what they really want are a population of students that represent various interests (arts, sports, etc). They don't necessarily want an individual student with many talents, but rather students with extraordinary, albeit limited interests.

 

In their information session, Stanford reps say, "Stanford is looking for lop-sided students . . . ", meaning exactly what is stated above. I must say, after all the 'well-rounded, diverse interest' talk that usually is heard, that 'lop-sided student' comment really made me giggle.

[davidg]

We should keep in mind that different schools are looking for different things, and avoid generalizing from one school to the next --- even between schools of similarly stellar reputation.

 

I think it's also worthwhile to differentiate between the experience of students, parents in attempting to divine what a particular school wants --- and information from the school itself (either official printed material or via someone involved with admissions).

[vagansmom]

Also remember that applicants to competitive colleges are measured against high school peers from their own school. Any one competitive college will not accept more than a few kids from any one high school; they need to spread the wealth.

 

Kids who do well in very competitive high schools, be they private or public, often don't get into the colleges of their choice because they are already in a pool of high achievers. Those kids ALL have special long-term commitments, drive, energy, passion, whatever you want to call it, and they're ALL very good at what they do.

 

So what's a college to do?

 

What I've seen (happily) is that they don't necessarily skim off the top, but often choose that "lop-sided" kid. I've also noticed that sometimes dance, while "lop-sided" isn't unusual enough in that kind of scenario.