LIV: Awesome. Thank you so much, Katie. Katie sends most of my students over to me, so she is that first step one-stop shop, but I’m Liv Rocklin. A little bit about my background. I earned my bachelor’s and my master’s degrees from NYU in educational theatre. I specialize in helping performing arts and visual arts students here at Prepory and getting into their dream colleges, kind of making sure that we focus on all aspects, creating their portfolios and also their academic side and voice in their essays. I have had students accepted into performing arts programs such as UCLA and NYU, University of Chicago, Emerson, University of Michigan, BU, and lots more. I also myself went through this process and went through it with a big variety of applications. Some schools I walked in there and I auditioned for some schools. I had a portfolio for some schools. It was a number of essays. So I have seen it all at this point and I’m super excited to share that with you tonight.

KATIE: Awesome. I’m going to give a little bit of introduction about Prepory and then I’ll give you some context. Liv, already we have some people sharing their different disciplines in the chat, so you can take a look at that and I’ll call some of those out for everyone so that you know exactly what we have in the audience. So some background for you about Prepory, Prepory has been in this industry for over a decade. We’ve helped over 14,000 students through this process, and 94% of our students get into one or more of their top five choice schools. So this is a fantastic track record in this space. When you work with Prepory, you’re also 3.38 times more likely to be admitted to a school with an acceptance rate below 15%. So that’s top programs across the country. We’ll get into some of those arts programs and also our arts applicants have an even higher acceptance rate with top programs. It is five times more likely.

There we have it. So here’s just a smattering of the programs we’ve been talking about. Liv mentioned some of them for you already. Some of her own students have been accepted to some of these programs, so we’re excited to dive in. If any of these stand out to you, that you’re excited about and you want to ask questions about, definitely feel free to put that in the chat as well. And Liv, we’ll dive in here with our agenda just from the chat here, I’m sure you probably took a look, we have some dance interest in our audience for sure. So definitely dance and also technical theatre, so not just on the stage but behind the scenes.

LIV: Love that. And yes, we’ll talk about all of those things, but just to start off with our agenda and what we will be talking about tonight, we’ll be talking about who is actually applying with a fine arts application and who isn’t. What selective performing and visual arts programs really value in an application, how to build those portfolios and write those essays, common mistakes and how we’re going to avoid them, how admissions teams actually review the fine arts applications once they’re all said and done, the way that Prepory does it, the Prepory difference, and then we’ll end with the Q&A. So jumping to the next, so who is actually applying to a fine arts application? And you are going to want to look for yourself on this page. So anybody with any of these particular interests, you can scan around any of these interests where you really want to pursue it as a career, right?

It’s not that it’s a hobby that you do, but actually you want to become a doctor. It’s like this is your craft. This is what you want to be pursuing. You want to learn how to do it on a deeper level. You want to make industry connections while at school to take it to the next step versus who is not applying to with a performing arts education or application. Students who want to continue studying art as a passion, maybe as a minor, maybe through electives, maybe through student clubs. I was in lots of comedy and theatre clubs and some of my favorite collaborators in those clubs, they’re like, “Yeah, I’m a math major.” It was super cool to meet people who weren’t studying it but still enjoy doing it. That’s not who’s applying to the performing arts or with a visual arts application, students who want to use art to supplement a different academic focus.

So if you’re like, “I want to be a psychology major, but I want to go into potentially drama therapy,” great, that’s an awesome master’s. You might not be starting with that drama conservatory BFA though, or students who want a different career but still want opportunities to do their art. The great news with that is you can always do your art. I had a student this past year who said to me, “Well, maybe I should minor in music in college because it’ll be my last chance to do music.” And I was like, “What are you talking about ‘your last chance to do music?'” I said, “I have an improv class later today. When you’re an adult, you can do the things you enjoy for fun.” So if it’s just still wanting to practice, that’s different than really committing yourself through a conservatory program.

LIV: So what are selective performing and visual arts programs valuing the most? First, of course, that first level, we have a demonstrated artistic ability and experience. So to actually show I’ve done this. To sign up for a theatre camp or an art camp or some sort of musical experience or camp or dance camp, you don’t have to have the experience necessarily to just sign up for anything. That said, there are very competitive summer programs. That’s a huge thing that Prepory helps with too, is helping you get into those competitive summer programs. I went to Cherubs, which is Northwestern’s program. They also then have a very high acceptance rate into Northwestern afterwards. The reason that they care about it is because it’s hard to get into Cherubs. You have to show that you’re already good at something to get into a program like that. So then by having one of those programs, there’s tons of them, but one of those programs on that college application, it’s showing, “Look, I already was selected in a selective process,” and you also know, “Oh, that person grew a lot at that program itself.”

So that’s a big thing that Prepory focuses on too, is how do we make sure that you’re going in in a way that you can actually prove this artistic ability. Of course, that also comes in the audition and all of that, but they want to see that resume. They want to see that resume already full in whatever ways that you’re able to do so, which is something we definitely help to brainstorm. Also, reflective thinking about the art form. The types of essays that they don’t want to see is: music is awesome because it sounds good. Yes, but we need to see a little bit of that deeper level. Many, many hours of the sessions that I’ve spent with my students have been this question of, “Okay but why?” I interrogated this poor 16-year-old boy for so long on why escapism is important, because that’s what he wanted to approach creative writing with, and we got to that answer, and now he’s at one of the top, he’s at University of Iowa, which is one of the top creative writing programs in the entire country. He had to be able to reflect on it enough, and those are the conversations that we try to have.

KATIE: What do you think about someone who’s looking to maybe double major or do two things at once? How would you think about maybe the writing process for that?

LIV: Absolutely. I mean, that makes that writing process even more important because if you’re telling them that you want to double major and balance a bunch of classes or double major in an artistic field and a non-artistic field, suddenly we’re dealing with a whole other variety of skills. So the writing process. Really to be able to show that intersection, especially colleges are really, really drawn to interdisciplinary students who don’t just see things in a vacuum, who see things as a way to connect with the world and connect with other industries. So that writing process I think can really show how a student really thinks about that.

We also want to keep in mind that ensemble oriented mindset, right? We’re not Rachel Barry. We’re not walking into a college application Glee reference. We’re not walking into a college application with this “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to be a star.” The people that you meet in a college conservatory, those are your most important network. That’s the people that are going to say, “Oh, you need a director? I know someone.” So this isn’t about, yes, it’s competitive, but once you get there, it’s important to be an ensemble member. We show that through the writing. We show that through the activities. If you’re in ensemble-based collaborative projects, we show that again through the reflective writing about why it’s important to be among other people in the art form that you’re in. Like I was saying before, the session about collaborative arts, that’s an entire major at NYU Tisch, collaborative arts.

How do all artists collaborate to make better art? Not how does this one theatre student win a Tony so that NYU can post about them? That’s not what they’re focused on. And then a strong artistic perspective. So what is it you want to say through your art, right? Art is fun, I agree, but what is it that you want to say? What difference do you want to make? This is something that we really focus on in the essays, and this is something that a lot of applications lack, and it’s something that I know that I’m not letting a student send an application in without. So here going on to the next. So yes, you’re an arts applicant, you need all those things. You still need some other stuff though. You need a strong GPA with major line courses, right? theatre majors, you should be in theatre classes, you should be in crew classes.

Visual arts majors, you need to be in these AP classes: AP art history, AP studio art, 2D art, right? Not all arts majors have AP aligned classes, but you should be taking these courses as rigorous a level as you can. A lot of what Prepory even does is course selection and advisement, which honestly matters from a really young age. From that, I saw we had 9th, 10th graders here, because if you’d never take a first art class, they’re probably not letting you into AP 2D art. So we look ahead and think, okay, well where are we going with this and how do we make sure that you end up in the most rigorous spot also actually doing well in those courses. Consistent performance and academic subjects, too. Yes, I’m the first to admit getting a B in Calculus as a music major, it’s not going to take a music application, but if all of the grades in humanities are A’s, and then there’s scattered B’s and C’s in the STEM subjects, it’s still going to be harmful because even conservatory programs, they’re going to require some tangential academic classes.

They’re still often going to have these core curriculums. Beyond that, it just shows can this student thrive if they’re not doing the exact niche thing that they’re wanting to do? That’s just not how colleges are designed. That’s how sometimes grad school is designed, but even conservatories are going to require you to have these other skills. It also shows work ethic. So this idea that you can kind of just coast on by and have four free periods or senior year, these are things that we kind of say to you, “Nope, sorry,” and that you got to keep kind of grinding. Also, test scores for test required schools. English sections certainly hold more weight, but a strong score is going to help any applicant. Any of these Yale Drama, one of the best programs in the country, you need an SAT, and you need the competitive SAT. And then strong essays that show a student’s unique voice and goals. We’ll talk about that in a lot more detail. And then letters of recommendation from academic subject teachers. Even as a theatre major, you need a STEM recommendation and a humanities recommendation. So if you’re not really going for it in your academic subjects and then you wind up without a good recommendation, that’s going to be tricky too.

KATIE: How would you think about maybe building those relationships or starting that conversation even if you have a slightly lower grade or you’re realizing that maybe you’re behind on this process?

LIV: So honestly, I think that some of the strongest letters of recommendation can come from those teachers that you have a B in the class because it shows a background to what’s happening. Yes, it’s great to show the A and then to show the relationship too, but the way to really show that effort and get a strong recommendation is going to office hours and really showing that interest. If you kind of feel like, “Oh, shoot, I have been kind of saying, who cares about math? My grade is suffering. My teacher knows I don’t care that much.” Whatever it might be, change that narrative for them, right? Show up to office hours, email them, ask if you can meet. Really kind of put in that extra work so that they see the improvement. What an epic recommendation letter to be like, this is how they’ve grown over the course of a semester. That’s the best case scenario. You can also have an arts teacher as a supplemental letter of recommendation. Some schools will take more than just the two, so you can still keep that in mind, but to build those relationships, that’s also why it’s important to show up fully in class to be participating. That’s the easiest way to get a good letter of rec.

I talk about that a lot with my younger students, my freshman and sophomores, when they are hitting that thing of “I kind of have a B in this class right now,” my first question is like, “Okay, does your teacher offer office hours? Can you email them? If they don’t, how can we go out of our way to get the teacher to see that you are trying and then meet you at that place, and then sometimes also kind of support you more than they might have if they thought that you didn’t really care.” So that’s a good question.

KATIE: Yeah.

LIV: You also write the arts part. You need our portfolios. One of these or some of these, these, not all of these for everything, but you couldn’t even art portfolio, a design portfolio, which is when you send in a video of yourself acting or dancing or singing or doing a more performance-based art, and then you have to get invited to the audition. So there’s that pre-screen process first before you’re actually in the room. Writing portfolios. If you make it past that pre-screen and in-person or Zoom audition, now a lot of auditions are over Zoom, but often there’s still what’s called unified, which is basically if you live somewhere with, if you live in a, not even a big city, but just in a more area with a slightly medium-sized city, basically all the colleges will rent out the Marriott and then you’ll go room to room to room, Boston University, NYU, Emerson and just audition all in one day.

That can happen too. And then your artistic resume as well. So this is the big thing. What makes an arts application unpredictable? Who they already have in their cohort. These programs are only admitting like 10-20 people every year. So it’s critical if you’re putting on a show or if you’re putting together an art exhibition, we want everyone to have a unique feel, a unique vibe, some sort of unique perspective. Two, equally qualified applicants. They’re not both going to be admitted if they’re too similar. It’s not something you can control. This also might be true about the people in the grades above you. If there’s somebody that truthfully, that looks just like me, that acts just like me that does the comedy side of things more than everything else and they were admitted a year before me, that might hurt my chances of getting into that school.

You also can’t totally control how an audition goes. Day-of goes how it’s going to go. You can prepare really well with your acting teacher on your own and with your theatre class. There’s a lot of ways to prepare, but I think anyone who’s done an audition knows some of that can go out the window. There’s the truth to that. So the way that we take that into consideration is we can’t count on the audition and then also the subjectivity of art. I think that the admissions officers are trained to not be biased. They’re trained to not be like, “Oh, well, I don’t like drama, so I don’t like Shakespeare, so I don’t like this one.” They’re trained out of that, but there is a subjectivity to this at the end of the day.

So, what can you control? Because if I’m saying all of that, then you’re like, “Then why do I need help with this? If I can’t control it anyway, then I might as well throw it all to the wind and we’ll just see what happens.” No, we can help you control quite a lot that will give you the absolute best chance. So the biggest thing honestly, is college lists. College lists are going to look different for different arts applications rather than an academic application. An arts applicant is going to apply to more schools because what would be a likely school for a math major is a major reach for a theatre applicant. Something like Penn State, wonderful school, about a 70% acceptance rate. Generally, the theatre program takes 10 men and 10 women every year, and that is it. So it looks very, very different. You’re also going to vary up the majors, and we’re going to talk about this more, but you’ll vary up the majors to be more strategic because if you’re only applying to conservatory programs, we are getting into really unpredictable territory at that point. So at Prepory, one of the main things that I do with my art students is helping them to identify, okay, what are the conservatory programs that you really, really do care about and what are schools where you could also be interested in tangential majors that would still allow you to pursue that artistic career, but we can maybe have a sense more of predictability on this application? And that’s really about balance and making sure that every school on your list is something that you’d be excited for, even if it’s something you haven’t yet considered.

KATIE: That relates a little bit to, we had a question in the chat about BA or BFA. How do we think about that? How do we build that list strategically? Do you typically see most students building a list that’s both?

LIV: Absolutely. So, I remember when I was applying to schools, I was paralyzed by the BA/ BFA conversation. I was like, what does this mean for the rest of my future? I found out it meant very little. Ironically, my degree in educational theatre is a BS (a bachelor of science of all things). So the blanket statement here is that between a BA and a BFA, it does not change your opportunities in life. It can be arbitrary what a school of assigns. However, yes, generally my arts students are applying to a mix of BA and BFA programs. Sometimes that’s because they’re applying to a tangential major, which we’ll talk about in a few slides. Sometimes it’s more because the school just labels it differently and we don’t know why, and there are some BFA programs that are more predictable than BA programs, so nothing is determined in your life by BA versus BFA.

What I try to help students do is look at, wait, what is the competitiveness of this program? What is the admissions process at this school? That’s what gives me the information, not just the name. Yeah, I remember that question though. So here’s a sample college list. This is a real college list that a student of mine applied to last year and he got into a variety of schools. He wound up going to Emerson, which he’s really loving. It’s a great fit for him, but just to kind of Katie to answer that question too, right? You’ll see here on the reach column, Penn State we had a BFA Acting, Northwestern BA for Theatre. Northwestern is one of these ones that you don’t have to audition for and yet it’s still Northwestern, so it’s a reach, DePaul, for any other student I’d say it’s probably a likely but for BFA Acting that’s a reach.

Things like theatre performance and look even at one school, University of Michigan, BFA Theatre Performance, University of Michigan, BA in Theatre Arts. So we can even take that approach. Same with NYU, BFA Acting versus Educational Theatre, and one of these is going to be a reach. One of these is going to be a target, and then over here you’ll notice there is one BFA, but Columbia College Chicago doesn’t require an audition, so it still kept that as a likely. This student was very committed to Chicago or New York, barring some top programs that he was interested in.

KATIE: What do you think about in this space, a student who might be interested in theatre and film, or would you prioritize radically different schools for film?

LIV: I would say there are definitely schools that are stronger in one than the other. Although take, for example, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, that’s going to be very, very strong in both. I will say it is generally pretty difficult to double major in two artistic disciplines because they’re so demanding. It’s not something that most schools are going to inherently support. More common is double majoring in a performance major and a non-performance major. That said, regardless of that, you apply into one and then you would have that double majoring-minoring conversation later. I would say the main thing to consider is if you can identify between theatre and film, if there’s one that feels more like your career to look into schools like NYU for example, that’s like okay, the theatre program is great and they have really great film resources that I will be able to utilize versus a school that really gate keeps their film resources or whatever else it is, or a school that only thrives in one. When we work with students, we try and help hone in that narrative and we could definitely incorporate all of, if a student wanted to focus on film and also had this great background in theatre, we would still integrate that narrative and find a way to show why that’s such a strength because again, that interdisciplinary aspect is important.

I keep saying the word tangential majors, so just to kind of offer a couple of examples for theatre performance, maybe you also are submitting a couple applications in theatre education, theatre arts, theatre studies, more like the study of the thing rather than just the practice. You’re still doing the practice, but there’s other parts of it too. Same with music education, business theory, therapy history, same with visual art, which we’re including film and visual art in this art history film studies, that higher level view of it, media. But yeah, I’ll pass it over back to Katie for a second here, too.

KATIE: Sure. I’m going to get Liv to dive into the Q&A little bit and just explore. There are a lot of questions coming up about summer programs and what I wanted you all to just see here is that like I mentioned before, as we’re digging into this, when you work with Prepory, our students are five times more likely to be accepted into art programs that highly selective institutions, and that is because we dig into your case specifically. So all of the questions that we’re getting in the chat, if you get on an initial consultation with us, we can dig into those more and when you work with a one-on-one coach, their day in and day out is fully understanding exactly your context and what you want to get out of the college experience. So if you’re looking in graphic design but you want to have a business focus or you want to have maybe more of an animation focus, we have quite a few animators in our chat too that’s going to look different for different students, especially if you want to look all over the country or maybe you do want to be in a certain city.

That’s something that can matter in a different way for arts applicants. So that’s something we want to be thinking about. Also want to shout out, you can see a wonderful review of the specific and glorious Liv Rocklin who’s presenting with us tonight. I absolutely encourage you to check out our reviews and learn a little bit more about what the experience is like. We have a great team and so much wonderful feedback from students about that experience of getting really specialized support.

LIV: Okay, so jumping back in, thank you for the shout out. I see a lot of questions in the Q&A on this, so we’re going to get right into it. How do you actually build these portfolios? How do you actually write these essays? Here’s one example of an acting resume. So an acting resume looks different, an arts resume looks different. This would be the same for dance, for music, than a typical resume does. It’s really focused on roles. We would help you to put this together to kind of show this actual demonstrated ability. Then we’re getting into essays, which I know that it’s like okay, what about the portfolio, which we will talk about and the essays honestly are really the heavy hitter along with the portfolio of these applications. So one of the reasons that we want to emphasize these non-arts related passions is that your personal statement relies on it, right?

Ideally your personal statement, which is going to go to every single college that you apply to isn’t arts related. It shows a different part of your personality. They want to see that you’re a person, not just a robot that sings, right? They need to see these other tangential passions. For a lot of people they’re a chemistry major and then their personal statement is about playing the violin. For us arts people, that’s the core of it, so then it’s looking beyond that and we really help you to find that important topic that’s not being overdone and then express in a way that shows a different part of you than what you show in your art. Supplemental essays, right? Highlighting the experience by showing reflection, not just achievements. Again, this isn’t just like they already have your activity list or your resume. It’s about showing “why did it matter to you” because they want that passion in the room and that’s not shown by just an achievement.

We need to identify it like a focused, mission driven goal. I love it if you’re coming in and you are like, “I just love to dance, I love it.” That is a good place to start. What we’re going to help you do that you have to do for a compelling college application is find why it matters. Colleges want to see that you have a desire for impact and we will help you hone that and it’s got to be specific, which is a conversation that usually takes a few sessions honestly, and then once we have it, then we can really hit the ground running. We also help you make sure that your voice is here. In a pile of essays, your best friend should know that it’s yours, so we help you to find that voice to find those specifics too. Also, making sure that you’re not repeating what’s in a “why this major” isn’t just in the supplementals and that we’re actually getting as much as we can.

KATIE: That is the question we’re getting a few times here is about the personal statement versus your “why this major” essay, how to fold those things together or not. Are you wasting your space in the personal statement? If you’re talking about something that maybe you’re going to talk about in the “why this major” essay, how would you think about that?

LIV: Yeah, so we want to totally separate those. We want to get two different pieces of information. That’s the big thing across the entire application. You’re trying to put your whole life into a 20 page PDF. We want to make sure every page looks different, so your “why this major” is about why, or how you discovered your passion for animation. We’d much rather see a personal statement about how you got really involved with the animal shelter and made really amends connections and connected with your community, and that’s a big, big focus at Prepory too, is that passion project, community impact aspect. One of my favorite parts of this job is sitting with a student hearing their interests and pitching a project and being like, “Wait, you could do this.” It’s awesome. I get to pitch projects all day and I don’t have to do any of them, and then it’s so epic to see them happening, so we want it to be something different, which is a part of your profile that will help you to address.

I would say one of the biggest pitfalls that I can sometimes see in arts applicants is that they’ve done truly nothing but their art and that is a little bit of a tough application to get to read because we’re getting the same thing again and again and again about why they love film or whatever it is, so we do want to separate those things and cultivate those other interests too. It’s a great question. Yeah, I would say it’s not a great use of space to have those things repeat, so I’m not going to read through this essay by any means. You’ll get the recording after you’re more than welcome to, but this was a creative writing essay that here their core, I’ll even just read the first intro where they say, “Over the past few years, I’ve read over 200 books and across most of them I found a severe lack of characters that were relatable to my experience as an autistic person. I wish to see more representation of my unique struggles in literature and finally get to see my identity in the characters I read and learn about.”

This passion and mission-driven impact that they want to go into creative writing, but they want to go into creative writing for a reason. They have been affected. They come from this personal place, art is personal, they come from this personal place and they can name it. I didn’t see people like me in the writing, so why am I doing this writing? Not just to add a bunch of random stuff into the writing zeitgeist, but to actually make this difference, and then they go through, there’s classes that they reference like American literature themes and issues. This happened to be for William and Mary. The student is going to Kenyon, but really, really great example of a mission driven essay.

And then we have another part of this is your activities and extracurriculars. This is a little bit of what I was saying before. We want five to seven arts-oriented activities, two to three community-oriented, making a broader impact than just rather than performing for performance sake, could be like an art exhibit that raises awareness about political issues, a concert that raises funds for something meaningful, teaching an art form to underserved communities, and one to two really a professional or quantifiably public level, self-published book or play. That creative writing student, I kind of strong armed them into publishing their book. They were like, “I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s ready.” I was like, “We’re publishing the book.” Self-produced music, an art exhibition in a local community center, and then three to four non-arts related activities, which is kind of what we were talking about before. Could be anything, but you should have some sustained commitment. This can’t just be like, “Oh, I joined the basketball team senior year,” or I mean it can be, but ideally it’s something more sustained than that to show that well-roundedness. I do standup comedy and one of my mentors told me the biggest most important thing he does is not do standup comedy because what am I writing a standup comedy about if all I’m doing is standup comedy? It’s about life, art is about life, so I better be doing life too so that I have anything to say.

KATIE: I think a lot of artists get that advice. I’ve definitely heard that one in the creative writing space, too. You have to make sure that you’re actually interacting and thinking about something else. Those self-referential work is something I do particularly enjoy in the comedy space and in the writing space. Something that feels relevant to this space here is we had someone ask, I already answered this question to the best of my ability, but we had someone kind of asking about the summer before senior year, “Should I focus my attention on going to a summer program and really making that count or what if I’m going to feel behind on my portfolio?” I found this a little bit later and you’re feeling nervous about time. Is it going to be more important to give that time to your portfolio and stay out of a summer program or do you think let’s figure out how to make it happen?

LIV: I think there’s a combination of those two things. I think one can serve the other. The summer before your senior year somehow you do want to be contributing to your portfolio and you also don’t want to be submitting a portfolio that was all made in 9th, 10th grade, but I think that a lot of these rigorous, selective summer programs are particularly strong at giving you something that you can actually use. Very few of them are just kind of busy work by any means, right? I had mentioned I did Cherubs, I was in the playwriting section of Cherubs. I ended with a play. That’s the product that I ended with that went in with several of my applications, so I would look for summer programs in particular that end with a product of some sort rather than just an exploratory level.

In the same way that I would tell a biology major, you’re not just taking an exploratory biology class this summer, you need to do research. You need to be in a lab doing actual tangible research and then publish a paper. Same thing for arts majors. Putting together that portfolio, putting yourself somewhere to make a product. I would also say if that is not an option, these programs are expensive. If that’s not an option, there’s a lot of other ways to put together a portfolio. You could get together with friends and make a self-produced film. You could again put on a concert and then kind of record yourself. The songs that I’ve released, I recorded and edited fully on Garage Band, so it is doable and colleges understand that you’re probably not getting into a studio space at 16. That’s okay. It’s about showing the effort and showing the ability. It’s okay if one of these things shows that you’re in high school. You are in high school, but I think that’s a strong part of Prepory’s work, is balancing that approachability with actionability and I definitely do push my students of, “Okay, you’re saying that you can’t publish a book, but you can self-publish on Amazon in three clicks, so I wonder why we’re not,” and having someone in your corner to push you that way too. Yeah. Does that answer that question?

KATIE: Definitely. I think so, and it does reflect exactly what I tried to put out there, which is an admissions process. As much as I wish the answer were otherwise, both is both.

LIV: Both is both, but you can definitely combine them together. You can’t go to 10 on 10 things, so we combine things together for sure. Okay, so now the portfolios, which we’ve talked about a bit or which has obviously come up quite a bit. So theatre, what makes up a theatre portfolio, you start with pre-screens. This is going to still be your auditions, potentially just you answering some questions on camera. This can lead to the live audition. It’s the same material. Generally you’re going to generally have two contrasting monologues. Note contrasting. I’ve seen this go wrong so many times where it’s like a contemporary monologue that’s really funny, and then a contemporary monologue that’s like dramedy. Those are not contrasting, that’s that you picked the same genre and they’re both by Gabriel Davis, and if you know, you know, I get the divorce papers guy. That makes sense to probably a quarter of the people here.

You want to look at contemporary versus classic, funny versus dramatic, physical versus verbally dynamic. You also often, during a theatre audition, are going to have an interview where they’re going to ask you again, “Why do you care about your art?” Boston University said, “Why do you care about theatre?” And I had to be able to answer that and it couldn’t just be because Legally Blonde is cool, and it is, but I had to be able to say why, too. Or even group activities, that can also happen. This is very similar to dance, theatre and dance. These are going to be very similar things. You’re going to send in a video of yourself dancing. If you get to that live audition, you’re going to be in a group choreography session. I’ll also offer, obviously we’re blowing through these things. This is where you can definitely schedule that initial consultation and get much more detail with Katie on your specific niche, that initial consultation totally free on your specific niche, and what it is that you’re preparing for.

Dance-wise, you’re going into that choreography session with a group of students. What’s showing up there? Yeah, your dance ability, but also your ability to be a collaborator, to pay attention, to show up on time, to stay active, not to be leaning up against the back wall kind of thing if you’re not dancing. So it’s also just, you are a human in there and we talk about that too. What behaviors do you need to be showing? Visual arts and film. We’re looking at a portfolio. This is an interesting balance of you want a strong artistic voice that does stay consistent, this is true for creative writing too, and you want to show a range of ability, so you do have to find that kind of balance where you’re putting forth a silent film and also a full feature, but there is something stringing them together, whether it be the style of photography, whether it be the themes themselves.

We do want to be able to say, if you look at two different Spielberg films, you can see things that connect them together. If we look at two different paintings by Monet, even if they’re of totally different things, we know they’re both by Monet, so we really can help assess those portfolios and say, do we have a voice but are we also showing more than one skill? If you put in a picture of the same sunflower a bunch of times, you’re only really sending in one thing. And then the ability to articulate the personal motivation of those pieces, usually there’s a place to write about this, and also the process. Similar to creative writing, different colleges are going to ask for different things, but it’s helpful to have a variety of lengths of pieces, right? They’re not going to read your book unfortunately, so the shorter pieces are needed.

We really help you to kind of transform that 20 page essay into something more kind of submittable. Still, again, variety of styles, but maintaining one artistic voice and perspective so that they know who it is they’re adding because if they already have someone that does the Monet thing, I don’t why I’m referencing Monet so much, but if they already have someone that does that, they want someone that does something else and they want to know that you have spent enough time with your art form to be able to hone in on that voice if you are competing at this level.

KATIE: What would you say to, we have a few in the audience that are kind of thinking about the backend piece, so whether it is backstage or film editing or music production, what does your portfolio look like? How is it different? How do you frame that for admissions committees?

LIV: So for a crew application, for example, for theatre crew or backstage for anything, you’re still going to submit a portfolio where you have pictures of the things that you’ve done or videos of the thing like if it’s a lighting plot, showing a video of the production itself and showing that lighting, if it’s stage crew in your building, showing those building plans. I’d say the biggest thing to preserve as you’re going is your process is the initial drawings to the next, to the next, to the next, because then you can really reflect well and that’s what they want to see is the development over time. If we’re talking music production, we’re still talking about pre-screens, recordings, live auditions would vary if you’re talking more the music production side, that’s really going to rely on the actual produced music. Again, there are ways to produce very professional sounding music, more than Garage Band, but without paying thousands of dollars to get into a studio.

So we can also help you research what is affordable, but effective equipment and then taking free courses that are online on music production and really producing some quality work and same thing with music production. I would say this is going to be a niche reference, kind of, I would say when Taylor Swift went back to Max Martin, I think that we could hear the difference in it. If that, if this lands with anyone, great if it doesn’t, great. When she went from, I’m forgetting his name, it doesn’t really matter to Max Martin, you can hear the difference in a producer’s style, that’s the same thing. So we want to be able to hear, okay, we can hear Max Martin and recognize Max Martin. When I heard the rerecord, the newer recordings, I was like, “Oh, we’re back.” I was so glad. So they want to hear that voice that still matters. Oh yeah, we talked about dance a bit, but with crew, we want to see your motivation.

Yes, you don’t always have full control over what it is you’re building. Your school decided to do Fiddler on the Roof, you had to build a roof. That’s okay too. We understand that, but I had a student, a really strong student this year who wasn’t applying directly to a conservatory program, but wrote a really great essay on stage crew and she really talked about how her leadership formed the group dynamic of the crew and what success that led to. Also to show your technical knowledge is going to be really, really important on the sage crew side, which is why I say to preserve the process, to show the structural maps that you’re building and what’s going into the Excel spreadsheets that are showing your budgeting, all of these things are going to wind up being really important. So just preserve your process and if you haven’t been, I would go back and look for some of it.

I would kind of try and recall that stuff, but that’s what I would say mostly for tech. And then those tangential majors. I’ll give an example in the next slide, but artistic analysis, reviews of pieces, literature analysis, generally there’s still something required such as University of Michigan, Bachelor of Theatre Arts. “Write a two page essay, reviewing or analyzing an artistic work.” So, two page artistic analysis. They also have one “Using one of the four poems below is inspiration, write a two page story or narrative featuring the poem’s narrator as the main character.” So it’s still going to push you past those initial essays, generally. Some common mistakes to avoid here, you want to avoid dropping too many of your academic classes by senior year. It’s tempting, I know, but we do want to avoid doing that. Conservatories are a ton of work. If you have three free periods senior year, they’re going to be like, “Do you not want to do work? What are you doing?”

So it’s not like, “Oh, I don’t need another language. I don’t need math.” You need to show that you’re engaged. Only talking about arts the entire application. We’ve talked about this. They don’t, again, they don’t want a dancing robot either. They want to see a full person and that’s kind of what we help you with on the Prepory side is where else can we extend this interest? Also, we don’t want to only apply to conservatories. They’re setting yourself up for a really risky process. We are going to help you apply to the conservatories that matter the most to you, but then to say, what else can we add to support your application and make sure that you’re in a really secure place going in. Not making a portfolio diverse enough. If every song sounds the same in a music production application, you’ve only really utilized one submission. Unprofessionalism during the live components. This is a theatre thing, but early is on time, on time is late, and late is fired. So talking about those important things too for the in-person side. And then also I see a lot of arts kids not answer questions in ways that are straightforward enough to understand. I always say substance over style. When I read an application that’s like metaphor after metaphor after metaphor, I’m like, “Did they know what they did though? Because I don’t know what they did.” So also make sure that your voice, while we love the beautiful artistic side of it, these admissions officers are reading thousands of essays in a day. It’s got to be just kind of straightforward and legible, so we help to mitigate some of that too.

KATIE: What do you think, Liv? Could you give us a tiny inside peek of how you might help a student do that piece?

LIV: Absolutely. So I mean the great thing with Prepory in general is that one, I’m going to see an essay, so then I’m going to be able to be the first one that says, “I love you so much, but I have no idea what this says and I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Plus we also have the Writing Team on staff. So then after, because at some point I am pretty close to the student and I do kind of know what they’re trying to say, so then we send it to this whole other team of Writing Specialists that we have, and they’re able to be the outside perspectives that are like as someone that has never met you before, like an admissions officer, I don’t what this means. I don’t know what this says. I’m losing you here. I would say the main approach that I have is making sure that we’re balancing reflection with just narrative, with just actual true narrative and that we’re going back and forth to show the student’s voice, but in such short essays, these college essays are like 200 words. They’re nothing. So my approach is always within those first couple sentences, I need to know exactly what you’re talking about in simple terms. Then you can have a little bit more freedom to go off on metaphors and examples. Examples are really helpful, we really push for that, but how do we make sure that it is quickly understandable? Because when you’re reading that many assays in a day, you want to get that thesis early. But yeah, having that multilevel check is also helpful.

KATIE: This is something with the writing process I feel like I talked to a lot of families about is that there’s also a component where if you’re a student here, if you’re a parent here, if you’re reading your friend’s drafts, if you’re reading your child’s drafts, you can tell if something is clear, if something is in order, but you can’t tell if it’s a good college admissions essay. It is its own genre, and I think artists know this better than anybody, so this is really correct for this audience. As you know, I have an MFA in creative writing, and the college admissions application essay was not always my genre. So you really have to think about the knowledge that comes with understanding this genre deeply and developing those skills.

LIV: Yeah, absolutely. This is a science and a formula that isn’t taught, to be honest, which isn’t super fair, but it’s not taught, and it does require that knowledge base to make it effective. That’s just the truth of it. Yeah, absolutely. Which also brings us to this is a holistic process. There’s no one thing that’s ever going to carry your entire application. The holistic process, Prepory did not come up with this. This is what all universities call their processes in the U.S.. There’s different processes at different schools, right? Sometimes a student is admitted or is assessed academically first to see if they could even handle the rigor of a school before they’re ever sent through to the artistic reviewers. Again, Yale drama, they’re looking at your grades first because if you can’t handle the general ed curriculum at Yale, they can’t give you a spot in the artistic area too.

So some schools, they’re going to look at that first. Sometimes the applications do go straight to the artistic reviewers. The majority of the cuts are going to happen there. Then you still need to get reviewed by the actual school, so both are going to be looked at. Getting past that first academic round is just a foot in the door. That’s why this is unpredictable because ultimately for a conservatory program, once you have that foot in the door academically, then your audition or portfolio is going to have the biggest impact, which again means that you do need to get past that first and it all matters. So just some final takeaways here. I first just want to say there are a lot of ways to pursue a creative career. Our goal is to help you keep doors open from conservatories to academic programs, all with the same goal, right? For you to pursue your passion.

That’s never going to be what’s given up, right? It’s not going to be like, well, maybe you should just be an English major. That’s not going to be the conversation. Love an English major to be clear. But I’m saying if you’re like, I want to go into theatre, so my passion is not going to switch that, but we’re going to say, “How do we make sure that that happens then?” A tangential major does not mean that you don’t practice your artistry. I did educational theatre. Most of my courses were performance based, so you also still have flexibility and we would help you find those courses. Lastly, because this is unpredictable, I just like to emphasize none of this reflects your ability as an artist, right? These are all tips to approach it strategically. This is the kind of backend corporate side of things that Prepory can help you with at the end of the day, but we open as many doors as possible. You have the creative part down, trust yourself there and know again, if you are getting cut out of one of thousands of applicants into a program that is taking 10 girls doesn’t mean anything about you as an actor. So just we kind of definitely emphasize that balance too, and I’ll send it back to Katie.

KATIE: All right. I’ve been busy, busy typing in the chat here and trying to make sure we get to a lot of our questions. So with our few more minutes here, Liv pop in and just take a look and see if there’s something you might want to talk about live while I talk through what Prepory is all about. So the core focus of our program is one-on-one, hour long Zoom advising sessions with someone like Liv or Liv herself. So that is really the core focus of what we do is making sure we’re digging into your specific focus area. The arts are so varied, as we’ve seen tonight with the broad variety in our audience here, and so your specific pathway isn’t going to look exactly like anyone else’s. And I say this to Law applicants, STEM applicants, every day, day in and day out, we’re talking through a profile, we’re looking at an example and I’m saying, “Hey, this is one example for you, and your profile, we’re never going to make this one ever again exactly like that.”

It is our job to get creative and help you strategize about the resources that are available to you. Open those doors, take those opportunities and make your own path happen. We do, of course, also have parent guidance built into the programs and Committee Review. Not sure if Committee Review is something that you address a little bit, but definitely something we could talk a little bit more about. We do review portfolio materials in our Committee Review process. So we cover, this is when a group at Prepory who’s not your individual coach will go through everything together and look at how it’s coming together cohesively as one whole, and I think this is really important. We’ve been breaking down the elements, and this is the part where we build them back up, look at them all together and say, “Is this a competitive application as it stands in one piece?” So that’s really a core focus of something that we’re doing, and we actually do this every year with students. So even with 9th and 10th graders, we are talking through what your materials look like, where you’re headed, what an admissions committee is really going to think about to prepare you for this process early. Because when we do that, we reduce the stress later on. You fully understand what it’s going to look like, how much space you have to describe your different activities, and it’s going to make that much more streamlined down the line.

Alright, so we do have a few more questions here, so we’ll take a few more minutes to answer some of those. I don’t know if there was one you wanted to cover and then I’ll dive in and ask you a few. But we have had a lot of really, really specific questions in the chat also that I’m struggling to type back to. So if you want to book a consultation with me and my team, you can scan this QR code. We would love to talk with you. We’d love to talk about what Prepory support looks like and how we can dive deeper on your specific case. So definitely take advantage of that and take it away with whatever you’d like to address, Liv.

LIV: I’m seeing one theme coming through. There’s no one specific question to read out on this, but a theme coming through on professional opportunities at college as well as how are we doing this once we’re at the school and I think that that will go into your conversation as you build the college list, because there are a few ways to approach this, right? If you’re going to Oberlin, I think your intention at that point is to really lock in and immerse yourself in your creative medium before graduating and then going forward and pursuing it professionally just by nature of where Oberlin is, right? If you’re kind of in a more remote area, you really are going to surround yourself in this artistic bubble in a good way, not in a bad way, versus going to NYU, going to Columbia College, Chicago, something like that where ultimately the school’s nature is going to put you into professional opportunities.

One is not necessarily better than the other. I think there’s a lot of value in buckling down and really honing one’s craft for four years before going forward and pursuing professional opportunities. I know for me, I grew up in Chicago as part of it, so I was already performing with the second city. I was already doing standup round. I wanted to keep going and keep going forward. At NYU, I remember I took a musical theatre writing class where the professors were Tony Award-winning lyricist composers and brought in Broadway actors to perform our pieces. That’s what something like NYU, when it’s in that place is going to get you. At the same time, you can get distracted by other things. So there’s pluses and minuses, but I would say that’s a good thing to be considering as you’re looking is, do you want the professional opportunities now or do you want to hold on and then go afterwards? I don’t if there’s one popping out to you.

KATIE: Yeah, I think so. I want to go in two directions at once, which is what’s important really early. We’ve had some parents writing about children in 7th, 8th, 9th grade who are spending a lot of their time and energy in the arts already, and they’re like, “If this is not quite relevant to my college applications yet, how do I think about that?” And then, “What if you discover this is your passion a little bit later, or you’re trying to combine two things so you don’t have a lot of time, but you’ve got to put something together. Just how do you think about priorities?”

LIV: Absolutely. I think that’s a great question. One, that 7th, 8th grade level, I think what it’s setting you up really well for is to be part of these more rigorous and selective programs when you’re older. The people getting into Cherubs, it’s often they’re getting in because they have had these past experiences. I think a really great thing about Prepory, though, is that there are so many students who I’ve had come in and been like, “I don’t have any experiences.” And I’m like, “Well, you don’t have any formal experiences, but first of all, you’ve done a lot and we can apply these things and I can help you to kind of craft the narrative to show the ways that it is applicable and you can grow in it. Plus we can build on what you already have to make an independent passion project that leads to this really exciting opportunity.”

We can start with you. You’re not just done because you didn’t do Northwestern’s program. That doesn’t make any sense. There’s only 20 people in there a year, so as far as prioritizing, anything that you’re doing already matters. Everything already counts because we can integrate it into that narrative. Part of this conversation also comes down to applying if you have a few different interests. Let’s say I saw something of a marketing interest with graphic design. The tricky thing with the graphic design major is that if you don’t get in that first year, it might not be possible to transfer in later. So at that point, that becomes the priority because we know strategically and logistically about the college process that you can add the marketing major in later. And then maybe just for the sake of that application, we’re focusing a little bit more on graphic design with the knowledge that we are not locking you in at 17, 18 years old to one future. So we also have those conversations too about what is strategy, and I would definitely say you can balance those multiple different things and you are not too late on anything because there are a lot of things that nobody can say no to publishing your own book, doing your own project, putting on your own concert. Those are the ideas that we will help you with.

KATIE: There’s another one in here I think feels related, which is someone who is good in a lot of different arts, how do you choose? Can you talk a little bit about reflective work at Prepory? I think this might be relevant to some of the families who are also thinking about or have children who are interested in overlapping business or marketing with graphic design or animation or something like that. How do you figure out what it is you want to do?

LIV: Well, first of all, I think there’s a lot of students that make a lot of sense at schools that embrace that versus shut that down. And that’s the question about conservatory versus a broader major where you still might need an arts portfolio and you’re still taking the arts very seriously, but somewhere like Brown, for example, you can combine all of those things. It is an interdisciplinary field. Or Tufts, for example, is very, they love to combine STEM and creativity. That’s a big priority of theirs. So if you’re a student that truly is like, “I’m not trying to figure out which one I want, I want both. I like both.” Then we would also craft your list around that to make sure to honor all of those interests. As far as the reflective work though, absolutely.

So, in no way am I jumping ever into a first session and being like, “Let’s write the essays. Let’s get it done. Okay, what do you want? What do you want? How do you want it now? The question starts of, “What are you interested in? Okay, why?” And then I’m kind of putting on my slight therapist hat without actually being a therapist to be clear, but the slight therapist had of listening for those themes, reflecting back and saying, “What I’m hearing is that you like to find meaning where other people might just see surface value. Does that feel fair? Does that feel like a true thing that I’m saying?” And then looking at, “Okay, great. I see how you could do that in marketing. I see how you could do that in dance. How are we bringing those things together?” And I think often the work with Prepory that can be really helpful is to have somebody else that’s seen so many paths taken, hear you and reflect back to you kind of more consolidate or summarize narratives of what it is you could kind of move forward with. You’re not expected to know that at 17, 18, so I think that’s a big part of the reflective work. We also use genuinely reflective models and reflective exercises that just genuinely bring out these answers. Sorry, that genuinely brings out all of these answers. So we also will do that work with you.

KATIE: I love that. I think that’s one of the most important things that we do is really set you up for success in finding your narrative and then being able to articulate it. And then typically, this is something that we see with, we’ve had a couple transfers in the audience too, and something that we see with transfers is when you’re not able to be intentional the first time around and ask these really deeper reflective questions, you’re not where you want to be. That can happen for all kinds of reasons. That’s just one of the many. But it is something that we see where it’s like, “I thought this was a fit. I thought I’d really thought this through.” But not really having proper guidance and then putting all of your eggs in that basket and saying, “This is what I really want,” and then you’re looking to switch gears and do something else.

So that’s definitely something that we want to be thinking about and starting to think about really early so that you have that clarity and you have that peace of mind to know “I’m sure about” this because something else that’s been coming up a lot in the chat is stress, and I’d love to know if you have any final tips before I let everybody go here. Please feel free with your specific questions to book a consultation with us. We would love, love, love to help you if you are not seeing a time available that works for you. I know that Prepory is responding in the chat here, as well. My teammate is in there, but please just reach out to us over email and we are happy to find a time that will work for you specifically. But onto the stress question before we let everybody go here. How do you think about staying balanced, keeping your cool through all of the various layers of boxes you have to check that we’ve been talking about?

LIV: I think that’s why it’s important that at the core of all of these things is that narrative that is genuinely being driven by what you care about. If I had told that student who wanted to write about autistic representation literature, if I had told them, “Actually, I think that you should talk about gender in your book, I think you should talk about that, because really in right now,” that would not have been enjoyable. They would’ve just been stressed. So we come from a place of passion and we come from a place of care, and I think the amazing thing about artists is that no one’s doing it, no one’s doing it for the paycheck, no one’s doing it for a reason beyond loving it. So you’re already starting really strong from there. I’m also kidding. There’s plenty of ways to hit that middle ground. You don’t have to go into the struggling artist life, but, so keep doing your art because it’s working for both sides.

It’s working to develop your profile authentically. I mean, I’ll even say, I’ll just share for me, I went a lot of years, I would say in my late teens, early twenties, doing a type of comedy and a type of art that I didn’t enjoy because I thought it’s what I was supposed to do and I was spinning my wheels and I was not getting anywhere, even though everybody told me it was the ladder I was supposed to climb. The second that I put that down and actually started doing a type of art that I really enjoyed, suddenly things started going kind of well, right? Suddenly things started being booked, awards started being given, and I enjoy it more. I was getting bored during my own shows. I was getting bored and annoyed in my own shows. It was bad. So just to say, follow that because that is what brings success. Prepory’s job is not going to be to tell you, here’s a list of things that you have to do, you better do it fast. It’s going to be what do you want to do? How do we make that? How do we present that in a way that shows college is who you are?But we have to start from you otherwise we could ask ChatGPT to put together an application. It wouldn’t be good. It would get denied right away, but it’d be about the same. So I just think still stick with your passion, develop it authentically. What we help you do is look at how to develop it authentically in a way that you could actually kind of quantify on an application. That’s our job from the kind of bird’s eye view. Your job is to enjoy the art that you’re making because that is what makes good art and also relieves stress sometimes.

LIV: Thank you all so much.