We Applied to 24 BFA Acting Programs. Here’s Everything We Spent, Every School We Tried, and What We’d Do Differently

By Debbie Schwartz

We Applied to 24 BFA Acting Programs. Here’s Everything We Spent, Every School We Tried, and What We’d Do Differently

By Debbie Schwartz

Published on May 7, 2026

One Massachusetts mom in our Paying for College 101 Facebook group shared an inside look at what it really takes — financially, logistically, and emotionally — to help your student pursue a BFA Acting degree.

If you’ve ever searched for real, detailed information about the college audition process for performing arts students, you know how hard it is to find. Most college application posts focus on traditional academics. But if your student is pursuing a BFA in Acting, Musical Theater, or another audition-based program, I can tell you firsthand — this process is an entirely different animal. It’s more expensive, more unpredictable, and far more time-intensive than I ever expected going in.

I’m a mom from Massachusetts, and my daughter just completed her first semester at Long Island University Brooklyn — where she made the Dean’s List. But getting there took nearly two years of planning, thousands of dollars, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, and more than a few tears along the way. I’m sharing everything here because I wish someone had shared it with me.

Who This Is For

This is specifically for families whose students are considering:

BFA Acting programs
BFA Musical Theater programs
Any performing arts degree that requires auditions as part of the admissions process

If that’s your student, I also highly recommend joining the BFA Acting Dreams Facebook group. If your student is focused on musical theater specifically, check out the MT Parents group. Both communities were invaluable to us.

Start Earlier Than You Think You Need To

We started my daughter’s process in April 2023 — more than a year and a half before applications were due — when she was finishing up her sophomore year. Here’s how our timeline unfolded:

Spring of sophomore year (April 2023): We began touring schools so she could get a feel for different campus styles and figure out whether she wanted the flexibility of a BA program or a more conservatory-style BFA, where the vast majority of her classes would be acting, voice, and movement/dance
November 2023 (junior year): We hired an acting coach to help with monologue selection and college list creation — and by that point, he had already been working with half of his Class of 2025 students for months
By November 1, 2024: All 24 academic and artistic applications were submitted

My advice: If you’re planning to work with a private acting coach, hire one at the beginning of junior year — not junior spring or senior fall. The good ones fill up fast, and your student needs that time to develop their audition material properly.

My Daughter’s Stats

GPA: 89.0556 weighted (her school does not rank students)
ACT: 27 composite (31 Reading, 29 English, 26 Science, 20 Math)
Coursework: 1 AP, 12 Honors classes
SAI: Six figures — we did not expect any need-based aid
Home state: Massachusetts

Her extracurricular activities:

Drama Club (4 years)
Community theater Teen Summer Program (5 years)
Shotokan karate, 2nd kyu brown belt (7 years of training)
Martial arts tournament circuit (6 years)
Winter Track (10th grade)
Library Teen Volunteer (2 years)
Middle School Tutoring Club (2 years)
Société Honoraire de Français (2 years)
Summer job, 40 hours/week (3 summers)
Part-time job on weekends (senior year)

Her Common App Essay topic: How Fortnite taught her to keep an open mind about things she hadn’t tried

One additional essay we sent to every school: We included a supplemental essay addressing her struggle with anxiety in her sophomore year, how it affected her grades and her ability to maintain a rigorous schedule junior year, and her strong rebound senior year — she finished her first semester of senior year with an 89.2632 weighted GPA while taking four Honors classes. We wanted programs to understand the full picture.

The Real Cost — And I Mean Real

This is where I think most families get blindsided, and I want to be completely transparent. Here is every dollar we spent:

Expense	Cost
Academic application fees	$895
Artistic application fees	$625
ACT score sends (24 schools)	$456
Acting coach (monologue prep + college list)	$2,800
Travel for auditions (hotels, flights, car rental, gas, parking, subway, food)	$2,685
Travel to visit the final 3 schools	$4,268
Total	$11,729

A few things I want to flag about these numbers:

BFA programs require a separate artistic application on top of the regular academic application — and most charge a separate fee for it. Our average cost per school ended up being $63, ranging from $0 to $135.
Ten schools had no academic application fee, and ten had no artistic application fee, but fee waivers were hard to come by for us.
Our single most expensive trip was flying to Oklahoma City to visit one of our three finalist schools — that trip alone was $2,500 for three nights.
We chose NYC Unifieds over Chicago Unifieds because it was closer and less expensive for us — but that meant we missed out on schools that only auditioned in Chicago. It’s a real tradeoff worth thinking through.

Could we have spent less? Yes — more virtual auditions and skipping the finalist visit trips would have helped. But I don’t regret how we did it. Just go in with your eyes open, because travel costs add up faster than anything else in this process.

This Was Truly a Family Effort

I want to be honest about this: the BFA application process doesn’t just fall on your student. In our house, we each had a role:

Me: Admin, organizer, and chauffeur for all college tours and auditions
My husband: Videographer and editor for all monologue videos required for artistic applications
My daughter: Academic and artistic applications, 29 total essays, monologue and song preparation (Wright State required a song), and the hardest part — auditioning and interviewing in front of programs

Yes, 29 essays. BFA artistic applications can have several additional essay prompts beyond the standard Common App, and they’re easy to miss when you first open the portal. Check early and often.

The Application Numbers: What 24 Applications Actually Looked Like

Academic Applications

24 total submitted
20 acceptances
3 withdrawn (Syracuse, Rider, Adelphi)
1 rejected (Chapman)
3 automatic Honors program acceptances (Dean College, Wichita State, WCSU)

Artistic Applications

22 artistic applications submitted
19 auditions total: 8 virtual, 5 on campus, 4 at NYC Unifieds, 2 video submission
3 prescreen rejections (Pace — redirected to BA; Chapman; Syracuse)
11 BFA acceptances
4 BFA rejections after auditions, with redirect to BA (Arcadia, Slippery Rock, Rider, Michigan State)
3 BFA waitlists (Western Carolina, Western CT State, Western Michigan)
1 application withdrawn after the school lost her audition paperwork and asked her to re-audition (Adelphi)

Every School, Every Offer: The Full Financial Breakdown

Here is every school she applied to, the outcome, and the net cost after merit and talent scholarships — because I know this is what you really want to see:

Arcadia University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: No — $38K/yr ($41K merit offered)
Wichita State University (BAA Media Arts, Acting for Digital Arts) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $33K/yr ($4.5K talent)
Point Park University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $49.5K/yr ($13K talent + $4K after appeal)
Slippery Rock University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: No — $23.4K/yr ($2K merit)
Western Michigan University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Waitlist — $29K/yr ($2K merit)
Oklahoma City University (BFA Acting: On-Camera Track) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $33K/yr ($10K talent + $5K merit)
Michigan State University (BFA Acting for Stage, Screen, and New Media) — Academic: Yes / BFA: No — $46.5K/yr ($10K merit + $5K one-time Presidential Abroad Scholarship)
Susquehanna University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $38K/yr ($40K merit + $1K FAFSA Grant)
Ohio University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $26K/yr ($14.5K talent/merit)
Long Island University – Brooklyn (BFA Acting for Theatre, Film, and Television) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $35.7K/yr ($25K merit + $1K after appeal + possible additional $3K if GPA hits 89.5) ✅ Final choice
Wright State University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $23K/yr ($7K merit + $2K talent) Least expensive artistic acceptance
Western Carolina University (BFA Theatre, Acting for Stage and Screen) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Waitlist — $21K/yr ($0 merit)
Western CT State University (BFA Theatre Arts: Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Waitlist — $29.1K/yr ($3.5K merit)
Dean College (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $32.8K/yr ($27K talent + $8.5K merit + $1,056 John & Abigail Adams Scholarship)
Virginia Commonwealth University (BFA Theatre, Performance concentration) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $44.2K/yr ($10K talent/merit)
George Mason University (BFA Theatre, Performance for Stage and Screen) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $29K/yr ($17.5K merit + $9K talent)
UMass Amherst (BA Theatre) — Academic: Yes / BFA: N/A — $32.9K/yr ($0 merit + $1,575 John & Abigail Adams Scholarship)
Pace University (redirected from BFA Acting to BA Film and Screen Studies) — Academic: Yes / BFA: No — $47.2K/yr ($33K merit)
Kean University (BFA Theatre Performance) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $34.7K/yr ($6K merit)
Roosevelt University (BFA Acting) — Academic: Yes / BFA: Yes — $43.4K/yr ($6.6K merit)
Chapman University (BFA Screen Acting) — Academic: No / BFA: No — Note: Chapman would not make an academic decision without a BFA acceptance first
Rider University (BFA Acting for Film, Television, and Theatre) — BFA: No; academic application withdrawn
Syracuse University (BFA Acting) — BFA: No; academic application withdrawn
Adelphi University (BFA Theatre Arts: Acting) — School lost her audition paperwork; we declined their offer to re-audition; application withdrawn

A note on our budget: Schools like NYU, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, USC, and UMich never made our list. With no need-based aid expected, their price tags blew past our $45K/year ceiling before we even ran the numbers.

What My Daughter Was Looking For — and How LIU Brooklyn Measured Up

Before we built her college list, my daughter defined her priorities:

BFA program (not BA)
Focus on film and TV acting
Under $45K/year
Urban location — NYC or LA strongly preferred
Frequent on-campus performance opportunities
Ability to audition as a freshman
Ability to seek off-campus work
Senior showcase
Business of acting coursework
Study abroad option
Ability to continue voice and dance training

Her final three schools: LIU Brooklyn, Oklahoma City University, and Wright State University

Her decision: LIU Brooklyn at $35.7K/year

What sealed it: She loved the campus. She loved being in NYC. She connected with the students she met in the classes she sat in on. The program is heavily focused on film and TV acting — exactly what she wanted — and has a formal partnership with The New Group theater production company. Students are actively encouraged to seek performance opportunities throughout the city, not just on campus. She’ll also have access to voice lessons with Roc Nation on campus.

The one tradeoff: Dance is not built into the curriculum. But we figured that in New York City, finding a dance studio won’t exactly be a problem.

And as a bonus — she met a fellow admitted BFA student during our campus visit. They hit it off so well that they decided on the spot to be roommates.

What Went Right

Looking back, I’m proud of how we managed a few key things:

Her audition schedule was strategic. The season ran from November 2 through March 1 — nearly four months. We didn’t pile everything into Unifieds. She completed 10 auditions before we even left for NYC, and had 6 artistic acceptances in hand before Unifieds weekend. That took so much pressure off.
She stayed healthy through all of it. That might sound like a small thing, but it wasn’t. She had a virus in her sophomore year that lasted five weeks and had her sleeping 15 hours a day. I was genuinely anxious about keeping her well through a process that involved travel, late nights, and senior year all at once. She made it through without missing a single audition.
Early acceptances changed everything. Having 6 artistic acceptances before Unifieds meant we could actually enjoy NYC. We saw two Broadway shows. Her audition schedule had breathing room between slots. She wasn’t auditioning from a place of desperation — and I think it showed.
She finished strong academically. Even with four Honors classes and a grueling audition season, she had one of her best academic years of high school. I honestly think the structure of the audition process gave her a reason to stay on top of everything else.
She is resilient in ways I didn’t fully know until this process. When one audition at Unifieds went horribly wrong, she rebounded — got ice cream, cried it out, and then delivered what she said was her absolute best audition of the entire process the very next day. She got in.

What Didn’t Go Our Way

I want to be honest about this part too, because it wasn’t all smooth sailing:

We had to re-record all 20 of her prescreen videos. My husband filmed everything on an SLR camera — and we didn’t realize until playback that the camera makes a clicking noise when it focuses. We scrapped everything and started over on an iPhone. It was genuinely soul-crushing. We missed an October 1 deadline for Roosevelt because of it. Lesson learned: always check your audio before you commit to a recording setup.
One school lost her audition paperwork entirely. She auditioned in person on November 2 — one of only five students auditioning that early. We expected a decision before Christmas. Instead, when she followed up, Admissions said they had never received confirmation from the Theatre department that her audition was complete. The Theatre department then admitted they had lost her paperwork. They offered a virtual re-audition. We declined and withdrew the application. It left a bad taste that never went away.
A recommendation letter held up another application. After Unifieds, I happened to check her Acceptd dashboard and noticed Western Michigan showed an item as incomplete. It was a recommendation letter from her drama teacher that had never been submitted. Once her teacher sent it, Western Michigan issued a waitlist decision. I’ll always wonder if it would have been a full acceptance had everything arrived on time.
The audition that broke our hearts. Our coach recommended not making her first Unifieds audition her top-choice school. We scheduled it second. But the first school moved her audition back three and a half hours — which bumped her dream school to the first slot of the day. She walked into the studio and was overwhelmed by the size of the space. It was her worst audition of the entire process. When the rejection came a month later, we both cried. We had visited that school, seen its spring musical, and she had loved it for years. Some heartbreak in this process is unavoidable. That one was really hard.

What I’d Do Differently

If I could go back, here’s what I’d change:

Apply to fewer schools. I completely understand the anxiety that drives families to build long lists in a process with such low acceptance rates. But 24 was too many. The application portals are a lot to manage — and many schools make you open a second portal after the academic acceptance just for the artistic side. A list of 15 to 18 schools would have been just as strategic and significantly less overwhelming.
Trust my gut on the school list. We worked with a wonderful coach who helped us build the list, and I don’t regret hiring him. But I know my daughter, and there were schools on the list I had a feeling weren’t the right fit. I didn’t push back enough. Next time, I would.
Consider Pittsburgh Unifieds or MARCAS. MARCAS was closest to us geographically, but it fell on the same weekend as her final high school play — she wasn’t willing to give that up, and I understood completely. Still, I would have loved to experience what auditioning for a large number of programs in one weekend looks like.
Tour acting departments earlier — and sit in on classes. People will tell you not to visit programs before you have an acceptance because you risk falling in love with a place your student doesn’t get into. I understand that logic, but I think seeing programs in action during junior year would have helped us cut schools we weren’t really attached to and spend more time researching better fits. We ended up with 11 artistic acceptances and only six weeks to evaluate them — we could only realistically visit three.
Audition on campus at her first-choice school. We had already visited, seen a show, and felt like we knew the program. We decided to save time and money by auditioning at Unifieds instead of going to campus. I will always regret that. It was her first Unifieds audition, the space was larger than anything she’d prepared for, and she was carrying enormous pressure. I can’t say an on-campus audition would have changed the outcome. But I wish we had tried.

Surprises Along the Way

A few things genuinely caught me off guard:

The school in “first place” changed constantly. Her original top choice was 50 minutes from home. We visited five times. She loved it — until she sat in on classes and realized the program wasn’t what she wanted. After that, it was the school where the audition went wrong. Then a school she fell in love with after her audition there, which turned into a waitlist. LIU Brooklyn wasn’t even on her radar as a top choice until she walked that campus and just knew.
This process is truly unpredictable. She got into schools we were told not to get our hopes up for. She was rejected or waitlisted at ones that felt more certain. A decision in this process is rarely a judgment on your student’s talent — it’s about what holes a department is trying to fill that year. Remind yourself of that, and remind your student too.
The total cost surprised even me — and I’m a statistician. I thought I had planned carefully. But travel costs, artistic application fees, and the coach add up to a number that honestly shocked me by the end.

How It All Turned Out

My daughter finished her first semester at LIU Brooklyn on the Dean’s List. She loves New York City and has become a pro at navigating the subway and MetroNorth. She has a tight group of friends from the BFA Acting cohort — and because BFA programs draw students from across the country, the fact that LIU is technically a commuter school has never mattered. Her people are always on campus.

She has seen 15 Broadway shows and stage-doored at three of them.

To every family just starting this process: it is hard, it is expensive, and there will be moments that genuinely hurt. But watching your student land in the right program — the one that fits like a glove — makes all of it worth it. Break a leg to all the seniors and families heading into audition season. You’ve got this.

_______

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