Eleven Pointers for Your Portfolio
A portfolio is a collection of your best artwork. It highlights your experience, showcases your ideas and skills, and demonstrates your ability and potential as an artist.
What Colleges Want to Know: Showcasing Yourself as an Artist
Schools often require visual and performing arts applicants to submit a general resume, artistic resume, repertoire list, and in some cases an artist statement, one-minute video introduction, and a headshot. Even when these materials are an optional requirement, supply them!
Quick Take: Creative Degree Options
Choosing among several possible creative degrees—whether for the performing or visual arts—depends on what you want to study, which school might fit your goals best (and how it labels the degree program), and what you see yourself pursuing after you graduate.
Giving Your Leadership Skills a Boost: For Visual and Performing Artists
Leadership is a key element that college admissions officers look for in their applicants along with qualities such as responsibility, time management, dedication, and hard work. Leadership is one of the best and most impactful ways to show character and exceptional extracurricular involvement.
ED? EA? RD? RA? Deciphering the Acronyms & Choosing What’s Best for You
If you are a rising senior planning to attend college, you are probably working on narrowing your list of schools you will apply to right now. Once that list has been finalized, the next decision is how you plan to apply to each school.
Making Your College Essay Stand Out
The Common App essay gives you a chance to show the readers—who may not get to meet you face-to-face—what kind of person you are beyond your courses, grades, and test scores. Much of this advice applies to any piece of writing required in the application process. Use these ten tips to help you get started.
Seven Ways That Working With an Independent Educational Consultant Helps Your Child
Students are more likely to succeed and thrive in a right-fit environment. College advisors strive to find that right environment for your child. We help your child understand themselves, what is important to them, and what they want out of the college experience.
Sharing Your Passions
Refining your extracurriculars for visual and performing arts applications.
Read (And Then Read Some More!)
Reading is not only a great escape from the real world and fun, it helps you prepare for college! College courses are demanding and require large amounts of time spent reading.
Tackling the Common App Activities List
Just as the Common App essay is a place to describe a part of yourself that isn’t reflected in the rest of the application, use the activities list to help flesh out your story.
9th & 10th Grade: How Visual and Performing Arts Students Should Spend These Years
The first two years of high school is the time to explore new interests. If you already know you want to pursue a visual or performing arts major in college, these early years are also the time to lay the foundation for your specialty, create valuable connections with your advisors, and learn from your fellow students.
Intensive Summer Arts Programs: A Big Bang for Your Buck
Specialized summer arts opportunities immerse you in the life of a visual or performing arts student, prepare you for the complicated application project, and can give you an immeasurable return on your investment.
Training for a Marathon: How to Win Your Voice Audition
Practice is always the key to calming those nerves. But what's the best way to practice? Soprano Anna Atkinson shares her preparation tips, whether online or in person. As a student in the Masters of Music in Opera and Voice program at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, Anna is a veteran of winning auditions.
Can’t Visit Campus? Ten Ways to Research Colleges Without Being There
Here are some options for researching colleges online.
Thinking about majoring in voice? Here are eight ways to prepare
The most successful applicants don’t wait until senior year to start preparing. Admissions panels at conservatories and university music programs are looking for students who have already invested in their craft, built a foundation in music theory, and shown a real commitment to performance. Here are eight ways to build your skills, strengthen your application, and show programs that you’re ready
Parent Corner: Creating a Productive Study Space with your Teen
Here are some ways you can help your high schooler figure out the best environment for their individual learning style and how they study best.
Managing Audition Nerves Part IV: Maintain Creative Expression
Don’t Let Creative Expression Get Lost in the Weeds. Audition advice from Arts Advisory Board Member Dmitri Yevstifeev
Managing Audition Nerves Part III: Organize Mock Auditions
To best prepare yourself for what a real audition might be like, set up several mock auditions in a variety of settings that mirror the stressful conditions of an actual audition. At each mock audition, challenge yourself!