This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello, hello, and welcome to Mapping The College Audition. I'm your host, Charlie Murphy, Director of MTCA. That's Musical Theater, College Auditions. Check us out at mtca.com. And today, we are doing a special episode, as I am hopefully in joyful repose as you read this. We are taking a family vacation for spring break, and this seems like a nice opportunity to give you all the kindergarten update pod slash blog that you've all been waiting for. At one point, I thought this might literally be like a topper to a longer episode, or I'm like, we got our first choice. But as you'll see, it became an entire blog and episode all of itself. So for those who aren't already clued into that blog I mentioned, please do check out our blog on Substack.

You can also find it on our website at mtca.com. So do subscribe. If you can, you'll get those blogs in your email. A lot of those are written by me and as well as a host of our fabulous MTCA team members who contribute basically every other blog. I'll write one and then somebody else writes one. But also, we're giving you our back catalog on Substack. So do subscribe so you can get those basically weekly. Another free resource at your fingertips. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell whoever you want to tell. We're bringing you good stuff in MTCA. I do hope you enjoyed this audio blog version of things. Again, if you'd rather in written form, you can head over to mtca.com or Substack. But otherwise, sit back and enjoy and listen to my dulcet tones as I wallow in my misery.

Here we go. This blog is called All I Really Need to Know About the College Theater Process I Learned in Kindergarten, or more specifically, in the Process of Applying to Kindergarten as a Parent in New York City.

[1:43] Charlie Murphy: Here we are. I've been promising this blog to our podcast listeners for literal months, and for our biggest MTCA groupies, it has become the most popular question of the moment. How are things going with your kindergartner? We're waiting for that update. Well, you will wait no longer. Here it is. For those who are coming newly to this blog, the inspiration for it, aside from the sweet parents out there who are infinitely curious about my family life, was that I kept making jokes throughout the year at MTCA about how many parallels there are between the college theater audition process and the process of applying to kindergarten in New York City. Now, of course, we all tend to make parallels to what is happening in our life at any given moment.

And it's not the first time I've related part of parenthood to my perspective on the college process. But this year really felt notable. Time and again, I would say, okay, now that is really like the process. And then I'd be like, well, that's exactly like the college process. Sometimes comedically so, and sometimes with all of the painful vulnerabilities involved.

[2:56] Charlie Murphy: Now, I'm going to go through a bunch of the parallels here at the end, which as a preview, those parallels can range from school list numbers to do increase screens, to coaching, to scholarship negotiations, to competitive percentages, to wait lists and safety schools. But I thought first, a bit of background might be helpful for those who don't live in New York City and are like, what are you talking about? Don't you just go to kindergarten? If the following, what you're about to hear and read, doesn't scare you away from wanting to move here and have a family, then you might just have enough grit to become an actor. There you go. In New York City, the public school process essentially works by lottery, but a lottery weighted with zones and districts.

I'm not going to get into all the math and specifics of it, but basically if you live within a district of a given public school, you have a very good chance of getting into that school, though not a guarantee. And if you're in the smaller zone, you have essentially a guarantee. Now, every child is guaranteed a seat at a public school, but it may not be the one that you want. And then of course, just like the college process, it gets much more complicated from there. Certain schools have different eligibilities, like for their gifted and talented programs, or have artistic requirements. See our audition for special music school below. And some have other specific preferences they offer, like one of our most competitive programs that gave priority to students in our specific district. Spoiler alert, we still didn't get it.

[4:13] Charlie Murphy: And pivotal to this whole process, part of the why this is so insane for many parents is that while New York City has some incredible educational opportunities and truly amazing schools, they also have some unacceptably poorly performing public schools. In my opinion, the Delta between these two is disgraceful in a city as wealthy as New York. It seems to my non-expert opinion on this topic, like the top level funding is not necessarily the issue as much as it might be in other areas of the country. And it may be more the fault of like other institutional problems, meaning all the schools are pretty well funded on a per-student basis, but some still really struggle. But that's a whole other podcast blog to get into.

But just so you understand a bit of the context and some of the reasons why my wife and I, and so many parents who do this process, put ourselves through this crazy process, it's not just the tantalizing upside of some of the amazing schools that are out there, but also the frustrating downside of some local schools where grade level opportunity and even basic safety are not always the norm. So we have the why. Now let me give you a bit of the what before we dive in and make some fun connections. So what did we do in this process? Here is what we applied to. Essentially, we applied to approximately 26 schools. Now I say approximately because it's hard to know how to count different programs within different schools.

We're talking about dual language, gifted and talented, et cetera, much like many of you have struggled with different majors like acting and MT. And how do you count those? Of these 26 schools, 18 were public school breaches, or to use more familiar MTCA language, most competitive schools. Three were public school districted matches, which are still competitive schools as we would discover. And five were private schools, which private schools are essentially an odd combination of match and safety in this process. They're safety in that they were our last choice of school for our personal hopes, but match because this is still a pretty competitive audition process involved in applying to private schools.

I'll note here with an asterisk, two of the 18 had special outside audition requirements outside of the usual application process, including a different two-tiered prescreen and callback system for both of those. And then a second asterisk note, all of the private schools have intricate audition and interview processes, which involve both child and parent. These steps are for both for them to audition you and also to pull you in and sell you on the school if you do happen to get in. Does that sound familiar at all to any of you?

[6:39] Charlie Murphy: Now, does that seem insane? 26 schools for kindergarten? Well, it sure did to us as well. Like many of you, it didn't start out that way. We originally were going to do a couple of public schools, maybe some of the popular reach schools that had noted gifted and talented programs, and then try to hit some of the local schools we were districted for that felt like they'd be acceptable alternatives to the local zone school that we knew we didn't want to attend. That didn't seem so overwhelming. That was a year ago. Then, like many of you, as we engaged in this process, we talked to families in our neighborhood who'd gone through this before, and we fell deep down the rabbit hole. We learned about the private school process, which at the beginning of this, I would never have pictured myself applying to a private kindergarten.

For what it's worth, I still remain deeply philosophically opposed. The advantage of the private school process is actually in its subjectivity as opposed to the randomness of luck. The process is still very competitive. But here now, my charming wife and I, alongside our bright and adorable child, could actually succeed at standing out from the crowd as opposed to being just another number on a page or a roll of the die. So that part of having a bit of control in the process was enticing, even if I remained morally opposed to the idea of it. An insert here, as insane as our process and these numbers feel between public and private schools, this is without us actively considering charter or parochial schools, which is a whole other path some New York City kindergartners choose to explore. Those are really viable options for many families, though they didn't feel right for ours given the nature of our specific child.

[8:07] Charlie Murphy: Which brings us to this fall, when the visits began in earnest. Private schools, public schools, all of it. And the applications, oh my, the applications. And don't forget the scholarship applications as well. And the interviews. You would like to hear my thoughts on my own family and education, ma'am? Well, yes, of course. And is my four-year-old a gifted and talented genius who will fit in beautifully at your school? Well, she's not actively throwing a tantrum at the moment of this audition. Does that count for something? And yes, of course, she also plays chess on weekends and does calligraphy each night before bed. You'll just have to take my word for it. And then the topper of them all, the auditions.

For the private schools, these essentially looked like playdates, where she would go into a school with some strange adults and some other students, and the adults would observe them, ask questions, et cetera. On the whole, not too unreasonable. But for two of our specific public school reaches, they involved a more rigorous testing process. For one school, we had to pay a $375 testing fee, plus a $50 admin fee, of course, got to get that admin fee, so that we could meet with a child psychologist on a random weekend who would administer a four-year-old appropriate academic test. Now, this was the test that we were warned we were not supposed to coach our child for, or they could be disqualified, though we would later discover that many parents do actually pay for test prep coaching for their four-year-old children.

Now, I run a coaching company for a living, and even I think this feels a bit beyond the pale. Needless to say, this was our first experience with a pre-screen rejection. She didn't pass the first round of the test, which was both infuriating, what is wrong with any test that doesn't count my child as a genius, but also ultimately much easier to handle knowing early on that the school wasn't in the cards.

[10:14] Charlie Murphy: And then the other audition was for a music school, which is a public school that focuses children in music at an early age and also boasts really strong academic scores for their students. We were excited about this possibility and even felt like we might have an edge here. Not only was our child exposed to music at an early age, but she has real musical aptitude from both sides of her family and manifests it in great sense of pitch, tone, et cetera, all of these things. And if there could ever be a bit of nepotism, that might go our way. We had some good friends with kids who went to there, and we do have a Grammy award currently sitting on our toilet at the moment. If a bit of favoritism could maybe go our way in this process, we would be willing to look the other way, and yet not to be.

We did pass the first live pre-screen audition. This is our first pre-screen pass. Yay. But we didn't pass the second round cut. This was our first experience with our own logistical failures as parents. Our child was almost certainly hangry as that second audition happened right at a normal lunchtime. Could we not have set her up for better success with some carbo-loading? Amateur mistakes from supposed professionals.

[11:18] Charlie Murphy: But so you might be thinking, Charlie, so far you've only told me about negative results. Surely good news must be waiting around the corner, right? So sure, let's get to our final results. Our results, public school acceptances out of 21, zero acceptances, 19 waitlists, two rejections, private school acceptances out of five, three acceptances, two waitlists. So after all that insane process of over a year of planning and preparation, the only public school we were officially accepted to and offered a spot in was our original zone school, which we did not apply to at all because we found it unacceptable in the first place, which is what prompted this whole crazy process. Again, because of the nature of New York City rules, if you don't get in any of the schools you apply to, automatically you are assigned your zone school.

You'll note the 19 public school waitlists, which are automatic in this process. For any school you apply to and don't get into, you get a random waitlist number that can give you some indication of your chances. Some are completely out of reach and some are potentially feasible. More on that in a bit. And for the private schools, we ultimately did extremely well. Of course, the one thing I resolved would absolutely not happen at the beginning of this process now becomes a distinct possibility.

[12:10] Charlie Murphy: The biggest difference. Now it's worth noting here, as I'm about to have some fun and go into some takeaways and parallels between the processes, that by far the biggest difference in our kindergarten process was pure luck. I was able to draw the parallels when it came to the pre-screens and of course those artistic music auditions. And then the private school interviews in that part of the process really carried a lot of parallels as well. However, the biggest factor in our poor public school results, aside from those two auditions, was the luck of getting a bad initial lottery number. Really not much we could do differently there as parents without learning how to hack the mainframe. And while some of our MDCA parents like to speak toward the luck of the audition process, I do like to try to clarify those ideas as more about being about subjectivity primarily rather than truly luck.

I mean, there is still luck involved in the college process for sure. You could get a tough audition time and end up with a hangry auditor, but primarily when I call the college process a subjective meritocracy, I really do mean that. What exactly defines the difference in artistic merit from one talented 17-year-old?

[13:14] Charlie Murphy: Welcome to the Spring Break Audio Blog of Mapping The College Audition. Today, I want to share some insights that I've gathered through my experiences as a parent applying to kindergartens in New York City. It’s fascinating how much the college audition process mirrors the kindergarten application process in many ways.

[13:44] Charlie Murphy: First off, both processes can be incredibly daunting. As a parent, I found myself navigating a maze of applications, interviews, and assessments, all while trying to present my child in the best light possible. Similarly, students preparing for college auditions often feel the pressure to showcase their talents and personalities to stand out among a sea of applicants.

[14:14] Charlie Murphy: One of the key lessons I learned during this journey is the importance of authenticity. Just like in kindergarten applications, where schools are looking for genuine, well-rounded children, colleges are seeking authentic artists who can bring their true selves to the table. It’s essential for students to embrace their individuality and let that shine through in their auditions.

[14:44] Charlie Murphy: Another parallel I noticed is the significance of preparation. In both cases, being well-prepared can make all the difference. For kindergarten, that meant researching schools, understanding their values, and preparing my child for interviews. For college auditions, it involves selecting the right material, practicing diligently, and being ready to discuss one’s artistic journey.

[15:14] Charlie Murphy: Additionally, the role of support cannot be overstated. Just as parents play a crucial role in guiding their children through the kindergarten application process, mentors and coaches are vital for students navigating college auditions. Having a strong support system can alleviate some of the stress and provide valuable insights along the way.

[15:44] Charlie Murphy: Lastly, I realized that both processes are about finding the right fit. In kindergarten, it’s about matching your child with a school that aligns with their needs and personality. Similarly, in college auditions, it’s about finding a program that resonates with the student’s artistic vision and goals. It’s not just about getting in; it’s about being in the right place to thrive.

[16:14] Charlie Murphy: So, as we dive deeper into the college audition process in future episodes, I encourage students and parents alike to remember these lessons from the kindergarten application journey. Embrace authenticity, prepare thoroughly, lean on your support system, and seek the right fit. These principles will serve you well as you embark on this exciting chapter in your artistic career.

[16:44] Charlie Murphy: Thank you for joining me today on this Spring Break Audio Blog. If you have any questions about the college audition process or want to learn more about how MTCA can help you, feel free to reach out at mailbag@mappingthecollegeaudition.com. Enjoy your break, and I’ll see you next time!