While most seniors spend a lot of their time stressing about where to go to college, Eric Leigh, ‘18, took his college decision process one step further by auditioning for Musical Theater BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) programs across the country.

Leigh’s audition process started months ago at the beginning of senior year. “The first thing I did was film prescreens, which are two minute long videos of me singing, dancing, acting, and talking about myself. I sent those out to 16 schools,” explained Leigh. “After my prescreens were accepted at 15 of the 16 schools, I started preparing for the live auditions.”

During January and February of 2018, Leigh spend most of his weekends traveling across the country to pursue his dream.“I flew to Chicago and New York and did the majority of my auditions there. For some schools, I traveled to their campus, but auditioning in big cities made everything much easier,” Leigh said.

After all the hard work of auditioning, Leigh spend the next month simply waiting to hear back from these programs. “The competitive nature of it all is very overwhelming. For a few of these schools, the musical theater program are harder to get into than some Ivy League schools, which is just horrible,” said Leigh. “Most programs get around 800 auditions and only accept 20.”

After being offered admission into seven highly competitive programs, Leigh accepted a spot at Ithaca College in New York. Leigh said, “I’m very lucky to have been offered admission, and I’m so excited! They have an amazing program, and I’m really looking forward to it”

“Looking back, the biggest piece of advice I could offer anyone thinking of pursuing musical theater in college is that it is a long, hard process but it’s fun.  It’s risky, but it’s well worth it,” said Leigh.