College Application Advice from Dance Program Admissions Officers

August 30, 2017

Applying for a college dance program can feel like a guessing game. Should you highlight all your competition titles and awards? How important are your academic grades? And how should you act in the audition? Here’s advice from admissions officers from some of the top dance programs in the country about how to make your application stronger.

Donna Faye Burchfield

Director of the School of Dance at The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA

The University of the Arts’ Winter Dancer Series, choreographed by faculty member Meredith Rainey (They of Brooklyn, courtesy University of the Arts)

What stands out at an audition?

“We look for dancers who are curious, appear to be independent thinkers, and have an openness about them. They do a great deal of dancing every single day at UArts, so they must also be physically strong and technically proficient.”

What stands out on a resumé?

“We’re really open in our thinking about the backgrounds of our students. We try to see beyond style and genre by focusing

on how their training choices tell us something about what they’ll be like as a student.”

What stands out academically?

“While academics are critical, we don’t review the student’s transcripts until they pass the audition. We place particular emphasis on their performance in the writing, humanities, artistic, and history disciplines. We don’t believe that standardized tests are relevant in assessing the appropriateness of a dance applicant.”

Sean Curran

Chair of the Dance Department at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, New York, NY

Gillian Murphy teaching class at University of North Carolina School of the Arts (Peter Mueller, courtesy University of North Carolina School of the Arts)

What stands out at an audition?

“The strongest applicant is able to easily pick up combinations and corrections. Students need to be very proactive and have a great work ethic. For example, if I give someone else a correction, a great student will take that correction on as well. I look for people who can stand in the front of the room and know the combination and the musicality themselves, and not be following others.”

What stands out academically?

“Academically, they have to have over a certain GPA for us to be able to accept them, and once they’re here they have to maintain a minimum GPA. So, we do place high importance on academics. But we find that, frequently, dancers are also strong academically because they have a great work ethic.”

What stands out on a resumé?

“It doesn’t matter where you’ve trained if you walk in the studio and don’t look educated as a dancer. You can’t lie in your dancing.

That is the proof.”

A version of this story appeared in the September 2017 issue of
Dance Spirit with the title “What Do College Dance Programs Really Look for.”