dorothy wrote:My dds been quite lucky in terms of cost although we have still paid out probably about £250 in audition fees and travel. She has a good circle of friends she has met through YMT and youth threatre, auditions, stage experience etc over the years and so has managed to stay overnight with friends for one of her London auditions and Glasgow audition, she got a lift with her friend for the other London audition travelling overnight and she got a voucher for a free audition at Central through her college. The other auditions were in Liverpool so no travel cost and Manchester for which the train fare was quite cheap. She also applied to her college and got some financial help off them towards the cost of auditions. Having said all that she still has no offers although she is still waitng on GSA and if she gets a recall the travel down there will probably be about £50 and she might need a travelodge so that would bump up the cost. Wiithout any offers its dead money although she now knows what to expect and its been good experience but we will have to go through it all again next year without any help she has had from college this year. It is very expensive and I agree it does sometimes seem that you have to be really low income to get the full grants or dadas or preferably be wealthy in order not to worry about the cost. Regretably a lot us arent wealthy and have to do without holidays and things to try and help our kids do what they love. I havent had a holiday for about 5 years (other than a few days away in london once or twice a year to see some shows) I am certainly not well paid. i am the only breadwinner in the family and am only doing 4 days because of the recession so money is really tight and although dd might get a grant it wouldnt be a full one so I would still need to try and help a bit and I really have nothing much to spare. Its not even a well paid profession unless you are famous so you will probably never earn enough to repay all the student loans . What a crazy world we live in.
A voucher for the central audition! Wow that's fab. Am so jealous as we paid £50 for that one!
it was the most expensive one. It never occurred to me about dd's college helping out in any way,no idea why it didn't seeing as she is doing musical theatre 
but she hasn't been given any help with any reg auditions. I must admit reg the GSA audition I had mentally costed it all up in my head how much it would cost if she was given a recall and with hotel and track expense it would have put another another £70 approx.And again that's just stopping in the good old travelodge.
) is the debate between doing a uni degree training or going the drama school route. Will my dd have as good a chance at uni as students going to "top" accredited schools.I know her course will be full on at 30+ hours a week. 3 big productions a year and extra classes to do if required. Obviously there is some written work but only a small percentage. From what I have read,drama schools are usually 40+ hours a week,with it being 100% practical training.They do the same qualification as uni's now too. We have tried with a couple of vocational schools,central and GSA. Both covered by student loan but not successful there 
the majority of the vocational schools are not fully covered by a student loan and the living expenses in London would be very high. Others only offer the diploma which you don't get any funding for at all and cost approx £10000 per year. I know there are dada awards but our income is too high to qualify for that. So the university training makes more economical sense for us but not if my dd is going to be saddled with a huge debt with no chance of getting work at the end of it. 
