Welcome to the Creative College Journey podcast, the place to help raise awareness on the many pathways to a creative life and education and how college might be a part of it, because it's not where you go to school, but how you go to school that counts. Hosted by professional, creative, and college expert Scott Barnhart, who is chatting with a variety of guests who have some amazing lived experiences from different universities, majors and creative industry interests. And we hope by hearing their stories, it might help give you some inspiration to find your own creative college journey.

Hi everyone. I'm Scott Barnhardt and welcome to the Creative College Journey Podcast. Why am I here? What is happening? Well, I am coming to this podcast hopefully as curious as you are, and I think the reason why I'm creating a podcast to talk about college admissions for creative applicants. Is because, well, I was once a musical theater college applicant who, when I got some decision letters, felt like the worst thing that could have happened to me happened. And that was, I didn't get into my dream college. And while that moment felt like an absolute heartbreaking turn of events, I learned it took a while. And sometimes I had to learn it the hard way. But that wasn't a failure in any way, shape or form. It was just a rejection letter. I've gone on to lead a varied and enriching creative life as a Broadway actor in the original company of the Book of Mormon, as a U C L A M F A, playwrights as a teacher, a director, a choreographer, a coach, and and now as an education consultant helping families navigate the choppy waters of creative applications towards college. Over the past few years, I've been having and leading hundreds of conversations with clients, students, and convention attendees about ways to navigate the college application process for creatives. Ways to enjoy the process, ways to lower the stress, ways to become more competitive. And these are students with. Really wide ranging goals and different career aspirations and wants of different majors and minors in mind. And the hard part in all of these conversations is that the wisdom that my clients constantly share. Based on their experiences, well, it never gets past that room and it could be so helpful for so many others. So here I am ready to try to change that. The Creative College Journey Podcast is here as a free and engaging resource to help any creative applicant see the multiple avenues and maybe multiple price points for college and beyond, and give inspiration and clarity to find your best path that's going to serve you and your goals. Because at the end of the day, That's what you're paying for and that's what you should be looking for. I'm here to help lower the temperature on the process cuz trust me, it, it's not actually that deep. I want to help showcase the opportunities of this process and some of its pitfalls. And really just try to clear some of the fear and anxiety around these auditions and applications and hoops that you have to jump through so that you might actually enjoy the process, learn about yourself along the way, and maybe just maybe you might enjoy your senior year of high school a little more too. Many of the episodes of the podcast will be interviews and conversations with boots on the ground, current students or recent graduates of a wide variety of creative majors and from institutions all over the nations. And this first season, I'm really gonna be focusing on students that I know. I know their unique stories and they're incredible humans. Take out your pen because these are all gonna be people that you can say at some point. I knew them when. But what we're gonna be doing is listening to their strategies, hear their wins and losses, and also find out their current creative aspirations and how maybe they've changed since when they originally applied to college. I'll also occasionally be speaking with industry and application experts about their points of view of what makes a resilient and successful artistic life, and in this process a resilient and successful artistic applicant. Because these folks are your community. They're not your competition. And the sooner you can realize that you've got people behind you and your unique path and vision and goals, man, it just makes the path so much easier. In some of these episodes, I'm gonna be speaking directly to you and I'm gonna be giving you some current tips, tricks, advice, and useful resources so that you can enjoy this process, be the best candidate you can be, and enjoy the journey along the way. I tell students constantly, and I believe it. It's not where you go to school, but how you go to school, that counts. So I hope as you hear these stories and get some inspirations that you might be able to take a deep breath, look at the multitude of options in front of you and realize you've got this. And really your job right now is just to take the next right step on your creative college journey. Happy listening.