Its her Life

Friends .... another method of entry onto a BA university course is by doing a one year Access to Higher Education Diploma (an alternative to A levels). I work at a college where we offer these Diplomas. We offer 3 choices, one of which is a Science course and many (not all though) universities will accept this as entry onto a physiotherapy degree. The courses are part-time, but do vary from college to college. At our college, the science course is 3 mornings per week, so not possible whist at dance college but a possibility afterwards. However, we also offer an eve course as well for social sciences. It varies from one college to another. If you look at the website www.accessible.ac.uk, you can find out more info. Not many people are aware of these diplomas as alternative entry routes to uni.

Yes balletmadmom, it was all worth it. My dd got into Tring on a full DADA (i'm a single parent on very low income so qualified).

LinMM. I believe if you log onto your Oyster account, it will indicate on there that you have an unfinished journey and I believe you can rectify it somehow. It happened to once ages ago when travelling from Brompton to Clapham by overground. When I got to Clapham, the barriers were open and I just changed onto my platform for Brighton without 'touching out'. And I can quite understand how you got lost at London Bridge. Took me a while to get used to that station. When I'm in Covent Garden area, I always get national train from Charing Cross to London Bridge. Much easier and quicker than tube.

Thinking of you Celib. My dd knows your son so I will tell her when she rings tonight. Hope he's on the mend now. xx

I agree with what Livingonaprayer said. My dd is in lower sixth at Tring as well and the pastoral care is excellent. Pleased some of you forum members enjoyed the open day on Friday. My dd too was one of the students showing prospective students around & she loved meeting you.

Besides the stress of all the actual auditions, I would just like to pre-warn everyone to be prepared for the possible unexpected costs as well! Last year when my dd did all her auditions, I had budgeted for a certain number of hotel stays (for those schools which were a long way from home), but what I hadn't planned for was some of the early arrival/audition times at many of the more closer schools! Maybe we were just unlucky, but for both my dd's auditions at Tring & Rambert, we had to register at 8.45am and for her RBS, ENB & Central it was 9am. Because we did not want to risk travelling on the morning in the rush hour (stressful enough, without having the added worry of traffic or train delays!!) this consequently meant that I had to book an overnight hotel stay for those as well, which for London in particular certainly was not cheap. So that was an additional 5 hotel bookings on top of the 2 for Elmhurst & Northern, which I had originally planned for. Then add to that any further ones for Finals, an absolute small fortune was put on my credit card! Maybe we were just unlucky getting all the early slots, as for some they got lunchtime or afternoons. Guess it's luck of the draw. But just be prepared.

No solos were required at RBS, ENB, Elmhurst or Central. I actually ended up creating a chart/table last year with columns/rows & listed each school, with their audition dates, required photos, what the audition consisted of (ie type of class, solo, physio assess etc) + any other reqs ie GP letter (Rambert asked for this, you had to take with you on the fay). Some people think I am too organised but believe me it helped enormously especially If your dc are auditioning for lots of schools.

Re Central's application form, exactly the same happened last year, but thankfully I am very experienced in IT so used my skills to adjust it all. And re solos, last year my dd def had to do a solo for the first round of Tring auditions and also for Rambert. Although with Rambert, only a selected number of auditionees are asked to perform solos.

Tring have now put some more audition dates up onto their website, inc 4th form & sixth form dance (but only one date!).

Further to my previous post way back earlier on in this thread, I just wish to say how reassuring and comforting it is reading about everyone's individual experiences of homesickness and all the comments & advice given. It has helped enormously knowing that my daughter and I are not alone.

My 16 yr old dd has just left home for the first time to attend full-time vocational school and is terribly homesick. The school did warn us that it can sometimes be harder for the older ones, as firstly they've spent more years used to being at home & secondly, because they are older they are 'expected' to cope with it better, which is not necessarily always the case. At the start I had her on the phone in floods of tears every single evening: absolutely heartbreaking for me as there's only so much one can do & say on the end of a telephone & you feel so so helpless. She would insist though that speaking to me & being reassured helped & made her feel much better. Now three weeks into the term, she is still phoning every single evening to chat & discuss her day etc, as well as coming home at weekends, but thankfully things are slowly improving . Most of her calls, albeit one or two, are now happy ones. Still have the occasional call or text saying she wants to come home, but I have to keep telling her to stay strong, it's still very early days. I guess for her this is her way of coping with this major change in her life & I've therefore gone along with her wishes if I think it makes it easier. Not sure if a good thing or bad though, or whether the constant daily contact is just making it harder & more painful. I am constantly supporting her & telling her to perservere and have to stress that she only gets opportunities like this once & she'd probably hate herself if she let it all go. I can certainly relate to some of the comments made above, as have first hand experience of the detrimental effects this can have later on in adulthood if one does not follow their dreams when they have the chance. In my late teens I was given a contract to skate on a 3 year world tour with Walt Disney on Ice (something that all my childhood I'd trained for and dreamt of achieving) ..... only to give it up at the drop of a hat because I was homesick! My parents at the time didn't try to encourage me to stay, but instead just said well you'd better come home then! (Back in those days, we obviously didn't even have mobile phones, social media sites etc & I'd also grown up in a very sheltered and protective environment). This is now something I've always regretted for the rest of my life, so probably one of the reasons why I'm so keen to encourage & support my own dd through these early days and not let her make the same mistakes I did.

Yes, tell yr dd not to stress, as kiwimum said above, you certainly do NOT have to sing or act for the dance course at Tring. My dd has just started on the dance course there in the lower sixth (with a Dada) & had her auditions last Jan & Feb. She did not have to sing or act, even when called back for the second Dada auditon. They had to do ballet & jazz, plus a solo dance.

My dd is on a Dada course (Diploma in Professional Dance). When I rang the child benefit office to inform them, I was asked if she was doing A levels as well, to which I replied yes, & was immediately told I would still receive child benefit. :-).

Yes, take her to A&E!!

Yes, I felt it today when I did my online food shopping order and realised I was now only ordering for myself and my 13 yr old son (I am a divorced single parent). Then went into her bedroom tonight to draw her curtains and realised I didn't have to :-( Believe it or not, will miss all the taxi-ing around too. My car will wonder what on earth's wrong!

We're off to Tring today, dd starting in lower sixth, first time away from home :-( Hope to see some of you there.

Dani Harmer (Tracey Beaker) went there too.

Yes, I agree, it's more of a stage school like Sylvia Youngs & Italia Conti.

We use fabric glue from the dressmaking shop. Called Hi Tack & in a brown bottle.

If the leotard they suggest is still from Express Dance Supplies, then it is really thin and doesn't even have any bra lining either. When my dd first started SA1s, we immediately ordered the recommended leotard, but she soon ended up wearing her Danseez or Capezio one instead!

Not Enbs ... that is a Diploma & funding is available by the Dada scheme. No degree there.

Thanks for that info Nana Lily. My dd too has a Natwest Adapt account with bank debit card. Has done since she was about 12 yrs old. I will certainly keep a watch on that & pre-warn dd too. I did go into our local branch a few months back when she was doing all her auditions for vocational sixth form just to query about transferring to a student account and was also told not til they are 18 because of the overdraft facility.

Dd is 16, about to start 6th form Diploma in Prof Dance at Tring. Not sure how much Pointe work they will be doing.

My dd is about to start full-time vocational training in Sept and we are debating about how many pairs of pointe shoes she will need to go off with! Having not trained full-time before, it is difficult to guage how many she is going to get though until we know how many hours of pointe she will do per week. However, having just done two weeks summer school, she broke one pair within a week. So I'm just interest to know how many pairs everyone else kits their dd's out with at the beginning of a new term?

An orthopaedic assessment is an assessment undertaken by a vocational school's physiotherapist to determine the student's physical suitability for full-time dance training, ie turn out, flexibility, physical limitations, feet, any physical abnormalities etc etc). They are undertaken during the audition process for full-time training. Some schools physically assess ALL students reaching the finals of auditions, some only assess a selection who they want to look at further for whatever reason.