This story is one of three in a series.
MERCED, Calif. – In March, Daisy Valencia-Ramos walked into an audition for a performing arts college in Los Angeles.
She’s done this before – the high school senior from Merced has landed roles in musicals and plays throughout middle school and high school – so she didn’t think she would tear up when the judge asked her why she wanted to act for a living.
“Sorry,” she told the judge, sniffling. “I don't know why it's making me emotional.”
She said the answer dawned a few years earlier, when a teacher threatened to fail her if she didn’t get on stage and sing in front of her class.
“[My classmates] all stopped what they were doing just to listen to what I had to share,” Valencia-Ramos said. “It made me realize my voice does matter.”
She said that was the moment singing and acting became her dream career.
Valencia-Ramos graduated from Golden Valley High School in June with her eyes set on a future in the performing arts. During her last high school semester, she attended a week-long field trip in Los Angeles with a group of other students to visit eight arts colleges.
She auditioned for two of them and, about a month later, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy – otherwise known as the AMDA College of Performing Arts – accepted her.
This story is part of a KVPR series called "Landing a Dream," which looks at efforts by high school students at a Merced high school to pursue careers in the arts.
She was ecstatic and was even offered a partial scholarship. But it wouldn’t cover all her tuition. The remaining balance was still so high, she immediately wondered how she and her family would pay.
“We have been basically financially unstable my entire life,” Valencia-Ramos said.
Valencia-Ramos isn’t alone in Merced County, where one in five people live in poverty and the median annual household income is less than $70,000. These challenging finances – along with other factors like fear of leaving tight-knit families, and the lack of arts jobs in the county – make it difficult for students to dream of a future off the beaten path, said Golden Valley High School theater teacher Amber Kirby.
“Hollywood wants marginalized voices. They want the voices of the people that can’t pay those college bills,” said Kirby, referring to the tuition demanded by many of the private arts colleges her students are interested in attending.
“Our voices in the Central Valley mean something…But they’re never going to hear those voices if you have to pay $140,000 dollars to go to college and share it,” she said.
High-cost dreams
Even with the scholarship from AMDA, Valencia-Ramos’ tuition alone would cost $30,628 — about half of the county’s median income of $66,164 — per year.
This is not a unique situation, said Shawn McCall, a program manager with the Merced County Office of Education who assists high school students with the federal financial aid application known as the FAFSA.
According to McCall, in Merced the main concern for high school students looking to attend college is affordability. At private colleges, where tuition is typically higher, it’s a harder task to accomplish.
Out of the eight arts colleges Valencia-Ramos visited during her school field trip earlier this year, the average cost of tuition for one academic year was $36,216. Tuition like that can be as much as five times that of a nearby public university, like Fresno State.
“I’ve not, ever in my career doing this, come across a private or for-profit college that the FAFSA will cover it all,” McCall said. “It generally would cover about a third or a fourth and then everything else is either out of pocket or student loans…. Even if it's in the fine print, a lot of our younger students don't truly understand what that means or understand it at all.”
Valencia-Ramos also had to navigate a confusing process in figuring out the affordability of her dream school. When she received an initial acceptance email from AMDA, the message stated the school was offering a “total institutional scholarship” of $64,000 – and in parentheses, the email went on to say she would receive “$16,000 per academic year for 4 years.”
Valencia-Ramos said she initially misinterpreted the email, thinking that she’d be receiving a “full” scholarship for all four years. She was crestfallen to learn she was wrong.
Kirby, her arts teacher, said another student had also misinterpreted a similar email from the same college.
“It was not just blatantly clear what they were receiving,” Kirby said.
The AMDA College of Performing Arts did not return multiple requests for an interview and comment by KVPR.
McCall told KVPR this confusion is not uncommon with acceptances from private schools, where wording on financial aid is less transparent and conversations with admissions officials can sometimes be unclear as well.
“They really need to get students in,” McCall said. “And then once they're in and enrolled after a certain amount of months, they have the bill whether they can continue on or not. They're stuck with the bill.”
Choosing stability
In late May, Valencia-Ramos was at home, mulling over her decision about pursuing performing arts. The living room in her family’s apartment is adorned with medals and trophies Valencia Ramos and her four siblings have earned over the years for perfect attendance and good grades.
Her parents are divorced, but they still live together to make ends meet. Her mom, Monica Ramos, said steady income has been hard to find, but she didn’t believe that should deter her daughter.
“We just told her to follow her dreams, you know, and everything's possible,” Ramos told KVPR.
But Valencia-Ramos doesn’t share her mom’s optimism.
“Financial stability is my number one priority because I know what it feels like to be in poverty,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “I feel like when you live through that your whole life, you kind of don’t want to do it anymore.”
Earlier that month, Valencia-Ramos was one of the leads in “Legally Blonde Jr.”, her school’s last musical of the year. She played Paulette, who infamously learns how to do the “bend and snap” dance routine to gain the attention of her dream guy.
But, in real life, she is deciding not to go after her own dream – and that high school role may have been her last.
The performing arts college wanted a $400 deposit on tuition. After being accepted at AMDA, she submitted an application for federal financial aid, but she hadn’t received her award letter by the time the deposit was due.
She didn’t even know if she had the money to afford the deposit, let alone what would be left of the tuition. After all her work, affording her dream school didn’t seem realistic.
Valencia-Ramos decided to enroll at Merced College, a local community college, with a plan to become an accountant.
Although she's not planning to apply again to a performing arts college, she’s open to other acting opportunities in Merced that may arise.
With acting out of the picture for now, she figures she can work toward her other priorities: a steady income and a stable life.
“I do feel like I am missing out,” Valencia-Ramos said. “But in the same way, I'm kind of gaining something because I know I'm going to always get that check every two weeks.”
