By the way, my D and I thoroughly enjoyed the Chicago Unified experience. The schools she auditioned for there were pretty much “long shots” anyway (she netted one waitlist), and she got an MT acceptance from a prior on-campus audition the day we arrived there, so it didn’t really feel high pressure to her. We basically treated it as a vacation; I have a niece who lives in Chicago who was delighted to serve as tour guide/restaurant guide/public transit consultant. One of the days she met us in the Palmer House lobby, and said, “there certainly is a lot of…ummm…‘teen spirit’ in this building, isn’t there?”
We only did NYC, would have loved to have done Chicago but our high school is incredibly strict on missed days, especially as seniors. We stayed at the Crown Plaza HY36 Midtown It is right across the street from Pearl Studios. It is the host hotel for the colleges and we came across many auctioneers in the elevator and restaurant. It is on the the side street so it wasn’t noisy and the rooms were lovely. We were able to run back and forth whenever we had downtime or she wanted to change. My daughter did not do any walk ins but there were plenty of schools offering them I just suggest if there is a particular school you want get there early and sign up.
We are from West Coast so did our best to save on travel with points and miles from other travel and cc points. We stayed at the Residence Inn just North of the river. The rate was around $110 and included breakfast and a full kitchen. Very quiet and when I went to pick up breakfast downstairs my daughter warmed up vocally. We Ubered it to Trader Joe’s the first day as we were there for 5 nights. The Uber to Palmer House was $5-$8 depending on the surge. We had to plan and pack each day. There’s lots of hang out areas at the Palmer house and my daughter changed there and we hung out a lot at our coaches’ suite which was an offered benefit of their services.
Other tips:
Pack or buy a humidifier while you are there. Plan to have a water bottle and fill it all day long (there were water bottle stations on the audition floors). Make your student do one or two walk ins. They warm them up for the day if you can get them before other appointments in the morning and take the pressure off. Be prepared to do some google research on the school so you have some talking points (this may be a school they didn’t apply to originally because they ran out of spots, or ran out of money etc). They just may get accepted and fall in love with that school. My daughter did 4 walk ins, but didn’t apply to two (be sure not to wear out their voice with too many). The two she applied to netted an acceptance and a waitlist.
Hi there. Does anyone have last year’s list of walk in auditions? I am trying to find out which schools have walk in opportunities at Chicago Unifieds.
I think @EmsDad had a list?
@thespis1 There isn’t a list for walk ins at Unified Auditions. Each year it is different. You have to wait until you are there and walk around to see who has walk ins available.
Here are some of the “usual suspects” that typically have held walk-ins at Chicago Unifieds in past years:
UAB
Viterbo
Utah
Western Michigan
Ball State
Cornish
Drake
LIPA
Royal Welsh Academy
Ohio Northern
SCAD
Molloy/CAP21
NYCDA
Long Island U.
Northern Colorado
Texas State (Acting)
Oklahoma (Acting)
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (not at Palmer House)
The list will vary from year-to-year, just as the audition process for any given school may change from year-to-year. Some of the schools listed may no longer be offering walk-ins, and some programs not listed may offer walk-ins. Sometimes very popular programs that “never” offer walk-ins will have slots open at the last minute for those that ask at the desk. You never know exactly what will happen until you get into the process for any particular year.
When do people start booking rooms for Chicago Unifieds? Suggestions any input would be helpful as the calendar turns to August tomorrow!
The discounted room block at the Palmer House for Chicago Unifieds is already available so you can make your reservations now.
How many days do most people stay at Unifieds?
I think how many days people stay depends on their personal schedule and their audition strategy (IE: how many are you doing on campus vs. unifieds) I would recommend booking a hotel for the entire time you could possibly need and then modifying/cancelling early. The rooms book early, and the prices are better the earlier you book. This year, S had an audition with NYU on Saturday, and there were some schools doing auditions or at least their dance call on Sunday. I booked to stay through the last day of Unifieds, but we ended up leaving Wed. evening as we scheduled all his auditions on M-W and S was able to get the walkins that he wanted to do done during those 3 days. If we had wanted that last day for walk-ins, we could have stayed. We stayed at the hampton inn a block from the Palmer. I would highly recommend it, and they were very good about cutting our stay short when our plans changed.
Last year, we booked very early. I recommend booking out more days than you think you will need since a number of schools will hold dance calls the weekend before. You can always cancel the days you don’t need as your schedule fills in.
@artskids, how far would you extend the reservations? NY dates are Sat the 19th and Sunday the 20th. We booked Fri- Sun. Chicago dates are Monday the 4th through Thursday the 7th. We booked Sun - Thur. Should I add a date on the front end of both of those just to be safe?
Both hotels allow cancellations up to 48 hours before.
@mindatwork I would book Friday night through Thursday night in Chicago and then modify/cancel as needed. I don’t think there are many that do auditions on Saturday, but we had one. (NYU) And if you’re doing the U of M audition, their dance call was on Sunday last year. I think there were one or two others with dance calls Sunday. Maybe CCPA? I would always plan to arrive the day before your the first audition you have scheduled.
^^^CCPA, Texas State, BOCO, U Michigan had weekend dance calls. Could be others!
Thanks, I modified our Chicago reservation and upgraded to the executive level while I was at it.
Any advice on which/how many extra days to book for NY?
Unified Auditions were fine. But my daughter liked all the on-campus auditions better and got best results (offers) from on-campus visits. If I’d had a crystal ball in retrospect would have missed less school days and booked more on-campus auditions. But it’s hard to know where ones kid will get auditions. So you gotta book reservations for a Unifieds. Just letting y’all know we thought Unifieds was not that great.
@Kkrazie - It’s different for everyone. For my D, unifieds helped her get “in the zone” - she liked the idea that ALL she had to focus on was the audition. (Not a campus tour, or sitting in classes etc) and in the end, she got way better results from unifieds.
@toowonderful I completely agree with you that it is different for everyone. My daughter loved Unifieds and felt she did her best there moving from one audition after another staying in “the zone”. When she did on campus auditions, she was pretty worn out from everything it entailed (long day and alot of waiting around) by the time she actually auditioned, that she didn’t feel she brought her best. But I can definately see why others may feel the opposite.