<p>Hi, I'm a rising senior who is going to go through the upcoming audition cycle. I'm going to be attending NY Unifieds in January, and I'm having difficulty imagining what they're going to be like. I've been to Pearl Studios a bunch of times in the past few years for various classes/rehearsals/auditions, so I know the building. But how does it all work in that space? Like does each school get a room and the kids wait in the hallways (the hallways of that place seem kind of small to accommodate hundreds of waiting kids)? How many auditions were you able to schedule in a day there? Where would one sign up for walk-ins? What was the overall atmosphere like?</p>
<p>My daughter did NY Unifieds last year and what you have described is pretty much how it’s done- regarding college rooms and people waiting outside in the hallways. In fact, we met a lot of really great people while we were waiting so take advantage of that! </p>
<p>My daughter only had about 3 schools that she had scheduled auditions for. She also did two walk-ins. The schools that do walk-ins have signs up telling people there are walk-ins. One of my daughter’s scheduled auditioned was rescheduled for later and I didn’t want her first audition to be at a school she was highly considering.</p>
<p>I literally walked throughout the hall and found reps in rooms and asked if my daughter could audition. They gladly said yes, it didn’t cost anything, they were very nice, and it gave her a great place to try out her audition. One of the walk-ins had a really great program but the school was way too small for what my daughter wanted and a bit too rural. My daughter wanted the full college experience- football, sorority…</p>
<p>Anyway- I hope that helped. We chose the NY Unifieds because my son goes to school in NY. It still paid for us to go to Unifieds even if she had only had 3 auditions. She lucked out because she got to do 2 more auditions and they were both very positive.</p>
<p>The overall atmosphere in our experience was very positive, fun, and my daughter had a blast and felt very confident! I only wish we had collected more names so we could see where people ended up.</p>
<p>My D scheduled 5 auditions and did one walk-in, and we only attended Saturday and Sunday. None of her schools required her to block off 4 hours, but I have heard of schools for which that is required. There were some gaps in her schedule where she could have added more walk-ins but we had done so much research on the schools ahead of time that she knew she wasn’t interested in the other schools in attendance, at least those that allowed walk-ins. </p>
<p>We were very surprised at how much space there was for walk-ins in many school schedules. If you hadn’t applied to any of the schools in advance, you would still have plenty of opportunities to audition. Just get there early to schedule them when their schedules are still wide open.</p>
<p>We had been to Pearl many times before too, and I must say I was surprised at how well the space accommodated the volume of attendees. That being said, we were very happy to have booked a hotel room across the street for her down time. And for changing clothes - the bathrooms did get crowded. We opted to attend NYC since we are local and there were many other schools she auditioned for that required on-campus auditions. It helped reduce overall audition costs and missed school days. One shock for us was that Penn State allowed walk-ins although they require a pre-screening DVD. Had we known they would allow walk-ins and that they would be so easy to book, we would not have sent the pre-screen. It was the only one that required dance - we would have saved money and effort had we known. Of course this could change from year-to-year so check with them if you plan to audition.</p>
<p>Overall, the experience was good. For the most part, the school audition reps were warm and the kids and parents were not too crazy.</p>
<p>Wow, thank you guys! All of this information was really helpful. :)</p>
<p>Stay at the New Yorker across the street, then you can go back and forth easily between auditions and rest, change, etc. I was surprised at how NOT chaotic the NYC Unifieds were. It was quite organized and really pretty quiet!</p>