Audition Dates

<p>For those of you that have been through this before-any general idea of when the schools tend to put there audition dates up on their website? I know it will be different for all but do you remember what month you started noticing the fall dates going up? My D will be a senior in the fall and we are looking to schedule some before unifieds.</p>

<p>most schools won’t have it up until june at least</p>

<p>Some things will change from year to year, but many schools hold auditions the same weekends each year - so in general, you can look at when schools had auditions this year and estimate that they will be held on similar dates next year. </p>

<p>The one thing that I saw change the most from my son’s year to my daughter’s year to this year (HS class of 2010 vs 2011 vs 2012) was the increase in the number of schools requiring prescreens. I would expect that each year, more and more schools will add this requirement. For my daughter, we had to send DVDs but this year, a friend of ours was able to upload all of her prescreens which was much less labor intensive. When schools make the change to prescreens, they may have to change or eliminate auditions that they have done in the past. For example, University of Michigan added a prescreen to this year’s audition requirements and eliminated their fall audition. </p>

<p>From what I have seen with my kids and our friend, going to a prescreen has not significantly changed the audition requirements but if you want to get an early date, you will need to be ready to start submitting prescreens in the early fall. </p>

<p>While waiting for dates to be posted, you use current info to figure out:

  • each school’s requirements (songs, monologues, dance, piano/music theory, etc)
  • who requires a prescreen
  • what other materials are required for prescreen (videos, headshot, resume, transcript, letters of recommendation, etc)
  • who has fall auditions
  • typical audition dates for programs on current list
  • who goes to unifieds - look at Unifieds site and each individual program because many schools participate without being formal members
  • which school do you have to do on campus
  • which schools you want to do on campus even if they go to unifieds
  • which schools require you to apply or be accepted before you can schedule an audition
  • which schools require a separate application (with or without prescreen) to set up an audition and what is required (headshot, resume, personal statement, hardcopy of transcript, letters of recommendation, etc) … </p>

<p>@broadway95 - feel free to email me - I live very close to WLC - our daughters met 2 summers ago and we have met with them for dinner in AA - would love to meet up for coffee :)</p>

<p>Good post Do-What-U-Luv. For those of you in next years group, be sure your son or daughter explores all possible schools in addition to “the best” MT schools. Your child also needs to decide what type of college experience he or she really wants. My daughter wanted the large university experience so her list of schools was weighted that way. Sometimes it it hard for our children to set realistic expectations and we need to both encourage them to reach for those top schools and to understand that if they dont get one of those coveted spots, there are other schools that have excellent programs AND a spot just for them. Consider this statistic from this years University of Oklahoma callback - 1200 pre-screening DVD’s, 120 callbacks, 12 offers.</p>

<p>Talk to your child now about where they might want to apply. Use the “Big List of Schools” that is posted on this forum. Select a list of schools that is balanced - a few that are less competitive, a few competitive and a few very competitive. Be sure that there are a few schools that are affordable - in today’s economic climate do not count on big scholarships. Once you have your list of schools, then go to each schools website and wait for their audition announcements. And do everything that Do-What-U-Luv said. And one final thing…SAT (or ACT) scores and grades are important, no matter what anything else anyone says. At Michigan they said that that was the very first thing they looked at during their pre-screening.</p>

<p>Agree with Kaisdad - in addition to the artistic prescreen, Michigan also has an academic prescreen - they list minimums, but once you pass the prescreen and audition, all of your academic stats and application materials come back into play - the decisions and offers are made by the dean of admissions for the school of music, theatre & dance, not by the MT dept or head of MT like at many other schools. So they are more like NYU which states a 50-50 mix of academic and talent for admission - Michigan’s may not be 50-50, but passing the academic prescreen is only the beginning…</p>

<p>@kiasdad - I’m having a hard time getting my head around the University of Oklahoma having 1200 prescreens… I looked at their MT sub forum and there has been no significant activity since a year ago. It just seems strange that if a program is that popular, that no one on CC is talking about it on the forum or sub forum… Also, that would mean that they had twice as many prescreens as Michigan… Or as many as Michigan and Texas State combined (with no overlap) - which even with the Glee-effect would be a large percentage of all kids applying for MT - and yet there’s no buzz about them… </p>

<p>I don’t disagree that they are a competitive school, but 1200 is ultra competitive…</p>

<p>Yea, I was surprised by that number also. We were talking about pre-screen dvd’s and yes, Oklahoma did not get 1200 DVDs. But they also consider the unified auditions and other regional auditions as prescreens. Your option is to send in a DVD or to attend a unified audition. From this pool they then invite kids to the on-campus callback. I’m just repeating what we were told at the on-campus meeting. </p>

<p>At the Michigan meeting, they said they got over 650 DVDs, (actually uploads), so I’m betting that Oklahoma received a similar number and made up the difference with the regional unified auditions.</p>

<p>It’s also unusual as to why there is so little chatter on the forums for Oklahoma. Anyone have any Idea why? (although I haven’t posted anything there either :0)</p>