As to MM academic, my daughter opened the”big envelope” with “Congratulations” written on it. We were ecstatic (I even jumped up and down). Then we read that she still needed to hear from the theater deptartment regarding acceptance. We should’ve known, as this happened with Pace too! Alas, false alarm. Still happy to hear a yes academically, and now hoping for an artistic yes…
Still waiting on Penn State.
Sounds like we might cross paths at future auditions!
Good luck to all!!
@SoCalPops I agree with @toowonderful about the experience of attending NYU. My D graduated from Tisch in 2017 and was able to create an amazing network of people that have been of great help to her as she starts out her career. Although she did not get an agent from one of the many agents that NYU hosts, she did end up getting an agent by being referred to one by one of her professors. She has also been notified of many castings (and actually cast in some of the roles) by her past professors and fellow students. Since many of the professors are working professionals, they often reach out to her to come in and participate in a reading for them. Going to school in NYC has just made the whole scene feel like home to her and she is very comfortable. This is not to say that you cannot create the same experience coming out of school that is not in NYC, but I think it requires a little more work once you graduate to create that NYC network.
Has anyone heard anything from UConn about their December on campus auditions? Either yes or no? Can’t remember if they said some would find out before the New Year. Thanks and Happy Holidays!
Here’s my stuff.
Prescreens (all are acting unless indicated otherwise):
DePaul - Passed
Carnegie Mellon (MT/Acting) - Passed
Michigan - Passed
Ithaca - Passed
Emerson (singing-only MT prescreen) - Didn’t pass
Scheduled auditions that didn’t require prescreens:
Juilliard
BU
Haven’t submitted/scheduled yet but am applying:
New School
Pace
Northwestern
Swarthmore (not for drama)
AMDA
Grades are solid (huge upward trend); ACT is 33 Composite (35E, 30M, 35R, 32S).
Does anyone know if Pace considers you for Acting if you apply MT? I ask because my chances at MT programs are lowered when dance is a significant part of the consideration process (I’m a trained actor and singer, but dancing is not my forte), so I’m not sure if I want to risk my chances by applying MT if they don’t consider you for both.
@hamdog123 regarding Pace, all auditions for each program are separate. You will not be considered for an acting program during your MT audition. I would suggest to get your materials in ASAP, as their dates fill up rather quickly. Hope this helps!
@hamdog123 - Last year Pace allowed students to audition for multiple programs so check with the University and see if you can still schedule an audition for their Acting program as well. Congratulations on your wonderful prescreen results! I hope you don’t mind me saying that I hope you have a back-up or two school in addition to that list? Wonderful schools, all of them - and all except AMDA very competitive for admission which makes results less predictable. Break a Leg!
I do have backups! I’m Canadian, so if I’m not accepted to any of these schools, I’ll attend a school up north.
And thanks for the Pace info––that’s good to know!
Great @hamdog123! My D applied to a dozen schools also. She finished her applications two weeks ago, but now onto scholarships for each school. She finished the possible scholarships that apply to her for one school that she has been accepted to academically. I don’t understand. Is she supposed to apply for all possible scholarships at all the schools that she applied to, even before she is accepted to them? Also, she has been awarded scholarships. Does she accept those even if she hasn’t auditioned for the school yet? Thanks to anyone who knows about this!
Hey @SwizzleSticks - scholarships are often part of the academic acceptance package but you don’t accept them until you commit to the school. Check with the school but usually acceptances can wait until the final decision date, which is May 1! If your D has a scholarship with an acceptance date earlier than that you’ll have to walk a fine line but I think chances are good that you can wait for the audition and the artistic decision before making any moves.
Hello! Regarding Pace, certainly you can audition for multiple programs, there are 3 - MT, BFA Acting, and IPE which is International Performance Ensemble, which I believe is technically a BA in Acting but it’s still a performance program.
However, they all require Prescreens. So you need to resubmit your stuff. And then watch your date options carefully. I seem to recall MT is different dates than Acting.
Pace also has a BFA in Acting for Film, Television, Commercials and Voice-overs. All 4 programs (BFA FTCV, BFA Acting, BFA MT, and BA Acting IPE) require you to pass the prescreen and auditions are separate for each.
Some thoughts for parents w Juniors planning ahead for next year…
When my D was a sophomore, I asked her voice coach when we needed to get started preparing for college auditions. She told me 1 year ahead or more. During Fall or my D’s Junior year, she studied for the SAT. Got a private tutor and studied weekly and did weekly practice tests during the winter leading up to the Winter SAT test. She nailed the test, and got a high score. This completed this important task, eliminated the need to take the test again to get better scores, and set her up to get substantical merit scholarships (some of which she has already been awarded here in her Senior Year). Investing in private SAT tutoring had a huge Return on Investment for us. From what I have seen on the college net price calculators, the SAT/ACT score seems to make more of a difference than grades, though a high GPA is important too to get the highest merit scholarships.
During Winter of her Senior Year we hired Chelsea at MCA to help us plan out the process of applying to colleges and round out a college application list. Sure, we new all the big name fancy schools, but the less well known colleges with great programs we couldn’t figure out on own. Very, very worthwhile investment hiring Chelsea! Got a list of schools and new what to focus on, and what not. Knew which ones were reaches, fits, and safeties.
Next my D and Chelsea worked up a list of possible monologues. My D then refined this with her local voice coach. (FYI she’s applying for BFA Acting, not MT). By end of Spring, she had her monologues picked and was practicing them.
Over the summer she went to a couple of camps and continued to practice and refine her monologues.
By end of summer D started on Common App and reviewing other applications. The applications and the essays turned out to be a constantly growing monster of sorts. At first we thought there was 1 common app essay and a couple other private college essays. By the time D was done with all essays and questions prompts, she probably wrote 40-50 essays/question responses. Some colleges have 5-8 essays and questions when you included their supplemental apps. And often you don’t get to see that until you’ve completed the main app, and they give you access to their acceptd or slideroom supplemental area for performing arts students.
The prescreens we started working on in end of August. We did those ourselves. I am a very skilled with video shooting and editing. But I am not an actor. So I didn’t really know how to coach my D’s performances on screen. We would shoot a number of takes, and then meet with our vocal coach to review a few days later. This was a lot of back and forth over weeks, but we eventually got these done by the end of September. They are not as simple as they might seem. She had 3 different monologues to shoot, and some schools wanted closeups, some wanted 3/4 shots, some wanted full body, some didn’t care, some wanted 1 minute cuts, some wanted 90 second cuts, some wanted the videos uploaded separately, some wanted them edited into one video, some wanted simple introductions, some wanted detailed personal introductions. I had to create matrix of all the shots and edits I needed to make. It was lot of work. By the end of the process I had done this so much with my D that I had learned how to coach her shots, and figured out what to look for in a good take. But that’s after 70 or more takes.
There are some coaches/companies that offer video for prescreens as a service. If this is not your skill set, then hiring one of those might be a great idea. Production value (i.e. how professional it looks) doesn’t matter that much. What does matter is getting a great performance on video that meets all the technical requirements they spec (i.e. time length, slating, etc.). Having a great coach that can be there during the filming would speed things up immensely. I understand Chelsea at MCA offers this, as do the MTCA people. Others probably do too I am sure. We didn’t use Chelsea as she is in Boston and we are in California. And MTCA works with MT kids, and my D did acting. Plus I knew how to do all this, so I thought it would be easier to do it ourselves. Frankly I don’t know which is better… by doing it ourselves, we did get to constantly refine it. Which maybe gave us a better result. Hiring someone else would have gotten it done faster, but I don’t know if that would’ve been better or not, as we would have a time limit on the shooting sessions.
By the end of September, D had all prescreens done, and her main essays and applications done. She applied to a few early action schools. She got accepted to two audition based BFAs and one BA so far with scholarships at all 3. She got declined on 4 of her prescreens with one painful rejection from her first choice school. But we now have a full slate of good audition opportunities coming up here in January and February.
Getting started early is ESSENTIAL if you want to maximize your chances. You should have your college list done early in 2019, get your audition material chosen and start rehearsing it. By summer you need to start preparing to shoot prescreens. August and September are fine to shoot them. But you need to be rehearsing and ready to shoot ahead of that. And to do that you need to know the schools you are applying to and what their specific prescreen requirements are. Then doing all the essays and applications takes time. It’s just a grind. Oh, and we also hired an essay coach through Chelsea at MCA. VERY helpful to have this advice. I am good writer, but knowing what to write about is the key to success with these and I did not know what to write about to advise my kid.
My D has applied to 20+ schools - I have lost track of how many Some are BFAs and some are BAs. In March of 2019 she will have some very good choices to pick from with scholarship money.
I know to some people this process seems random or sounds like a “lottery”. That’s not accurate. Preparation and casting a wide net will get you some, possibly many great choices. There is no sure way to get your kid into their top school of choice though. That is where the random element does come in. Many of these programs only take 10-15 kids a year and get hundreds of applications. But if you cast a wide net, and prepare, you can get a few great choices out of it.
Hi everyone! I had a son from class of 2022 and found cc so helpful and especially so supportive during the February/March waiting torture period. I’ve been meaning to come back to pay it forward, but I have twin daughters (thankfully not interested in theatre) who are in the class of 2023! So I’ve been focused on helping with essay editing. (ugh- so many!).
Anyway- my big warning is for anyone with an on-campus audition at BU. If you get into an Uber and merely give the campus address, you will end up 20 minutes away! You MUST tell the driver you are going to BU’s campus- then give the exact address. This problem caused my son (who went to the audition alone last year) quite a bit of stress, even though he still got there in time. Good luck!
@SoCalPops - nice of you to share these thoughts. I am in awe of your commitment and preparation. You go, Dad!! I agree that getting started early and casting a wide net is key.
I thought it might be humorous (or maybe comforting) to some readers to share that I recorded my son’s prescreen videos under fluorescent light in the hallway of my company’s suburban office building against a white wall on an iPhone. No editing. Probably no more than 5 takes. To add a serious note, do the best you can. Private coaching and quality video are not accessible to everyone, but love, support, kindness, and encouragement are. Give what you have, start early, and cast a wide net.
Anyway, we are flying back from a holiday trip right now. I am sitting next to a happy 19 year old who just finished his first semester in a quality BFA acting program. Do your best, parents. I think it generally works out.
Happy Holidays!!
@MomofJ5 Thank you for this information. My son auditions on January 11th.
lol @VASkydog - and we filmed my D’s prescreens with her phone in our living room with all the furniture squished to one side and used bedside lamps on the floor as lighting! We did zero editing. My D started the application process in August, missed all the early application deadlines, had her first and last auditions within 3 days at LA Unifieds and still ended up with a perfect fit school. Not everyone does everything the same way and different actors want different kinds of schools. There is no one-size-fits-all in college applications. There’s just - do “your” best and have a plan that fits who you are and where you want to head in life.
Living room, office, bedroom walls are all great for background shooting of your prescreens. iPhones do great video these days too. With my D we pushed aside all our couches and created a neutral wall beige background. Nothing fancy. I had a couple photographer lamps, but my video camera is almost 8+ years old. What I did like about doing this ourselves (vs. paying a videographer or coach), was D got to shape and change her audition material through the process of doing many takes. It also gave her great practice for interview type questions because of some of the personal introduction questions that a few of the colleges asked for. Fancy video I don’t think matters. In fact when it comes to “editing”, there’s not really a lot you can or should do. Its mostly pasting together two monologues and an intro for the schools that want only one video uploaded. And trimming the beginning and ending of your cuts. Other than that, pretty much all schools want “no cuts” in the monologues. They want complete takes with no internal edits (editing the begin and end points are fine, and its assumed that you will do that to not waste their time). iPhones can do simple editing like this these days quite well. I think the most important thing on prescreens is to approach them like they are you live audition for that school. Because in fact they are your first audition for that school. And they can get referred back to and rewatched later by the admissions staff when deciding on who to admit. A couple of the schools we talked to cut about 60-75% of the kids out based on prescreens. Meaning they only invited to live audition around 25% or so of the kids who submitted prescreens. If you actually make it past a prescreen to a live audition, then at some schools, your chances of getting accepted become close to 40-50%.
Prescreens will NOT be the last time you have to film. D did it all through college for summer gigs, callbacks, and a variety of other things. NYU had a variety of studio spaces (like rehearsal rooms) set up for kids to do that. An Xmas gift for her this year was a photographer’s screen, since NYU is now 80+ blocks south.
If you are looking for questions to ask on tours/auditions, I would ask how schools handle teaching kids to self-tape. Like other auditions, there is an art to it…
Thanks @VASkydog ! We wanted to come out at the end of this journey knowing we did everything in our control to get the best result. There are many things in this journey beyond control, but we’ll have no regrets that we didn’t do something we could have. 
Good luck to your son @MEMTmom !