We are very new to this process and wondered how callbacks work after on campus or Unified auditions take place. When do they usually happen and do all schools do callbacks or are you able to be accepted straight out. Just trying to get a mental picture for next year!
Thanks!
Most of the schools that do callbacks are for acting rather than MT. Julliard has a series of callbacks, one the day of the first audition and I believe two more over the next couple of months. Rutgers and U Minn/Guthrie have callback weekends. I believe the British schools do as well, and they’re in the UK. The only MT school I can think of with a callback is Pace and that happens the same day as the original audition.
University of Oklahoma, Western Michigan, and The University of the Arts are others I know have call-backs for MT. Oklahoma’s is another weekend after the initial audition. Western Michigan has a callback the day of auditions; I don’t know if it’s the same for on-campus and Unified auditions. (They were sort of spontaneously at Chicago Unifieds a couple years ago. My D ended up canceling her audition at WMU, so I’m not sure how it worked at Unifieds.) UArts has a callback the day of the audition on-campus, but doesn’t have a call-back for Unified auditions (which they video, IIRC).
At Unifieds and on-campus, Western Michigan calls you back for a dance call in the afternoon if they are interested in you (for MT, acting is different). If you don’t get called back to dance, you are not going to get an acceptance. At Unifieds the dance call is pretty late in the afternoon (I think it was around 5:00 pm two years ago), on-campus I think it is earlier. Getting a callback does not guarantee an acceptance, but you are close if you get the callback (maybe something like 50-50), hence, they don’t call back many auditioners.
Penn State does on-campus callbacks to interview students they are interested in, not sure about how they handle Unifieds.
For schools that do on-campus callbacks, it can get pretty emotional when they handout the callback slips.
Note: it is not uncommon for schools to change their audition process from year to year, so what has happened the year before may not be the same the next year.
Thanks for all of the info. Sounds like this will not be a predictable process…also good to know!
Point Park and Pace both had CB’s on audition day when my kid auditioned a few years ago.
Oklahoma’s first round of auditions for MT or acting can be at thescon if they go to your state convention or at Unifieds if they are there. It is almost a prescreen from what we could tell. They require an on campus audition so they “call back” those most interested in. They have several
Dates for These “call backs” - not just one weekend for the finalists.
U arts has callbacks for MT during on campus auditions only They are same day call backs.
DePaul and Pace do same day callbacks for BFA acting (not MT or other programs at pace).
Guthrie and Rutgers do one callback weekend on campus for a small final group (Guthrie usually calls back 60-80) and choose
from that. Guthrie admits 18 kids - half boys and half girls. Guthrie also allows you to send a video for callback if you have a conflict with the date.
Juilliard does first round same day callbacks and then one other weekend for the “final 40” and pick a total of 18 including both BFA and MFA students in that 18.
LAMDA did callbacks (recall) for US students in April in NYC this last year. Other London schools have callbacks in the UK.
UNCSA doesn’t do callbacks but they have one accepted student weekend in which they put the kids through workshops and classes to get a feel for the program First hand. It was run much like a callback but those invited were already admitted.
Hope that helps.
So helpful. Thank you so much!
To add to @EmsDad note about emotions when slips are handed out. We saw lists posted at Pace - on a mirror no less and in front of all the other students and parents waiting. This was on campus. So you could see the kids faces -
It was thoughtless to do that (and my kiddo got called back - still didn’t like it).
Juilliard (for on campus dates) emailed students if they got a same day callback or not this year. It was the first year they tried it that way. Nice because you could leave campus vs waiting for a list to go up.
This does help prepare for those inevitable disappointments. Thanks again!
Good luck. It is a wild ride and you can’t predict the outcomes! People Always say the kids land where they were meant to and it does seem that way with all the kids we know who went through it this year.
@ringoandlyra Callbacks are one of the many areas where there’s just no substitute for researching each school’s individual process, including speaking with the department–and still the process can change. At Chicago Unifieds, LIU held callback sessions in the late afternoons, and my D knew to reserve some time for that; Temple did not have a callback process planned but decided to use their dance call as a callback. Both schools let her know she was called back privately, at the end of her audition. Her regional audition for Marymount Manhattan was a callback after a video submission. The majority of schools she auditioned for (BFA MT) did not have a callback as part of the process.