Callback process?

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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<p>Hi everyone,</p>

<p>A very interesting conversation happening here!</p>

<p>A couple of things to keep in mind about Acceptd (Audition 1):</p>

<p>1) We set out to call this Audition 1 (check out our website). The words “pre-screen” do not exist. The term “pre-screen” developed out of how the public came to see this and we learned that there was no way to stop it. The term “pre-screen” didn’t sit well with us when deciding to use Acceptd this year. Nonetheless, “pre-screen”, seems to be an inescapable terminology and has since seeped into our vocabulary, whether we like it or not.</p>

<p>2) In order to be fair to every who HAD uploaded through Acceptd for Audition 1 and paid the $75.00 audition fee ($25 as a fee for Acceptd and $50 for Pace), we had to require the few walk-ins we saw during Unifieds to do the exact same. So, no, this was not a “post-screen” (I’m not really sure if that is even a word). This upload does, however, serve our faculty in making decisions, because it captures all information on the candidate and allows for them to re-watch the material as many times as they like throughout the process. Also valuable to the process the fact that many, many candidates got a “No Callback” through Acceptd for one program, and later re-submitted (at no extra charge) to another program where they WERE called back. This should be considered as a valuable element in requiring applicants to complete this audition in advance of an in-person audition.</p>

<p>3) Acceptd has been hugely beneficial to our process this year because we have an Acceptd profile for EVERY candidate. Our faculty have used this throughout the season and even in the audition room as it contains resumes, letters of recommendation, additional video content, etc. Even if we didn’t use is as Audition 1, our faculty now see it as essential to managing a large amount of data on each candidate.</p>

<p>4) I know a couple of you have brought this up, but we feel the $75 fee is still a better deal than spending the time and money to travel to New York, find hotel accommodations, and spend three to five hours on campus. Yes, we completely acknowledge that, for some, this means they WERE called back and spent all of this money only to find out they weren’t passed along to the final round of BFA Acting or BFA Musical Theater auditions. This is tricky - we needed to do the callback within the auditions this year. I don’t think we’re too different from other institutions who have callback on the day of the audition and, believe me when I say this, it wasn’t something we entered into lightly. You can see Amy Rogers’ post on this earlier in the thread.</p>

<p>I hope we can all find some level of resolution in this thread regarding the direction in which our audition process is headed. We have a lot of great information and suggestions which we will take with us when planning for next year!</p>

<p>Again, thanks for all of your valuable feedback!</p>

<p>Pace Performing Arts</p>

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<p>^^^ My strong gut feeling is that next year Pace’s audition process will run somewhat differently, and, even more importantly, will be explained in a different fashion. I’m particularly concerned with your off campus auditions, i.e., Unifieds, where the process was especially muddled. Thank you for being such a stand up person in an effort to address concerns on this thread.</p>

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<p>Keep in mind that “walk-ins” are never guaranteed for any school. They are only provided if space is available during the audition day. One of the primary benefits of following the school’s process is the opportunity to get a guaranteed audition time. As a parent, I would not have been comfortable risking getting NO audition for a school my son(s), unless it was very far down their list of favorite programs.</p>

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<p>^^^ Agreed. I would not plan on a walk-in audition at a school my kid was interested in, or as a way to get around the prescreen audition video process. It is not a reliable way to audition and is not guaranteed.</p>

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<p>MTopera - my d had a terrible experience too! Extremely disorganized, spent most of the introductory meeting talking about how great the program was, etc. She auditioned at a lot of schools and that experience was the worst.</p>