From the CMU website:
Starting in Fall 2017, the School of Drama’s Acting and Music Theater majors will require all applicants to submit pre-screening materials in order to be considered for a live audition. More information will be available on this website in May. It’s likely that the pre-screening form will be live starting September 1 and students will be notified of the pre-screening decision on a rolling basis.
Link here: https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/school-of-drama
I wish all schools would pre-screen. It would really be great to upload a full slate to a site [Acceptd or the like] and invite schools to view but I realize that isn’t likely to happen. Perhaps now that the 800-lb MT gorilla is moving to a pre-screen, more schools will jump on board.
I’m guessing the sheer number of auditioners, which seems to go up every year, finally got to be too much for them to handle.
But the flip side, is think of how many more will audition if they can just push a “send” to a program. No limit on spots available, no needing to travel etc. For a program like CMU which can hire staff to review tapes a clear win, for other programs, harder to judge. In hindsight I loved the “one” prescreen we did:) Wish we had done more, but schools will still need to find a way to limit the numbers coming in and find a way to differentiate those who can spend a boat load on a sophisticated pre screen and those that can not. My sense is that the Ivies have been grappling with these issues for at least the last 10-20 years. You can end up with a very generic, even if high achievers group of students, it is really tricky regardless of if you are looking at kids applying to med schools, Ivies or art programs.
I am glad CMU is finally doing a prescreen, I was always wondering why they didn’t. I think it will make things so much easier. Personally, I don’t think that those who can spend a boatload on sophisticated prescreens really matters or makes any difference on who passes or not. My D passed 8 out of 10 prescreens and recorded them in our living room with no special equipment, pretty much the opposite of sophisticated. 
Finally! It’s about time. My D didn’t audition there but I have done nothing but complain on this forum for the past year & a half about them not prescreening and me finding it ridiculous that they agree to see SO many people ,many of which you know dang well shouldn’t even be there. Wasting resources and precious time .
Thank goodness they finally listened to my advice :))
@stagedoormama That is good to know about the prescreens.
I agree with@stagedoormama – our D filmed her prescreens in our den, using her iPhone, and passed all of them, including Ithaca, Penn State, Texas State, and Michigan. I don’t think hi-tech or fancy matters one bit.
That’s what everyone tells me. You can shoot it yourself on your phone or a home camera and get great results. Not necessary for a pro. Glad there are some things that might be easy and inexpensive !
Add us to the list that using our home video camera on a tripod - we did do it at her performing arts studio - but no special lighting, no professional videographer (husband did it), no professional editor (I did it - just clipping off ends, and adding slates to the front where required). Passed all 8 prescreens at her prescreen schools in 2013-14 audition season.
I did it with an iPhone at home and at the accompanist’s apartment. Passed all pre-screens, and was a recipient of a Young Arts award with it. Now, at college, D is using similar, with friends filming each other, to submit to summer stock and other auditions and experiencing good results. Just make sure the lighting is decent - experiment with a few locations.
^^^and filter out as much of the background noise as possible! We did S’s with a video camera; D’s with an iPhone. Both passed prescreens. We did need to experiment with sound a bit. For us, the monologues taped did in a small carpeted room in our basement turned out best from a sound standpoint.
FYI, most of our kids who are now out of school film professional auditions all the time with combo of iphone, ipad, laptop – being on the road necessitates knowing how to self-tape and my I know boys have rigged up hotel lamps and all sorts of things to direct light or block light. And they’ve gotten callbacks and bookings from those videos. So developing those skills, along with basic editing know-how, is a good thing for MTs to do!
Add us to the chorus of keeping it simple and inexpensive: my husband used an iPhone 6 to video our D; I stood by the music source and hit “play” when he pointed to our daughter, who stood against a bare wall in our family room and did her thing. Passed Michigan, Elon, Penn State, and Syracuse.
We used an inexpensive remote control for the iPhone 6 that starts the video function when you click it. We ordered the remote off Amazon. With that and a tripod, D was able to record videos for summer intensives.
I will be honest. I am not technologically savvy. And when we did prescreens in 2012 (for a D who graduated HS in 2013), we hired one of Ds friends (a high school student) who filmed everything for us and edited it all together for each school the way they needed to be, providing us with the files in the right format for each school. It saved me a lot of stress since I didn’t know how to do it myself.
Phones have much better capability now than they did even 5 years ago. But I agree with all - we didn’t do anything super fancy. Don’t waste money on any sort of fancy filming. But also don’t feel bad if you need to get some help. We hired someone because I wanted to make sure we got recorded what needed to be in the formats needed. It was $100 well spent.
@vvnstar, we ran into formatting and some other lost data and transfer problems with earlier summer intensives etc so we also got help to save headaches in the middle of the night:). But I agree many families are more tech savvy than our family so happy to hear that the phone recordings made no difference for prescreens. I think we only did a few prescreens and one for scholarship money so good to hear from those applying to the very top schools having no issues with prescreens no matter how recorded.