My daughter is currently in the 10th grade. Should she attend unified auditions in the 11th grade or 12th grade?
You audition in your senior year for admission to college programs. Juniors can audition at SETC (usually held in March) and I think some other Thespian auditions around the country but these are going to be primarily for recruitment and information only, generally not for admission in the Junior year. Rising Seniors can audition at the International Thespian Conference in June and admissions can result from those auditions.
Some Juniors do attend Unifieds “just to walk around” and I think sometimes summer programs hold auditions at Unifieds for underclasspeople.
You may want to read, “I Got In” by Mary Anna Dennard. This gives a great overview of the college audition process. There are other books on auditioning for college as well.
Can someone explain how Unifieds work? Is it a cattle call for all the school there with one audition, or do you audition separately for each program that you can (pre-screened in, etc)? Do you do it all in one day? Callbacks needed?
Unifieds are individual auditions for each program. Some/many programs also hold dance calls. All auditions are by appointment, usually scheduled months in advance, although some programs do accept on-site walk-ins.
An exception is a “large-room” audition (with callbacks) that has been held for the past two years in NYC by some schools, dubbed “NYC Combines.” See this thread for more info: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/2095664-nyc-combines-for-2019-p1.html
Unified auditions are held over two days in NYC and LA, and several days in Chicago. In Chicago, some programs hold auditions one or two days in the weekend prior to the official audition days, which begin on a Monday (not sure about additional days in NYC and LA). Most students attend for more than one day in order to fit in their scheduled auditions. Some programs require fairly large time blocks for auditioning students (in some cases, several hours). Other programs have very short auditions (in some cases, just a few minutes), especially those accepting walk-ins.
Callbacks are generally not required. A couple of programs use Unifieds as a live prescreen and, therefore, students successfully passing the prescreen at Unifieds must attend a final on-campus audition. A few programs call back students for an additional interview or dance call later in the day - I think this is limited to mostly those accepting walk-ins.
Thanks so much for sharing all that, everything we needed to know!!!