Does anyone have personal experiences from attending these locations? What are the pros and cons or each? With location, business, amount of schools, services, weather, personal experiences, etc? Would love personal stories or stories from people who attended multiple locations.Thank you so much!!
I live on the West Coast so it would be technically be easiest for me to go to LA (Next year, 2020) but I’ve heard more schools go to other places and you could get some visits in if you went to Chicago and NYC. I will be attending moonifieds and one unifieds location hopefully.
I think each site has its pros and cons. In general, I think Chicago is believed to have the most number of schools and the most number of auditioners. This can be both good and bad depending on how you and your student handle crowds. I believe it is also the place where the largest percentage of schools are in the same location although there are schools at all locations that are at ancillary locations and not at the official “host” hotel.
Other factors to consider - both NYC and Chicago have often had to deal with weather issues. That is probably not a concern in LA.
Obviously which location is most convenient and affordable to you depends on where you live.
From what I’ve read, LA seems to be more laid back and smaller in terms of numbers of auditioners but also numbers of schools participating.
We only attended Chicago so I can only speak to it first hand. We enjoyed our week in Chicago. We stayed at the Palmer House and felt it was a great location. D thrived on the energy and hectic pace. Palmer House was well located and we had everything we needed close by. The rooms at the hotel were great.
But we’ve had friends who’ve gone to both NYC and LA. They seemed to enjoy those locations and all got offers. So I don’t think there is an advantage from one location to another in terms of offers being extended.
Chicago: more spread out on number of days (Sunday-Thursday)…more competitive for walk ins due to number of days…but can stay right on property or close by and don’t need a car; possibly more flight delays due to weather
LA: less crowded, easier to get walk ins, but many schools don’t go there, so check websites. You would probably want a car too. Only two days of auditions. Audition panel may be burnt out or already focused on other choices.
New York: audition panel is fresh. Have to stay off premise which means walking in inclement weather. Some auditions may be at far locations and have to fight traffic issues.
Also, I remember some schools do dance calls only at specific Unifieds and if that is an advantage for you, you may want to attend where they hold one.
My D attended only Chicago Unifieds because it gave her access to the highest number of programs she was interested in. We live in the SF Bay Area and it seemed the best way to economize overall on travel costs since she exclusively applied to schools outside of California. We arrived the weekend before and left on Wednesday afternoon, for a total of something like 12 auditions in the city and at Unifieds as well as a campus tour in the suburbs. It took a lot of communication with the various schools ahead of time to work out the schedule and I can’t speak to the other Unified experiences …just say that Chicago worked out well to meet her needs.