My daughter passed all of her prescreens except one. Interestingly, that school required longer song/monologue lengths than any other school she was interested in. Her prescreens had already been filmed in the summer and she didn’t feel like getting an accompanist and filming a longer version of her song. We discussed it and she decided to send the longest clip she had instead of the requested 2:00 max clip. Her reasoning was that, if they couldn’t see/hear enough of her in :45 to decide if they wanted to offer her an audition, it wasn’t a school she’d be interested in. Well, she didn’t pass and we’ll never know if it was because they didn’t think she was qualified for an audition or because she didn’t follow their “rules” and they saw her shorter clip as not showing enough interest.
Only they know their rationale for asking for 16 bars or 32 bars or 45 seconds or 2 minutes…but it is curious that some schools can decide if an applicant gets an audition in 16 bars and others need as much as 2 minutes. A wacky process, indeed.
@theaterwork - I agree that college auditions are nothing like professional auditions. From my own D’s (very limited) experience with professional auditions in NYC and for summer stock opportunities… she would say that college auditions were a warm and fuzzy pallooza in comparison. Heck, at least you have an actual appointment and you know the school will SEE you and let you do your full audition…(as opposed to an open call where you get up at the crack of dawn, wait in line forever, and get cut off after one line of your song - IF you get in the room)
I agree with @bisouu - mature or not, if a person can’t handle the college process, maybe this is not the career for them. God knows I couldn’t. And isn’t it better to find that out sooner rather than later?
As a former professor, just wanted to drop on to say that faculty are actually restricted by FERPA ( a federal law) from talking to parents about anything personal for kids 18 and over. And there is nothing worse from a professor’s perspective than having a parent calling a professor demanding to know why you (the professor) haven’t called the parent to let them know about their child’s failures.
Just as a quick note about the FERPA privacy laws : if your child signs the Buckley Waiver, the administration WILL be able to talk to you (the parent) as well as release grades to you.
Food for thought.
ETA: No, I am not up in my child’s business. =)) When our oldest started college, the waiver was in the stack of forms. I figured since we were paying, we had a right to contact the school for info.
I agree with @theaterwork . I have to say that my S acted professionally for years before auditioning for college–he found the college audition process entirely different from professional and much more stressful. (Cattle call and summerstock auditions are another - very stressful - animal; he didn’t mean these; he meant auditions by appointment.)
He told me it was in part because of the stakes–that in a show, if you didn’t get the part, there was another part to audition for; whereas for college, it’s win/lose, for 4 years. But also, the college process is very non-transparent. It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to know what each school is looking for. Obviously, a professional audition is unclear too–but it’s much less unclear. You know walking in roughly if you’re the type they’re looking for; you’re usually auditioning for a part; if you’re auditioning for casting folks, they will actually give you direction as to what they feel will make you even more aligned with the directors vision. Whereas for college, there just isn’t any knowing. Each college has its own vision and its own goals, and some are knowable and some are not, and most are unspoken. I’m certainly not criticizing the colleges for this - I’m just trying to say that their goals are not really comparable to professional auditions. They are trying to find a balanced maximized-marketable class, but we don’t know what that means to them, nor how we fit in that vision.
So what I’m trying to say is that that uncertainty can be extremely stressful for many young people. It’s like casting about in the darkness while everyone is saying it’s only about ‘talent,’ and that ‘talent’ is this knowable measurable agreed-on quantity; but there’s no real parameters, just “do the best you can and be yourself.”
So yeah, it can be really stressful for a young person. I do agree that the young person must have resilience if he/she is to make it in the business, but I also think that it’s important to acknowledge how crazymaking this process is. And then once they graduate they will face a whole other can of stressors, but that’s another subject…
@toowonderful you just made me laugh out loud because what you said about professional auditions is so true compared to the whole college audition process!!! LOL
@toowonderful Yep! Wish I could convince my D to turn and run run run away from a life filled with this soul-crushing stuff. She is a stronger spirit than I.
Notifications sent to Muhlenberg and Wagner that my S will not attend, hopefully that will help someone. I am scheduling our visits to his 4 top choices, se we have one more round of hotel stays and college visits, but this time is different since he is visiting the schools that actually want him, and he gets to be the decision maker this time. Tried to convince him to just visit his #1 ranked choice (BoCo) and be done with it if he liked it, but he wants to see all the programs and mull it over slowly and cautiously. That is his personality coming through clear and strong and it’s gotten him this far, so off we go to 4 schools. I imagine we will be one of the last on the decision makers thread…
I would love to hear your insights, advice, general thoughts…
Dream School: Academically accepted, MT denied. Not-So-Dream Scool: MT accepted
Scenario 1 - attend Dream School as undecided, reapply and audition again next year as a freshman MT (IF she even could be accepted into MT next year!)
Scenario 2 - attend Not-So-Dream school. (could end up becoming Dream School!)
I know ultimately it is D’s own decision and either scenario is a Win. I am just looking to hear insights or thoughts - perhaps we overlooked or haven’t thought of something. I know it is up to her to decide if MT is truly the most important; is it her passion, really what she wants and can she see herself at this ‘other’ school. I am pretty sure her answer is yes. I am just wondering if there are benefits to scenario 1.
I probably will hear what I already know - maybe I am looking for validation! Bring it on…please.
I know colleges treat freshman like adults…
every time I comment on college auditions not being the same as professional ones , someone always seems to think I’m holding my kids hand walking around college tours…im not. I’m not trying to baby her nor do I . This doesn’t have anything to do with that, I just think that the processes are not the same.
As to whether “your kid isn’t cut out for this life if they can’t handle college mt auditions” … how does one determine that? Should I measure whether she cried for one day or two after a top school rejected her? One day being acceptable and two not being acceptable? For the record she didn’t do either of those things but really… how does one look at a very young , not 18 till August female & determine what her degree of "mental mettle " is? What is the sliding scale? What magic formula is going to make us all know if our kids “can take it”? Right … there isn’t one. Because your kid could be a bundle of absolute mess from this mt college crap & end up bring the most resilient person after 4 yrs. but they could also be doing great with college audition rejections and fold like a deck of cards at 22 when doing this for real.
College auditions are a weird time because our kids are still really kids…they rely on us to some extent for support and advice (and transportation and hotels). And yet, the schools are treating them, for the most part, like adults and at least semi-professionals. I think you will mostly find that this is the last audition that you play an important role, as a parent, and that from here on, your kids will take more and more responsibility for themselves and their results and (this is a hard adjustment) will not want to tell you about every little up and down. But right now, they’re 17 or 18, they’re sleeping in a room in your house, you know their friends, you see all their shows…and you can’t help but treat them like the child they’ve always been up to now (and they probably don’t mind this so much, at least intermittently).
Where it really got hard, at least for me, was with school auditions, which, in my view, are absolutely THE most stressful auditions there are. (It’s like asking dad which kid he likes the best and it’s not always you.) But even so, it’s a weaning process. By the end, I only heard about callbacks and casting, nothing about what happened in the room. So painful as it all is, it’s sort of a continuum, and by the end, they’re ready for the cold, cruel world. Isn’t that what college is for?
@theaterwork you are not wrong. There is no magic formula. Only your kids will figure out whether they can take it or not. I know you know this but it’s worth saying. No college or audition determines if your child is acceptable or not. You might want to book the job… sometimes you and sometimes you don’t and you move on! I think it’s great parents support their kids in this process. It sure beats having them do it on their own
@Jkellynh17 …and then, once they graduate and enter the professional world, ,they don’t even tell ya if that they went to an audition. My kid told me early on, once in her career, that auditioning was just part of the job and she wasn’t gonna mention them, unless she got the part.
@theaterwork it is so hard for US - the parents - to know these things. I find myself asking D2 if she’s sure this is what she wants - rejection lays her pretty low - and that scares me. It is hard for anyone - especially a teen/young 20 y/o - not to take rejection personally. We have a family friend who, years ago, graduated with a theatre degree (in her words, before even getting into a BFA was uber-competitive), worked for a number of years in regional theater, but eventually moved to the production side because she took rejection and “no” too personally. She felt it was impacted her psychologically and time and experience did not make it any easier for her. On the other hand, many of her colleagues adjusted and found they could handle rejection without personalizing it. I don’t know how we will know that about our kids now; only time will tell.
I agree that the monologue times should be standardized. It’s ridiculous to me that you need three or four cuts of the same monologue.
Someone on this thread suggested just doing the shortest cut for all the schools. I had asked that question in the Acting section - if a school asks for monologues of two minutes, are you allowed to do a one-minute monologue? It would certainly make life easier! But people responded with the opinion that no, you could do a minute and a half in that case, but one minute was too short.
I’d love to hear an admissions person weight in on that to know for sure.
Yes @artskids exactly! You don’t know how your kid is going to handle things when they’re older either. I just cannot judge my D right now as to whether “she has what it takes” by what she exhibits now as a 17 yr old hormonaly driven kid ! I get so tired of people saying how kids are babies now and “back when we were 18 we were working 10 jobs and practically on our own”
Um our kids are growing up in a different time and world. They are the most technologically advanced group but yet have few social skills ( unless you count posting on twitter and Snapchat 20 times a day) and sometimes not tons of motivation and we/ society has made them this way. Sorry but that’s just my opinion & a whole other topic.
And @Jkellynh17 you are right also in that it is a weaning process. Right now my D is depending on me like crazy. She does not have a job like a
Lot of her friends because of being in MT at her school and also because of auditions, of course we are the ones taking our kid to the audition, so yes transportation and giving advice as to college finances and what is affordable and what isn’t. Kids do not get taught any of this in school well not much if any. My D just recently learned about loans and interest and length of term blah blah. So to say they are an adult is just not accurate. Now do the college mt auditions give you good practice in rejection & in auditioning in general and a taste of an mt life? Yes of course
