Can someone explain what is the benefit of early action? Do they take lower grades? Also, how is it possible to do early action in an audition situation? What schools have early action for bfa programs?
In general, early action could be helpful because the pool is smaller than the regular admission pool. Another benefit is to get everything over with earlier (or at least to get a solid start earlier). However, a student could just be rolled into the regular admit pool anyway. And then rejected or accepted from that pool. So, for example Emerson has an early action with auditions in November. You could do that because you’re really interested and if you get the admit, you could be done. Or you could do it as a warmup to the January/February auditions.
Agree with @lovetoact. BW and CCM also hold early auditions (Nov-Dec) and will make decisions before January (yes, no, hold) for those auditionees. Even if decisions from the early rounds are “no” or “hold,” getting feedback early in the season can inform changes to your audition materials or presentation.
My daughter did early action for some of her non audition safeties. Hofstra was one that was able to give an answer and academic merit scholarship info before Christmas.
What’s the difference between “early action” and “rolling admissions” (if you audition early at a rolling admission school)?
@actorparent. Rolling admission. You know fairly soon after you submit your application if you are admitted academically. However in most cases you won’t know if you are admitted artistically till you audition. It really depends on the college
But aren’t there rolling admission MT programs where you DO hear back artistically soon after the audition? In previous years, people have posted that when they auditioned at Marymount Manhattan, UArts, Montclair, and some others, they heard back within 8 weeks of the audition.
And if so, is there any difference between that and early admission? Just wondering if there’s any difference, or if it’s pretty much the same thing (audition early, get result early).
Early action has a deadline for application and a date that the school expects to notify the applicants, just like the regular application process but earlier in the year (a caveat is that even in regular admission, schools like Syracuse often send their acceptances out in waves, not on one specific date, but they themselves know when those waves are happening–it’s not a random ongoing acceptance process). Rolling admission (for general liberal arts colleges) means that you apply when you want to apply and they’ll let applicants know on an ongoing basis if they’ve been accepted. If an audition is a part of the process in a rolling admit school, you’d obviously have to wait until the audition is over to hear from them.
U Arts notified within about 3-4 weeks of complete application last year - including audition. So if you audition early there you may find out early. But the entire application must be complete.
And sometimes you will hear early if you are rejected but won’t hear for weeks/months whether you were accepted because they are building a class and they want to see who else comes through the door.