<p>I am looking for additional information on East Carolina University. I haven't seen much on this site. Is anyone familiar with the program. They pre-screen and then hold in person auditions for the BFA MT program but the big list indicates there is another audition at the end of freshman year. I found information on auditioning for a professional acting concentration within the BFA at the end of freshman year, but do they also require it for those accepted after the high school audition? If they do re-audition for MT, is ECU a cut school or do they take most of the kids who are accepted as freshmen?</p>
<p>I have been lurking around here for a while now and decided to sign up for this question. </p>
<p>ECU may very well be a good program but good luck with getting a lot of information about this program even if you decide to have a son or daughter audition there. The difference in the way they do things for their on campus auditions vs. Elon as an example is like night and day. I can compare the 2 audition experiences first hand as a parent from back to back days.</p>
<p>Elon on a Friday audition day is like visiting a Major League baseball club. Everything there was first class, positive, and informative. People from everywhere go to them to audition but yet they make you feel relaxed and important as a visitor. The MT students were wonderful all day as was the director of the program who spoke to the group to answer questions and to sell their school and program (even though she didn’t have to). She was very informative about what they can do for your student to train them for a career and she was absolutely hilarious while doing so. My daughter loved her day there despite it being a long one. Dance, acting, and songs were all done at separate times throughout the day. Visiting students auditioning sat through an actual acting class and after that practiced with their accompanist before their auditions began . Yes, it is very hard to get accepted there but they make it a memorable, positive experience for everyone (or at least they try hard to do this from what I saw). No verbal feedback, but there were smiles and maybe a “good job” or two was said in one of the 3 portions. This was expected and is how most other auditions we have been to were run with some variations in the way they do things through the day. Elon’s audition day was the longest we have been to, but overall a great day.</p>
<p>Next day (Saturday) we auditioned at East Carolina. If you will forgive me for continuing the baseball analogy again, it was like dropping all the way back to single A in the minor leagues. There is no comparison. There was no meeting with the group for info/questions/answers. The auditioning students are escorted by current students into a room and then perform in front of 3-4 people and an accompanist is provided. Your son or daughter better have some thick skin too as instant feedback will be given. This can be good or bad, but I am only saying for your student to be mentally prepared for about any kind of comment positive or negative from the director. I may or may not share more about this at another time. As I said, there was no information session, no opportunities for questions to be asked to faculty or answered by them because they do not come out and meet families. Frankly, I just did not have a great vibe about the place but that was just my experience and my opinion based on the way they present themselves at their on campus audition day. They may be a very fine program for all I know. They just didn’t tell us anything at all about the school or the program. It was a straight audition of 2 songs and a monologue and then listening to any instant feedback and you are gone (and told a letter will come). There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, we just had a totally different experience to compare them to from the previous day.</p>
<p>Some current ECU MT students were around and they were nice kids. The one that escorted my daughter to the audition room could see into the room and made fun of the kid that was auditioning and then said “nice job” when he/she came out. It could have been just him, but I had not heard of anything like that or had not seen anything but encouragement and helpfulness elsewhere. One student took us to an upstairs warm up room and did answer some questions along the way. One question we had was similar to yours. The students face a “jury” after their freshman year and yes, they can be cut from what I understood but we were told that as long as someone comes in and works hard, that they would have nothing to worry about. Contrast this with Elon where we were told that once in, there is no cutting once you are admitted.</p>
<p>It’s probably not fair to compare ECU to Elon but the experiences were totally different and there is no comparison between the programs and the way they run auditions. Maybe someone else that has a student there or is a student there can help you better than I can. We had the same questions as you and wondered why there was not much information out there to be found so we decided to just check it out since we were close by on the previous day. After auditioning there, we still don’t know much about their program. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks so much. I too was surprised the audition was so quick. Our experience was positive, but left me with questions. I would love to hear from a current or past student who knows about the program.</p>
<p>Moose 12 -</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your description of the audition. My D is a Junior and her guidance counselor attended ECU so suggested she take a look at it. Besides their website, I haven’t been able to get any information on the program. I know I can call the school and try to speak to the head of MT or get a current student’s name for my daughter to communicate with, but CC is usually such a good starting point.</p>
<p>As far as I am concerned, their audition process is unforgivable. I could understand it if it were at Unifieds, but when people travel to go to the school they should offer more. What a turn-off and a lesson to them to make improvements. I wish there were a student or professor from ECU who would comment in this forum!</p>