^^Yes, the distinction I was attempting to make is that ED and RD were the options back in the olden days.
@alwaysamom I think you are so right. Less applicants and kids were not casting such a wide net so not really the need to attend Unifieds “back in the day”. But that makes it at least 15 years old.
Anyone know how many students attend the Chicago site? Maybe someone has already posted about that. It must be many hundreds, don’t you think?
@Notmath1 - I think the numbering attending Unifieds in Chicago is easily more than 500 and may push 1,000. I think I could easily count 100 kids per floor mid-day in the Palmer House on three or more floors where there were audition rooms. That’s 300 right there and, of course, that would in no way represent all the students attending. Hence, by my extremely crude estimation, the number is some multiple of 300, say 2-3 (based on an estimate that only about 1/3 to 1/2 of the students are out and about in the hallways at any given moment in time), which gets you to a range of at least 600-900.
I think that the number of applicants to each school has increased at some and maintained a similar number at others. For at least the past ten years, Tisch has had ~2000 applicants to the drama program. That number hasn’t changed by much. Other schools have seen an increase but I don’t have hard numbers, and of course, yet other schools have arrived on peoples’ radar in recent years, either with new programs or just promoting their programs more actively.
@alwaysamom - younger friend of D who auditioned for Tisch last year told us info session said they had over 3k to audition, and had to increase the number of days slots to accommodate. Second hand info- but blew my mind
@toowonderful The 2000, or slightly over 2000, number was given to me directly by Chris Andersson. In any case, it’s a large number and has been for many years. Keeping in mind that that number is for the entire program and not solely MT.
I was a high school theater kid back in the 80’s, and we heard way back then about how a group of colleges got together in the same city every year to hold auditions. I remember specifically that NC School of the Arts and Boston University participated, and I think Yale was on the list at that time. There were others, too, but I can’t remember them.
@heliobike That sounds like the start of the “consortium of conservatory theater traning programs.” BU and UNCSA are still part of it, as is CMU and SUNY Purchase. There are only 4 or 5 schools in it, but they hold auditions in the same building. They are not officially a part of unifieds but generally try to hold auditions around the same time/place as unifieds. (last year the NYC dates didn’t coincide but they usually do).
My daughter did her 1st round of auditions in 2008, and had no pre-screens then. She entered a program that year but was not happy there and left it. She ended up re-auditioning in 2010, and found that in those 2 years, admissions to programs had become more competitive, and that it had become more difficult to schedule auditions at Unifieds, due to the increased number of applicants. (She only auditioned at Unifieds both times). The series Glee started up in between, and musical theater became immensely more popular over the next few years. While she still had no pre-screens in 2010, I remember there were a few schools that had started them, and they became increasingly common after that. I believe Penn State started using them while she was finishing up her program there, or maybe the year she graduated. I am so glad she got through the whole thing when she did, as it seems to have exploded since then!!!