How many/what percentage of applicants pass prescreens for Vocal Performance undergrad?

Any school you know of would be very helpful information. Is it highly selective? Or just a general ‘weeding out’ process?

It is dependent upon the school and the year but the best school are highly selective.

I was hoping @“Mezzo’sMama” would chime in! Honestly, even though we went through the process with my D last year, I really have no idea how to answer this. By looking at how many live audition dates and times are available at each of the schools you are looking at you can get a rough idea of how many singers they are seeing in person; but we would need an industry insider to let us know how many prescreen applications a program is likely to get. There is an excellent recent thread on the MT forum related to this. I think the pool of people who post here on CC regarding VP is so small, and those who do post probably skew very positively in terms of results, any analysis of those numbers wouldn’t be very helpful.

I am not a fan of the prescreen process for young singers since at those ages, many of them really don’t come across all that well on a recording. The exception might be high lyric sopranos- those high notes come in earlier in that fach and they can be more impressive at a younger age. Mezzos and those with voices that will be more dramatic don’t mature as quickly and it’s more a case of “what could be” when it comes to those.

Even an “insider” couldn’t give an accurate percentage as to the percentages who pass thru to audition day because of all of the variables involved. As I said, some programs are better/lesser than others and the same goes for the faculty. In any given year, the pool of applicants may be stronger or weaker so that plays a big part. You don’t know who listens to the prescreens either, and they may not be voice faculty. The thing to do is to pick the programs that appeal to you and apply- see what comes of it.

Best of luck to all!

My 2 cents:

It’s a very hard question to answer. But if you are just trying to gauge what “passing” means I can only say that in my opinion (which could be wrong) you will only pass a pre-screen if you meet the basic requirements/expectations for the music school. Meaning they believe you could be successful in their program. If you are not up to snuff you will most likely not pass. So if you do pass, you will be seriously considered by the school.

However, how difficult it is to pass at each school will depend on the selectivity and needs of each program as well as the talent of other candidates. So, you could be good enough to pass but if there are too many good enough candidates…you could be dropped. For example, they will only need to hear so many sopranos…and your type of soprano may have a lot of candidates one year so you could be dropped and not pass the pre-screen due to competition. Whereas a baritone who is good enough may not get cut bc there are only a few baritones to consider.

So it is best to just wait through the process and see what happens - a most frustrating answer but that’s the best anyone can say.

I second @“Mezzo’sMama” in her assessment that recordings are not at all a good way of evaluating young singers. Obviously, most higher end programs know this, and therefore I THINK most good programs use the prescreen videos for whittling down the live auditions to a manageable number of applicants who meet their basic qualifications (as @bridgenail said). I imagine it’s a tricky business for a couple of reasons; 1) Teachers don’t want to waste an applicant’s time or money if they are sure you are somehow not right for their program, and 2) Good schools could spend A LOT of time every year hearing live auditions (in most places, the entire primary Vocal Faculty attends every audition, in addition to perhaps Opera Directors and Choir Conductors), and they need to balance the time and resources of their faculty. Often, live auditioners also want trial lessons, etc., so in all, there is a lot of time and energy dedicated to this every year. Experienced faculty get really good at listening for potential!

Sometimes I feel like we might as well be reading auguries as asking this question! Can you even pass with a low budget, diy video? What if the kid has potential, but also had the beginnings of a cold on the one day the teacher and accompanist were both available? Ai yai yai.

Yes you can pass pre-screens with a DIY video, but make certain the recording is done in a space the complements your singer’s voice and be careful with camera/mic position, what the singer is wearing. In our limited experience it seems that the people doing the screening know what they are looking for and absent a truly horrific quality video are able to sort through not perfect acoustics. For undergrad- a kid can either hit their pitches or they cannot, their voice has a quality that merits development or it doesn’t. Yes the top conservatories are very picky and you want the best effort possible sent, but I still believe that they can hear the difference between a good singer with a not top notch video and a not as good singer with an perfectly recorded video. They make their final decisions based on in person auditions anyhow. Depending on how severe the cold is steam, sipping warm water with lemon, tea, honey and a good warmup does wonders.

light lyric coloratura mom here - I think she was very hard to tape. It took several tries, in different locations. Her voice teacher from Lyric Opera said the recordings didn’t properly represent the “overtones” of her voice. In too small a room, she kept blowing out the mike as well. Just parents here, not sound engineers! I’m not worried about her in person auditions, but he prescreen tape was a nightmare