Is the "Glee Factor" still a factor?

<p>D auditioned for 10 (I think) programs and applied for 14 schools- which those outside the “MT world” sounded crazy high. From posts this year it sounded medium to me- I felt like there were people with WAY more than 10 auditioned programs. Reading back old threads I saw what felt like "lots’ with 4/5/6 schools. You are right - we need a genuine number crunch- not my forte…(but then I never took AP Calc…)</p>

<p>@toowonderful, I’m not so sure that applying to 14 schools is unheard of now even outside the MT world. My son who is the farthest thing from a MT applied to 11. Eleven, fourteen, potato, p O ta tO. If you are applying to a really competitive list of schools no matter what the major, there is a need to cast a wider net.</p>

<p>The question is though, how wide is too wide? I guess it depends on your pain threshold. I can’t imagine filling out 20+ applications. (By the way in that ‘what was the hardest part’ thread… B, filling out the applications.) If you ask me if the goal is to get into a BFA somewhere/anywhere, there is an easier way to do it. Pick schools that are less competitive (they do still exist) and apply to them and then throw in a non-auditioned BFA or one in an academic match where you audition for the BFA after you’re already at the school. It’s a better recipe to me than 20+ applications. How does one even begin to answer the inevitable question of “why this school” and mean it? Not criticizing anyone that was able to suck it up and do the 20+ if they felt it made sense. You have my admiration. That’s a ton of work.</p>

<p>I think alot of people are putting the top 5 or 10 on their list regardless of “fit” or they are not sure yet exactly what they are looking for. Then if you realistically round out your list that’s how people end up with 15 schools. </p>

<p>Here are the average number of auditions per student from the Final Decisions: Background Threads over the past 3 years. Non-audition and acting programs were not counted:</p>

<p>2012 Data points: 31 Average No. of Auditions = 8.8
2013 Data points: 19 Average No. of Auditions = 9.5
2014 Data points: 24 Average No. of Auditions = 11.2</p>

<p>The data is sparse but an increasing trend in the number of auditions seems to be clear.</p>

<p>I didn’t go back and count them, but if you throw in non-audition programs, VP and acting auditions, the average number of total applications probably climbs towards 13-14 by 2014.</p>

<p>Combining the data for all three years, the average number of auditions for the top 42 schools (90 percent of auditions were done for 42 schools) was 9 per student. Many students do 1-2 auditions outside the top 42 schools, but this only accounts for about 10 percent of the auditions.</p>

<p>I would postulate that CCers probably audition more than other students, on average (knowledge seems to breed panic in the college admission world…).</p>

<p>Thanks for doing the math @EmsDad :-bd So it seems like the thought that kids have increased their # of schools in the past couple years holds water- what about if we could go back 5 or 10 years? While I am sure the “Glee Factor” is still there, isn’t part of the process the fact that kids are better educated about odds and what it takes (from CC, from books like “I Got In” and many other sources) and doing things differently.</p>

<p>BTW- when I was heading to college I applied to 5 schools. One “reach”, Two “fits”, a “safety”, and “that crazy music thing with no basis in reality” (CCM) It was a different world. </p>

<p>We admittedly had a big list… Which was a direct result of the fear generated by my years on CC… Supported by her local voice teacher, who had seen kids (girls especially) cast too small a net in the past. In retrospect, we could have cast a smaller net and still been fine. I know when starting out, D felt she could attend any school on her list and be happy, but the audition process and visits made her realize what she wanted from a program, which is what made the final decision so difficult for her. </p>

<p>It would be interesting to see the avg auditions by gender. You up for that @EmsDad‌ ?</p>

<p>There are many more programs, too. Sure the top ten is basically still the top ten but way back when there was not the bottom 75. There are new programs every year. Supply meets demand, I guess… I do think Emsdad is very right in guessing that people on CC are not typical. Without thinking much about it I can easily recall a dozen or so students over the last few years who went to regional or Unified auditions alone or in a small group and auditioned for a couple of schools just to see what happened with very little parental involvement. Boys did okay. Girls less so.</p>

<p>@kategrizz I actually took a look at the data from this year because I was curious to see if “coached or not coached” made a difference in the numbers. What I was trying to figure out is if students who had a professional college audition coach (like MTCA, MAD etc.) tended to do more auditions or not. Anyway it was inconclusive but I do have a gender breakdown for this year. @EmsDad may have better numbers and a better methodology. For example, I’m not sure if he counts a prescreen that isn’t passed as an audition or not. And would Muhulenberg’s audition which is really just for scholarships be an audition, or not. I said no on the prescreens because it may have meant there was no application and yes on Muhlenberg. I also counted any auditioned BA figuring an audition is an audition. Anyway, it appears to me (rounding up) that females averaged 12 auditions and males 11 this year. This was from a sample of 17 females and 10 males which was the data that I found on this year’s thread. If you normalize it a little bit and take off the top and bottom outliers in each group (In both genders there was one who did way more auditions or way less than everyone else which skews the data a bit because the sample size is so small ) it averages closer to 11 for females and 10 for males. </p>

<p>Got my nerd on for the day. </p>

<p>@actingmt - I know kids who have been in that position too. One of D’s dear friends came with us to Chicago Unifiieds, she goes to the PA school, but parents are unsupportive beyond that (which begs a different question- you “let” your kid do PA HS and then don’t think they will want to major in the arts? OK…) Anyway, her only chance to audition for a variety of schools was there… and b/c she didn’t have support, or a plan, she did a variety of walk ins. No BFA offers</p>

<p>I’ll chime in on the issue as to whether applicants to MT programs are applying to more schools than in the past . I don’t have hard and fast data and just an overall “gut” about it all…from reading CC for `12 years and also advising applicants to college theater programs for the past 11 years as a college counselor. I think people “in the know” about how competitive BFA admissions (such as those on CC!) are applying to a larger number of schools that in the past, but just a little more on average (not counting the outliers who apply to 20+ schools!). </p>

<p>When my D applied for BFA in MT programs (HS class of '05), she applied/auditioned for 8. I’m embarrassed to admit that she did not have any non-audition safety schools (though I STRONGLY advise applicants to have two of those), and only wanted a BFA degree program (thankfully, she had a very good outcome with choices). Even my D who applied to college one year before the MT D did, and was applying to some of the most highly selective colleges, applied to a total of 8 schools (but her list was more balanced in terms of reach, match, safety) whereas most BFA in MT programs have “reach” odds. </p>

<p>In my work advising BFA applicants (though I truly think this is VERY individualized and so there is no one size fits all approach even to THIS issue)…I generally suggest a total list of between 8 to 14 schools, and most students would fall in the 10 to 12 schools category. In very few cases, do I think a student needs more than 12 total schools. One reason they might apply to as many as 14 might be because they are undecided as to the BFA or BA path and have a balanced list of about 7 schools in each of those two categories, or if they are undecided between MT and VP, for instance. But if they are PRIMARILY desiring a BFA in MT (or Acting) program, then approx. 8 to 10 audition schools should be enough and add on two non-audition safety schools (that are also academic safeties). If you apply to 10 BFA in MT programs and don’t get into any, then it is my belief that either you don’t quite have the requisite skill set yet to be admitted or else your list is not well balanced or appropriate to YOU realistically. I see far too many people create a college list of simply “schools that offer MT that I like” without regard to building a balanced list of artistic odds and academic odds and geared toward one’s realistic ballpark. The right list is important and it is very individual and should not be the same from kid to kid. I think my kid had the right list for her and it yielded results. Nobody should be totally shut out of a college with nowhere to go. The list must be very carefully built. </p>

<p>But GENERALLY speaking, in today’s BFA climate, I still believe that a list of colleges (including
the safeties) could range from 8 to 14 (or from 8 to 12 auditioned based programs). It is very rare that anyone truly needs more than 14 total schools or more than 12 audition schools. About ten years ago, I may have said 8 to 10 audition schools would be the ballpark for most candidates and now I might suggest 8 to 12 for most, which is not that large of an increase but it is a bit of one. That’s my take. </p>

<p>Regarding the methodology used to create the results above, I just cut-and-pasted directly from the “Applied to” lists into Excel from the “Final Decisions: Background” threads, used Search-and-Replace to do a little clean-up, used Text-to-Columns with commas as a delimiter, deleted the non-audition/VP/Acting programs, and then did a counta() on the resulting columns. I averaged the results. In a few cases I had to do some editing to create a list from the data presented in the posts.</p>

<p>Looking at the individual school results that I described in the Class Size thread, the data follows an exponential distribution - there is a rapid fall-off from the most popular and a long, almost flat, “tail” in the data (just like the count of views in the Musical Theatre Schools list). Using the data from the Final Decisions Threads, the total number of auditions for the 12 most popular programs over the past 3 years exceeds the number of all the rest combined (about 70 other schools). Very interesting…</p>

<p>@EmsDad - That IS interesting? Out of curiosity- What were the 12 most popular programs? My eye tends to go to the ones where my D was auditioning, and I certainly assume the “big guns” of CMU, CCM, UMich, Ithaca, NYU etc- but would be interested in more statistics. </p>

<p>@soozievt, your analysis is spot on in my opinion and is exactly where we have netted-out in terms of numbers. 8-10 audition and 2 non-audition. Both of D’s safety schools offer a BFA in Theater or MT, one without an audition at all and one with an audition-in at end of sophomore year. Some very talented and more important working local actors have come out of the non-audition school and we are impressed super impressed with all of them so it would be ok to start there and maybe to stay. The audition safety is in a fantastic city for theater and has a well-connected faculty and an excellent film department that offers lots of additional training opportunities to work your craft as an actor. D feels she could make either one work, isn’t her first choice but very open to it. Her audition list won’t grow much from this because after reading a ton of CC and doing additional research there are not more than 8 audition schools that she really thinks would be right for her. We will have visited the top three before she auditions at Unifieds and hopefully one more on the list. We visited the in-state BFA MT which seems to be a very decent program but D just can’t spend the next four years in a tiny town next to nothing. She visited, toured, saw a show which was very good with some moments of greatness but she just couldn’t see it. So that is off the list and there isn’t anything to replace it so the list gets smaller.</p>

<p>@emsdad. I defer to you as always on this sort of stuff. I didn’t add up the “applied to”, I instead counted the schools that people said they actually auditioned at because I found some examples of applying to but then not bothering to audition at. In any case, I don’t think it changes anything materially. I pretty much did what you did once I got it over to Excel. </p>

<p>To be honest, I think “applied to” is probably a better count anyway. It implies intention. Stuff happens along the way that might change that list for example, early acceptances coming through that renders a school farther down the list less relevant so you don’t actually do the audition. However, if you really want to get underneath the mindset, applied to is probably the more relevant number whether an actual audition takes place or not. I guess I feel slightly different though when it comes to prescreens that are not passed. Since that precedes an actual application my feeling is that it is the equivalent of having a piece of pre-application data (like knowing admitted student SATs or GPA averages) that gives you the hint that you may not be a match for what the school is looking to admit that year and then just choosing not to apply.</p>

<p>evilqueen…sounds like your daughter has put a lot of thought into creating an appropriate list!</p>

<p>emsdad…what were the 12 most popular programs to audition at? By “popular,” I think you mean the ones listed on THIS FORUM as having been applied/auditioned the most often, right?</p>

<p>As requested, here is the data that I tabulated from the “Final Decisions: Background” threads for the last 3 years. I included all the data because a list of the “top 12” or whatever would not accurately characterize the information (see explanation below).</p>

<p>Note the following cavaets:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>It is highly likely that I made a few mistakes (I didn’t bother to check to see if every program I guessed was an audition program is, in fact, an audition program if it only had 1 or 2 auditions listed - it simply didn’t matter enough to bother, given my purposes for collecting the data and the inherent lack of accuracy likely in the small sample size).</p></li>
<li><p>The data sample is very likely to be less than 1% of the audition pool size.</p></li>
<li><p>The data is not a random sample (its from CCers and contains any bias inherent in CC).</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Hence, the data cannot be called a representative sample and may not accurately characterize the audition pool, in fact, I am sure that it does not accurately characterize the audition pool. However, it served my purpose to see what a typical data distribution probably would look like and I think it indicates some general characteristics of the audition field (such as, there is likely to be a significant concentration of audition interest in a relatively small number of programs). Many of the usual suspects are at or near the top, and some of the newer programs with significant mindshare (at least here on CC) are near the top. If you multiply a number for the size of the audition pool somewhere around 3,000 by the percentage shown for each program, you get numbers that, for the most part, seem to be in the ballpark for the quoted number of auditions for many of the programs.</p>

<p>Differences in audition counts of +/- 4 (or perhaps more) are probably not statistically significant, so the order as shown could easily vary by differences of that amount. I am sure the list would reorder to some or a large extent if a statistical valid data sample were available. If you don’t think the order is accurate, you are most likely correct. I won’t defend the explicit accuracy or utility of this list.</p>

<p>I would guess that data collected in this manner probably underestimates regional audition pools, perhaps to a significant amount.</p>

<p>Of course, the competitiveness of the audition pool at each program varies, you shouldn’t base decisions on this information, the most popular program doesn’t mean it is the “best,” numbers don’t tell the whole story, and so on and so forth.</p>

<p>The 50% break point is actually between schools 13 and 14.</p>

<p>The list shows: </p>

<p>[School] [audition count] [% of total audition count]</p>

<p>CCM 39 54.17%
Carnegie Mellon 37 51.39%
Point Park 35 48.61%
Ithaca 30 41.67%
Pace 29 40.28%
Michigan 27 37.50%
Texas State 27 37.50%
Baldwin Wallace 26 36.11%
Penn State 25 34.72%
Boston Conservatory 24 33.33%
Rider 24 33.33%
Otterbein 23 31.94%
Ball State 20 27.78%
Elon 20 27.78%
Hartt 18 25.00%
Coastal Carolina 17 23.61%
NYU 17 23.61%
Syracuse 17 23.61%
Emerson 16 22.22%
Montclair 15 20.83%
U Arts 15 20.83%
Oklahoma City 12 16.67%
Northern Colorado 11 15.28%
Oklahoma 11 15.28%
Roosevelt CCPA 11 15.28%
Shenandoah 10 13.89%
Webster 10 13.89%
Florida State 9 12.50%
Indiana 9 12.50%
Ohio Northern 9 12.50%
Wagner 9 12.50%
Marymount Manhattan 8 11.11%
TCU 8 11.11%
Wright State 7 9.72%
Miami 6 8.33%
James Madison 5 6.94%
Utah 5 6.94%
Western Michigan 5 6.94%
UCF 5 6.94%
Alabama 4 5.56%
Millikin 4 5.56%
Viterbo 4 5.56%
LIU Post 3 4.17%
RCS 3 4.17%
UCLA 3 4.17%
Wisconsin Stevens Point 3 4.17%</p>

<p>2 each
American, Belmont, Catholic, Central Michigan, Illinois Wesleyan, Memphis, Molloy/CAP 21, NYU-Steinhardt, Plymouth State, South Dakota, UT Austin, Western Carolina, AMDA</p>

<p>1 each
Arizona, Buffalo, Catawba College, Christopher Newport Univ, Colorado, Colorado Mesa, Evansville, Missouri State, Oakland, Rhode Island, Sante Fe, Seton Hill, Southern Illinois, Southern Maine, Tampa, Temple, Tulane, Urdang Academy, USC, Western Connecticut State, Western Kentucky, Wichita State</p>

<p>Emsdad…thanks. You did a lot of work to come up with that and I think anyone who reads it should take the caveats in mind that you so well outlined. And again, it is from a small sample of applicants and CCers tend to be the more informed sort as well. </p>

<p>One thing about popularity in terms of where people are applying, is that not all of those programs at the top of this list you put in the post are necessarily the most competitive to get into. For example (and I always worry about hurting someone’s feelings in such examples), Point Park has come up here as a school where many of the applicants here applied. However, that doesn’t mean it is one of the most competitive programs. .In fact, in my work with some quite talented and competitive applicants, when building a balanced list of “artistic odds” for their college list (and you can’t go by acceptance rates alone with that for BFA programs since they all pretty much have low acceptance rates), many have put Point Park on their list as “easier” (but NOT easy!) odds to balance out their more artistically competitive schools on their list (Ie., UMich, CCM, CMU, etc.). That would make Point Park rise in popularity to have on some of these kids’ college lists. I would say that explains a bit why Rider comes out high on the list too. Even the tippy top talented kids cannot count on getting into the most competitive programs and have to have other schools on their list and so there are programs that might have “popularity” in terms of numbers applying where kids add the school to their list to balance out the most artistically competitive programs on their list. </p>

<p>I also think there is a “CC factor” at play on this list. That is (I really hope this doesn’t offend anyone as I think these are fabulous programs that I recommend to students ALL the time)…some schools like Otterbein and Coastal Carolina have a “presence” on this forum…reps from the program participate here and so CCers learn of these programs a lot on this forum. I would contrast that to when my D applied to BFA programs and has a slew of friends around the country who also applied (majority got into so called top programs that are quite well known)…neither she nor any of her friends applied to these schools, for example. Here on CC, they have grown in popularity and part of that is their presence on this forum (which is a positive thing, of course!). </p>

<p>Thanks Emsdad, for again adding to the “science” behind the “whys” and “wherefores” of this “gamble” in our kids’ lives. Terrific information to add to the web searches, hearsay, school propaganda, first- and second- (fifth-??)hand experience, gossip, media hype, teacher/coach advice, books, news/magazine articles, blogs, financial spreadsheet probabilities, late-night panics and gut feelings. What are the “statistics” for accurately pinning the tail on the donkey? Surely they are “mathematically” better. But then w/o out this treasure trove on information on CC, we would miss out on all the “fun” of plotting and planning the strategies and logistics of our kids’ MT campaigns. Maybe we should really be reading up on successful historical war campaigns. Isn’t there something in there about sneaking in and attacking from behind? Giant wooden horses? Digging tunnels? This is DEFINITELY Glee’s fault.</p>

<p>I think the comfort in gathering every scrap of information/analysis is that then parents feel we CAN plot, and sneak, and build a horse…because we have more to plan with! I certainly am an uber-planner, lists and charts are a few of my favorite things (though I have always wanted a white dress with a blue satin sash) </p>