Like many before me, I’ve been scouring CC over the course of this chaotic process, and I’ve decided it’s finally time to post an audition experience of my own. Yesterday, I auditioned for Juilliard.
My audition took place in San Francisco. I arrived nearly an hour and a half early, but it didn’t take long for the waiting room to start filling up. There were about 50 people altogether, a few of which were auditioning for the MFA program. I was personally auditioning for the BFA. First, we were given a brief introduction about the program. I was blown away by the kindness and welcoming atmosphere set by the faculty. They did a great job of diminishing the intimidating stigma that inevitably comes with auditioning for Juilliard. This was followed by a vocal warmup with the entire group. We practiced diaphragmatic breathing and basic diction exercises (such as tongue twisters). The vocal warmup was very high energy, and definitely set the tone for the rest of the day.
We were then separated into two main groups: Group One and Group Two. These groups established which panel (two panels with two faculty members each) you’d be auditioning for. Within these two groups, we were again separated into two smaller sub-groups: Group A and Group B. They auditioned everybody in Group A and posted their callbacks before moving on to anybody in Group B. They did this out of respect for everybody’s time (people who audition at the very beginning of the day know whether or not they got a callback early, so are able to leave early). I was put into Group B. Now comes the scary part…
The callback sheet goes up for Group A, and one person is called back. ONE. That intimidation started to creep back: “Wow, this really is Juilliard.” I was able to calm myself, however, and I got myself back into a focused mindset. The acting audition went really well. I felt good about my two pieces, and one of my auditors even laughed a few times during my classical monologue! They did not provide any feedback, but did ask me to sing 16 bars of a song. I do not consider myself a singer by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt good enough about my rendition of “In My Life” by the Beatles.
After everybody in Group B had finished, all we could do was wait for the moment of truth. The callbacks were posted and… one. Just like Group A, only one person was called back from Group B. That person was not me.
Oh well… I felt strong about my pieces, and there are so many great acting schools out there. We all know that Juilliard is a Hail Mary anyway. Regardless, I was very surprised to see only 2/50 called back. One aspect to this process that I did not consider prior to Juilliard is the timing of your audition. My Juilliard audition was their very last day of auditions. I am not saying that I would have gotten a callback had I auditioned on an earlier day, but perhaps they were more limited in the number of callbacks they were still able to offer. It’s my way of icing the wounds, and maybe it’ll might help future College Confidential users plan accordingly.
Best of luck to you all!
great things are ahead for you and you may just be one of those Super Stars who will speak about your Juilliard audition on a talk show because you made it without them BAL <3.