How many auditions are people signed up for? What’s normal? What’s too many?
After lurking on this site for two years, I aimed to have my D apply to/audition for roughly 18 schools, as that seemed to be “the norm” for girls. However, once she started throughly investigating schools she came up with a list of just 10. She is currently signed up for 9 auditions. Two in-state, six she will do at Chicago Unifieds and one we will fly to an on campus audition for. Her tenth school is a non-audition BFA program that she has already been accepted to. Her schools are a mix of smaller and larger programs.
As we all know, this is an extremely expensive and time consuming process. I feel the number of schools a student auditions for has to be a balance between the time available, the money available and the likelihood of being accepted into a program. We couldn’t fit more auditions into Chicago Unifieds even if we wanted to, so more would mean an additional trip at additional expense.
As for what is too many, I would say that is a very personal decision. I’ve read threads on this site that talk about getting burned out and sick going from one audition to another every weekend available. I’m not surprised when I hear of students auditioning for 20 schools, but it would be too many for my D. I would never personally tell another parent/student that their number is “too many”.
I think it’s mostly the musical theatre applicants who apply to sky high numbers of schools. My D applied to 10 BFA programs and 4 BA programs. She failed 3 prescreens, dropped one school due to audition slots filling and ended up auditioning at 6 programs. We were okay with that because she had two BA acceptances that had excellent reps for pre-professional training. I think it’s more important to have a well-curated list where your actor is a good fit for each school than to apply to a certain set number of schools.
Thank you for your feedback. I wish I understood better the liklihood of getting into programs. Non-audition choices are great options, but then you don’t know how the money will play out, too. It’s a lot to consider. Thank you both for your replies.
There’s no one answer. My S is undecided between Acting and Jazz Voice but knows he doesn’t want to go for BA or even non-auditioned, so we have a high number and will assess our options afterwards. Our application count is at 7 Music programs & 11 acting bfa’s. If you have a good safety that your kid and your finances can live with, it should reduce your number. We don’t in particular - we have some fallback plans more so than a safety. But we’re comfortable with that - your situation will determine what you’re comfortable with. We definitely tiered the schools some and made sure to have a group of less selective audition programs in the mix. We’re viewing that collective as the safety rather than a non-audition program because he’s not interested in a typical college degree and could go other routes if nothing works out. We’re figuring something will though.
What makes the schedule manageable is a few of these schools accept recorded or skype auditions and we live just outside nyc and can do most of the live ones there. Spacing them out on the calendar is crucial too. So is being organized about the various app requirements to get them scheduled.
The constraint of auditioning does change your perspective on things. We swapped one school out because they required an on-campus audition and it just couldn’t work with his schedule. Hell, it even puts a silver lining on a prescreen rejection (one less audition to schedule!)
Mom of a BFA MT 2023 student here…just chiming in…
Seems like yesterday that we went through this process. My DD did 3 auditions but started out with 8 on her list. We know some who have done 6-8. Because so many schools hold weekend auditions during the winter months of December, January and February, it really is tough to do much more than that. My DD had specific things she was looking for so that narrowed the list.
That said, everyone should take a look at West Virginia University. Their BFA Musical Theatre and BFA Acting programs are really top notch. Great faculty, supportive environment and the program’s reputation is on the rise. My daughter currently goes there and loves it. The GPA and SAT requirements are reasonable and the focus is more on the audition.