Hey guys. I found an old thread (now closed) regarding this info, but was curious if there is new data to add? The 2008 thread had numbers in the 200-500 range for kids who audition. I’m thinking the numbers have doubled or even tripled in the past 5-10 years…
Definitely changed! Some schools audition (or have auditioned) upwards of 2000-3000 kids. And with the average class with usually sub 20 spots. There are exceptions of course, BOCO, NYU, etc. who give spots to 60-70, but still the odds are crazy!
This is a more recent thread (but not comprehensive). I thought @EmsDad did some mad statistical analysis a year or so ago but could not locate the post.
Some of the schools with bigger % also have the largest #s of auditioners. My D was telling me that one of her teachers (who is also head of the audition team for NYU) said they may hit 4000 auditions this year - it seems insane
4000!?! That’s staggering. I looked for @EmsDad but couldn’t find recent info. I was trying to get an idea of % offered vs % audition for the various schools. Assuming just 1000 auditions and 30 total offers - that’s only 3%… Am I missing something?
@beachymom No, unfortunately. Acceptance rates are somewhere between 2 and 6 percent depending on the program.
I think a good gauge is that you can access the schedules for the schools that you passed the prescreen on through Get Accepted.
Texas State, for example, only appears to see 210 kids max who have passed the prescreen. Ithaca has slots for about 600 slots but based on the current data I would say about 450-500 will pass the prescreen and audition. My guess is Michigan has about 400-500 slots for kids who pass the prescreen based on the limited number of audition days.
My question would be how many kids pass the prescreen in percentage terms for each school? Clearly, it varies by school as it appears some trim a lot from the prescreen (TX St) and some are a bit more liberal.
Elon likely trims a lot as well due to limited audition days, while Pace has a ton of on-campus audition days and does Unifieds as well.
@artskids I wish I could have clicked a wow reaction rather than just like or helpful. 
@DramaMan - that’s an idea! I’ll take a look. Which programs yield the higher percentages? And you all were right about no audition program should ever be considered a safety!!
Here are two past posts regarding the size of the audition pool:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19228858#Comment_19228858
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17289152#Comment_17289152
The number that I derived was around 3,000 using some simple logic and number-crunching (“Freakonomics 101”).
I also derived estimated overall odds of acceptance at the top 60 or so MT programs at around 28 percent - of course some programs have much, much lower odds. If you are interested in reading what turned out to be a fairly long thread ruminating about how many programs you should audition for based on mathematical analysis of the available data there is this post:
When evaluating the competitiveness of various programs, its important to think about “Yield” as well as the raw numbers auditioning and class size. Some programs have close to a 100% acceptance rate of offers (a high “Yield”), while others may have yields of 25% or below. Hence, some programs may end up putting out 4 times as many offers as others in order to fill their class. Unfortunately, MT program “Yield” numbers are generally not published anywhere and, for the most part, can only be speculated based primarily on the reputation of the program.
I know BOCO admitted putting out over 200 offers to yield around 60 acceptances the year that my d auditioned. No doubt CMU has a pretty high yield.
There it is. I knew @EmsDad could put some stats behind the discussion! Thank you.
Plus I assume that any rumors of yield are inflated. It serves the schools no benefit to say it took 60 offers to get to 15 kids. Even just going back through a couple of the prior year decision threads, some kids got into 10 programs including a few that let it be thought that every kid offered is accepted.
I equate this approach to football or basketball recruiting. Even the top schools have more offers than commitments yet on decision day every coach says that they basically got all of their top priorities. That is not to suggest that top schools are throwing out offers left and right. But I am sure there are about three to four kids a year that get into Michigan, BW and Elon. If all hypothetically went to Michigan that would mean BW and Elon would need to make four more offers.
For those interested in class sizes, there is this thread from 2015:
(there may be a newer one, but this is the one that my search found)
I am a charts & graphs person, as is my MT gal. That is how our brains work. That said-I think that it is super important to apply to the schools that you love, and can see yourself at. The answer is only 100% no if you don’t try.
A while back I counted the acceptances and rejections for five year’s worth of data in the “Final Decisions” threads (from 2012-2016 as I recall). I ended up with about 500 individual data points. The acceptance rate results are listed below for programs with more than 30 data points. My conclusion is that the data is “biased high” due to the fact that people who get acceptances and are happy with their results are much more likely to have posted in the Final Decisions thread than those who did not fair well. Also, CC posters may be likely to have students that are possibly better prepared than the general populace. Hence, I think the acceptance rate numbers are about 3 times higher than actual, so I divided them by 3 to get my "estimated’ acceptance rate. The usual suspects are at the top, so I think the numbers may be at least somewhat representative:
Carnegie Mellon - 6% [63 data points] estimated rate = 2%
Michigan - 8% [52 data points] estimated rate = 3%
CCM - 9% [75 data points] estimated rate = 3%
Elon - 12% [42 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Emerson - 12% [42 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Baldwin Wallace - 13% [47 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Penn State - 14% [57 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Ithaca - 16% [58 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Texas State - 16% [56 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Otterbein - 20% [46 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Pace - 20% [64 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Syracuse - 22% [37 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Ball State - 34% [53 data points] estimated rate = 11%
Point Park - 45% [65 data points] estimated rate = 15%
Coastal Carolina - 45% [31 data points] estimated rate = 15%
NYU Tisch - 48% [44 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Rider - 48% [50 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Roosevelt - 48% [31 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Hartt - 59% [41 data points] estimated rate = 20%
Boco - 66% [44 data points] estimated rate = 22%
U Arts - 68% [34 data points] estimated rate = 23%
“My question would be how many kids pass the prescreen in percentage terms for each school?”
I wonder if the school will report number of prescreens received. It would be a useful data point!
Great information! I think they are pretty accurate 
@EmsDad is so good with numbers. I trust and believe his numbers to be pretty accurate. But don’t let the numbers scare you. I think when you hear schools throwing out numbers in the thousands, it is likely they are including all applications and prescreens received. For example, they may say they auditioned 1000 kids, but perhaps what they really did was review 1000 prescreens and auditioned 400 of those students in person. It is also possible that they are including auditions seen at large group auditions where the student auditions for a lot of schools at once, then those schools can call them back for an individual meeting if they want to see more. (I think some Texas auditions are like that, SETC auditions are like that, etc…) In those cases some of those students may or may not have even applied or expressed interest in that school. But because they audition for all schools at once they “auditioned” for that school. Like all things MT, every school words things and considers things differently So it is very difficult to compare. I think schools often inflate the numbers of students that “audition” for them to make it seem even more difficult than it already is to be accepted. Having said that, remember that even a school that takes 25% of those who apply turns down 75% of those who apply. No matter how you look at it, these programs are just darn hard to get in to. And every acceptance should be celebrated as a win, no matter the school or program.
Numbers for NYU Tisch are tricky. Its acceptance rate includes non-MT studios. The number of applicants who apply to MT, but get accepted into other studios and accept that offer, make the acceptance rates to its MT program appear much higher.
Agree with @uskoolfish above. The rate for NYU listed includes for all studios at NYU, most of which are for acting and one is the MT studio. Many acceptances listed here on the forum, when listed for Tisch, include all the studios at Tisch. The rate to get into the MT studio is much lower…has typically been more like 5%.