<p>I was wondering if there is a difference at all. Does anyone think an on campus audition is worth the trip to the campus or just do all at the Unifieds/Consortium/ Regional auditions. I am thinking of having DS do a few on campus just so he can get a feel for the school and students and also see some of their productions. But, I think it would be close to impossible to do them all that way, especially with a drama kid who will have a fall and winter production. He has a few he has to do in person..i.e. Elon and Muhlenberg.</p>
<p>My D preferred Unifieds to on campus for several reasons. She liked the energy at Unifieds. She really didn’t want to fall in love with a campus when we went there. We only did the campus ones that were required to be done on campus and her top choice one since it was not too far away. She was able to get a feel for the faculty while at Unifieds, also some of the schools did information sessions which also gave you a feel for things.</p>
<p>I think that it’s always better to do an on-campus audition if it’s possible. Clearly, not everyone is able to do so because of financial or time constraints but having the opportunity to see a campus, do a tour, speak with faculty and current students, attend a class or two, see a production, view housing options, eat in the dining hall, etc. is always going to be an advantage. As for the audition itself, at some schools you may have the ability to spend more time with the auditors than at a regional audition or at Unifieds. That may vary school to school, too.</p>
<p>As for how it affects admissions chances, I think it’s been made pretty clear here on CC by several school reps that there is no substantive difference between the two options.</p>
<p>I agree with broadway95. I think doing as many auditions as you can at Unifieds is a better option, then touring your accepted school afterwards or better yet do the tours in the spring of one’s Junior year instead. I think for auditions, the student is so focused on the audition that it is hard to relax and really experience the tour and the program. The campus tours she really enjoyed were the ones that were not during auditions. Just a perspective.</p>
<p>My daughter did all on-campus auditions with the exception of U Miami which she still had to fly to go see in LA. In fact, every audition involved a flight and then sometimes a drive.</p>
<p>If you have to mostly fly everywhere, and especially if you are several time zones away from where most of the schools are, I would absolutely do Unifieds instead if you could unless there are some nearby that you can drive to. The way the schedules work out if you are trying to be as efficient with the flights and hotels as possible to save money, there is almost no time for campus tours etc. Also during the on campus auditions, the theatre departments are busy with the auditions. It is not an ideal time to get to spend a lot of time with the faculty and staff. I’d recommend Unifides and then maybe returning for campus visits after you’ve been accepted if you hadn’t seen some of the schools prior to applying. We did a mixture of both. Some schools we had already seen and did not return to but a couple of others we went to see after the acceptances including 1 which we had actually done an on-campus audition with but had no real time to tour etc. because we had to move on to the next one. Anyway, that would be my vote.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I wish we’d done a campus audition for my son’s top choice, to which he wasn’t admitted. From what I heard, the campus auditions were much longer and more comprehensive than at Unifieds, at least for that school. But his audition for his number two choice school, which he will be attending, was also off-campus and short and when he left he thought, “Well, they aren’t interested in me,” but he was admitted with a generous scholarship. So, who knows.</p>
<p>NYC Unifieds were actually pretty interesting, since they were in the same building as a lot of Broadway and off-Broadway auditions, so it felt very real and like the beginning of a career in a way. (We see a TON of very beautiful, accomplished looking young women going in and out of Mary Poppins auditions, for instance.) Also, if you like Smash at all, I’m pretty sure their S1 audition scenes were filmed in the same building. We live in the middle of nowhere and got into this appallingly late, so I don’t have anything to offer on the on-campus audition front.</p>
<p>This would be my advice with respect to on campus versus unifieds. If you can conveniently or reasonable travel to on campus auditions, I would recommend doing so IF (and this is a big if in my book) you can schedule the on campus audition prior to unifieds.</p>
<p>We could easily have fit Ithaca, Syracuse and BU into my daughter’s unified schedule but chose to do all three of these schools in consecutive weekends in February. She was wait-listed at Syracuse and I can say with almost dead certainty that going in February impacted that decision. She received comments at her audition that would make you think she was a lock to get an offer. But she ended up having her application processed during the 4th wave and I can’t help but wonder if they were receiving a higher yield than anticipated from the first 3 waves and that impacted the decision making by the time it came to the 4th wave. </p>
<p>As to Ithaca, I can’t prove it had an impact but she should have been a good fit for Ithaca. She was accepted at UNCSA and I see a lot of similarities in the schools. But it seems only logically particularly with a schoool that does rolling admissions that the ones who go towards the end can get squeezed out by the numbers. I suspect she ended up being sort of psuedo wait listed as she did not finally receive a notice of rejection until quite a long ways into March. </p>
<p>Finally, as to BU, she also got very favorable audition comments and the school worked diligently with us to collect some additional info to support her academic case to BU so I suspect that decision was more academic related than time related. Still, I wonder the extent to which the lists are largely in place and its difficult to shake them late in process. </p>
<p>The process worked out for her because UNCSA is a better fit for her than BU, Ithaca or Syracuse but, if I had to do it over again, I would have had her do BU, Ithaca and Syracuse at unifieds rather than in February dates.</p>
<p>I agree with ActingDad, if travel to campus is convenient, audition on campus if possible.</p>
<p>Interesting Actingdad…hmmmmm, that is another question I am wondering about… timing of a auditions. At most schools they say they don’t make a decision until all auditions are done. but I’m wondering about that. It seems to me if they are looking for “types” that might make initial decisions and then sort it all out after everyone has auditioned. It seems to me the earlier the better, and I have already looked at a few EA auditions in Nov. so he can get his feet wet per se. The only negative about that is that if he happens to get bad news early on it may impact confidence. But, my DS usually doesn’t have a problem with rejection. </p>
<p>Unfortunately we live in So Cal, so all but USC and UCLA are going to be an expensive plane ride across the country. I think the first on campus audition at BU ( my DS’s fav BFA right now) is not until Jan. I think Elon has an EA audition, but it doesn’t coincide with UNCSA’s audition… you see the problem… Elon’s audition has to be on campus, as well as Muhlenberg’s. It looks like DePaul has a weekend thing where they audition and visit the school, go to acting classes, and meet faculty and students. I think he would enjoy that. It was in Dec. this year. I’m thinking of having him do the consortium in LA for UNCSA, Purchase and CMU, because those schools are the most selective, and the probability of acceptance is pretty low. Our HS has had really good luck with kids at BU and NYU…as you can tell…HELP!!!</p>
<p>I’d bet that for every person that can come up with an reason that auditioning on campus and on campus early helps ones chances, there are people who will confirm otherwise. I’d have to think if a kid is really that much a fit for a program the school would let them in whenever and wherever they audition. </p>
<p>I’ve been told that decisions are made often in the first moments of meeting a kid sometimes before they even open their mouths. I sure know that is the case with professional acting. My kid booked a pilot once and I was told by the director that he knew my kid was the one the second he opened the door.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with you shacherry… I am probably over thinking it somewhat. We won’t be able to make any travel decisions anyway until he auditions in August for his HS’s productions for next year. That will dictate how much time he will have to be jetting off across the country for auditions… I have a feeling he will be doing a lot at regionals and unifieds. Even that might prove to be tricky.</p>
<p>I wondered about the timing thing myself last year but there were enough examples of people that got admitted at later auditions combined with what the schools themselves insisted I finally concluded timing probably didn’t matter. Even if it sort of did, there are lots of other reasons that are more likely to explain acceptances and rejections and frankly even if you think you’ve got a handle on them, the outcomes can still surprise you. </p>
<p>Speaking of which, there was an interesting thread in the MT forum on topic of trying to unearth the science and mystery behind acceptances and rejections that might be relevant. I’ll try to link it here but I may not exactly know how to do that. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1280638-thinking-you-bombed-but-getting-anyway-thinking-you-rocked-getting-rejected.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1280638-thinking-you-bombed-but-getting-anyway-thinking-you-rocked-getting-rejected.html</a></p>
<p>What do you know it worked. Back to the topic, I’d not necessarily let timing concerns be the reason you start flying all over the place from the west coast. Do what you need to do in the most time and cost effective way. Otherwise it’s a killer on both. February can also mean taking advantage of Feb break which means less time out of school to get it all done. But I’d still vote for unifieds. We just couldn’t go last year because of an unmovable commitment.</p>
<p>5boys, maybe you should reach out to some of the members who posted acceptances to the schools your son has on his list and see what they did in terms of location and timing. That might give you a good game plan and the piece of mind that you are leaving no stone unturned.</p>
<p>Thanks all!! Unfortunately our spring break is not until the 2nd week of March. So that does no good. I will be smart about it and plan as best we can for this crazy process. It is exciting, but also daunting at the same time. My DS will also have 4 AP classes to deal with next year( against my better judgment), and an independent theater project he is putting on himself. It is definitely going to be “fun times”… I am SOOOO glad I have all of you to reach out to…I can not thank you enough, and we haven’t really even started yet.</p>
<p>My son used Unifieds to work the kinks out of his monologues, with an added bonus of getting some very helpful & positive feedback. He intentionally did not audition for his top choice at Unifieds; did that one on-campus 2 weeks later with a lot of confidence. (He got in). Our thinking was that there may be only 1 reps from each school at Unifieds. Much better (in outr opinion) to audition in front of several faculty members on campus.</p>
<p>There are two good reasons to have one audition early (before January), with early notification. Ideally, though, it shouldn’t be one of your top choices. First, if the student is admitted, it’s great for confidence. Second, if the student isn’t admitted, you can see it as a reason to re-evaluate the monologues or get additional coaching.</p>
<p>Agreed prodesse… my S will be auditioning early for Emerson and Elon… neither of these are his top choices. I like the idea of auditioning for your top choice on campus… which will probably be BU for my S.</p>
<p>My D is a junior and plans to audition for 14 schools next year. We are going to do 6 at Unifieds and the rest on campus between late September and the last weekend of January. Living in the northeast helps with that as most of our schools are within driving distance.
We are splitting it up for two main reasons. One, it seems to make sense not to cram too much into one weekend. If my D is overwhelmed and stressed she could make a mistake. She generally enjoys auditions, but still. It is stressful. The second reason is that the first weekend in February is at the peak of cold and flu season. What if we had nearly every audition scheduled for Unifieds weekend and she was sick?? Disaster. So by spreading it out I feel like we are leaving ourselves some time to play with in case of bad weather or illness.
To be honest I didn’t really think about whether it was better to be on campus or at Unifieds. I just tried to make a plan that fit everything in in a reasonable fashion and left us some wiggle room if needed.</p>
<p>dramamom…I hate you:))) JK. JK… but am seriously jealous that you live so close and can drive to a lot of auditions. I agree with you on having them broken up a bit, especially your comment about waiting to do all at Unifieds and then getting sick…YIKES!! I think my S will do it a lot like this, but will probably have a good chunk at Unifieds and Regionals. I hate that on top of it being flu season in Feb. it is also not a great time to fly across country and drive around in the snow, etc… I am from So Cal and am scared to drive in any bad weather… I know, we are spoiled here.</p>