<p>dramamom0804-that is a good plan. I wanted to put my D a bubble. It works really nice that you are drving distance and that is what stopped us from planning more that way because we needed to add too much drive time on to accommodate. Best of luck!</p>
<p>I have heard, so this is not gospel, that you should try for the early admission for Elon. They have a larger than normal rate of kids who accept early acceptance and it causes long wait lists. My son did mot audition for Elon, this was second hand. </p>
<p>That being said, we did a mixture, the schools that had an early admission option and that we could get to, we did. Out of the three, he got one rejection, 1 acceptance and 1 deferral that turned into an acceptance. There was a feeling of relief when he went to Unifieds. He loved Unifieds, he fed off the energy and the school he is going to in the fall is the result of a walk in. So…it is a crapshoot!!!</p>
<p>Absolutely photomom… early for Elon is a great idea, and why we will fly there as soon as he can in the fall to audition. I like Elon because their academic acceptance is separate than their artistic acceptance, so it leaves the door open to him if he doesn’t get in the BFA, but still wants to go to the school. It looks like a good safety for my DS according to naviance… but all I now, is that I don’t know…LOL!!</p>
<p>I would advise you to not consider Elon a safety for anyone. The applicant number has gone through the roof, they have been discovered. </p>
<p>I have a friend whose son is getting his BA in theatre arts there, he loves it. He is very talented and just auditioned as a current student for the BFA but did get in. And still loves it.</p>
<p>^Echoing photomom’s suggestion about Elon–even if your son’s academic record is better than the typical Elon profile, he should apply early action (I think they do this) to be confident about it as a safety. We see highly qualified kids waitlisted or even denied by Elon every year because they applied late in the season. I’m pretty sure they have a nonbinding early option, which he should do if he really wants to be accepted. Its popularity continues to grow.</p>
<p>Oh, and for the record–my son auditioned for two of his top three schools (Ithaca and Otterbein) in December and ended up being accepted to both. He did one optional audition in October as a dry run, which helped. The post-Christmas auditions were not ultimately successful and he felt somewhat “meh” about them, and even started feeling burned out by late January. His very last audition was JMU, and he wasn’t psyched for it, nor did we follow our usual audition rituals (it’s an hour from home, so no travel involved), but perhaps because it didn’t feel high stakes, it actually went very well and he had a great time. Liked the school and was accepted. He did one school at NYC Unifieds–DePaul, no call-back, but it was fun, he liked the auditors, and the experience was worthwhile. As somebody else posted earlier, it was cool to see the “real world” auditions going on in the other studios while we waited, allowing for a glimpse of what his future might be like as a working actor. Anyway, if your kid wants to try some auditions a bit earlier in the season and has prepared thoroughly, based on our experience it seems to be worth a shot.</p>
<p>My audition experience is pretty much contrary to what everyone is suggesting – I did 4/6 of my auditions at Unifieds, and the rest in late February or March, and it worked out really well for me. I felt I did better at Unifieds because while there are more people, the atmosphere is more casual and less awkward and competitive than at on-campus auditions, and allowed me more time to breathe between auditions or walk-ins. Unifieds felt like they took more planning though, so that is something to consider.</p>
<p>I liked not seeing the campuses before I auditioned because it made the stakes feel lower. I didn’t put any pressure on myself in that “this is where I see myself” kind of way because I hadn’t seen anything yet. It allowed me to focus on auditions first, and then worry about touring and deciding where I wanted to go separately. Less information crossed over I guess, so I could focus on the task at hand.</p>
<p>I didn’t feel that auditioning late in the season hindered or helped me in any way really, other than I got more time to prepare and I got to do all the fun holiday stuff without worrying too intensely on auditions. I did hear back later obviously, which was not a fun wait and kept me waiting for financial aid packages close to many deadlines, but I think this happens to everyone anyway.</p>
<p>Dramamom0804, my D plans to do the same – mix of Unifieds and on-campus. We are in the midwest, so we can drive to the midwest schools. Hope to do most east coast at Unifieds in Chicago. We’ll see how that works! I, too, worry about sickness in February – putting all eggs in one basket seems so risky – esp. since she is auditioning mostly for MT and not being able to hit all of the notes would be horrible. I would love for her to be done by February – no idea, though, how easy scheduling will be.</p>
<p>5boys haha no worries. There are a lot of great theatre schools around us here so we started this journey thinking lets take advantage of that. We didn’t look at any west coast schools. The farthest we go is Chicago.
The other thing we have done is to lighten her course load for next year. She’s a great student but doesn’t need more AP Calc or more science to get into drama school. So she has early release for half of the year and we are hoping that lands in the time when we are traveling!! Having a lighter course load will make it easier to miss class too. I think she is going to miss 6 or 7 days.
Merlehay - you can kind of figure out what your schedule will look like next year by looking at when schools had oncampus auditions dates this year. I just jotted them all down on a calendar. There is something of a pattern. I think the schools work with each other to not have auditions at the same time. Syracuse and Ithaca for example are the same weekend but one is Friday and the other Saturday. So you can travel there for both in one weekend. Uarts is one saturday in december and suny purchase is the next saturday. Of course things will be slightly different next year but doing this helped me see what our schedule might have looked like and could it all even fit in.
Someone might already have mentioned this but don’t forget some schools require you to schedule a four hour block at Unifieds because they have a multiple step process. So it’s not just a 15 minute thing. You can’t have any other auditions scheduled during that block. So that cuts down on your time at Unifieds.
I will be feeling much better about all this come October when I have everything scheduled and on my wall planner!! And we will be getting an early flu shot, buying lots of hand sanitizer and gargling with salt water from October to February!!</p>
<p>dramamom - very few actually require the 4 hour time slot. And, they are very accommodating at Unifieds, there tends to be lots of shuffling around.</p>
<p>We scheduled our four hour blocks the first and last day. Ithaca actually stayed til Thursday morning and since there was a block we picked that one for them</p>