When submitting my pre-screens, I did them very early back when slates were not included in the time limit. Because of the new common pre-screen, the guidelines state:
“This time limit includes the slate at the beginning of the piece and is strictly adhered to; please do not upload media files longer than 90 seconds.”
My college coach informed me to submit them anyway, but I am worried that I will not pass pre-screens, especially for some of my top-choice competitive colleges, like Elon. However, I don’t want to re-record everything. Will it be okay if I go eight or so seconds over the time limit? Will it harm my chances of passing?
When were the pre-screen instructions changed?
With words like “strictly adhere to…” I would be very hesitant to do otherwise. Following rules is important and it is the first impression of you and your work. When they say “less than” or “maximum” they are being pretty clear about limits. When the instructions are “60 seconds” it would most likely ok to go 50-65 seconds. I have been pretty clear with my students that the common prescreen files can not go over 90 seconds total.
It was over the summer, and it wasn’t for all schools. It was announced that a certain number of schools got together and agreed to a “Common Prescreen”, which resulted in some schools changing their requirements from years past.
Here is a link that lists the requirements and participating schools:
https://papermill.org/musical-theater-common-prescreen/
We had a very similar situation and have landed on that +/- a few seconds is OK (ie 93 seconds) but I would attempt to edit it down to be very close to the limit. 8 or 9 seconds seems like too much, can you splice out some intro music or something?
Thank you for your replies everyone! I ended up submitting them because I am a student in the IB program as well as an applicant for 21 colleges, so there was almost no way I could’ve re-recorded them. Thankfully, I passed all of my prescreens (except Elon and Penn State, which I am waiting for). I think my longest prescreen was around 96 seconds for anyone that ran into the same situation, but I took a very long beat in between the end of my monologue and when I said “thank you”.