Scheduling auditions

I have asked this question on another thread, but I thought I would ask it here since it is about audition scheduling.

Has anyone tried to live audition back to back, for example, audition at Univ. of Cinn on Friday and drive four hours that same day to Oberlin for an audition the next day? I don’t know what the weather will be like in February for driving four hours in Cincinnati. It will be risky, I think, but I was wondering if I should even consider it. Also how about auditioning on a Friday at U of Mich, and fly next day to Peabody for an audition on Sunday (in Feb)? Any thoughts? Any advice on scheduling auditions? Thanks so much!

Someone tried to do this last year. Not sure how it turned out. Here’s that thread. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1713213-scheduling-live-auditions-p1.html

Also, have you read through this thread from last year’s auditions? http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1730336-tell-us-about-audition-day-2015-p1.html

This series of posts on violinist.com has some great advice about the entire process: http://www.violinist.com/blog/karenrile/20139/15001/

My son auditioned at NEC on a Wednesday during vacation week and then we drove to Eastman the next day for an all-day audition on Friday. We had to drive home Friday night because of an a Capella competition Sat but it all worked out fine (also, I noticed that my son preferred to leave campus right after auditions). We were both pretty tired Sunday!

It is always risky in the snow belt especially when it comes to travelling in that time of year. One of the biggest concerns is the obvious one, even leaving out the weather, if back to back auditions like that will impact how the kid plays. Some kids thrive on that, they get ‘into the zone’ and want to stay there, others get worn out and tired.

We had an experience like that, my S had an audition at Colburn on a Thursday, which was an all day thing, then we had to fly a red eye to Boston for his audition at NEC, which originally was scheduled at like 10am, but was moved to 2 or so. We landed around 8am, were able to check into the hotel fortunately, and got a little rest, but it was pretty stressful.

I think the Cinn / Oberlin one is maybe slightly risky, but the UMich / Peabody seems fine.

I don’t know how anybody gets through this process without some risky scheduling. It’s tough, because you feel like you have to apply to so many schools because “there are no safeties” but the logistics of getting all those apps, prescreens, auditions, etc done is (at least for me) feeling really overwhelming right about now!

Good luck!

@dbandmom it feels like a sprint at first and then a marathon! All your kid’s friends will have sent in deposits and he or she will still be auditioning and waiting. We were able to drive to most auditions which was less stressful with instruments etc. I researched hotels so that I could book them as soon as prescreens were passed (I may have even booked before for Frost, but some would say that invites bad karma!). We tried to pace them so my son had some audition experience in before the big ones. If we had visited more schools before auditions we probably would have culled out the list, but it all works out. Good luck to you!

My D auditioned last year for VP-undergrad. In order to do all of her auditions we had several weekends of back to back auditions but they were relatively close to each other and we were driving, not flying- Oberlin and CMU or BU and Hartt. or Eastman/Ithaca. Luckily the weather cooperated, except for the Ithaca/Rochester weekend. My poor husband found himself driving on the NY Thruway in a white-out at 10 p.m. I agree with dbandmom in that there is almost no way to avoid some back to back auditions. Good luck.