The common prescreen was a game changer. Just as the common app was for regular academic admissions. So many kids applying to more schools than they ever would have.
@onette I’m just curious how this coming back to life after rejection is working. We declined or withdrew academic acceptances and scholarships after D was rejected artistically, and I know many others did the same. Are they only calling the ones who didn’t? Are they returning the academic scholarship offers? I think it is good for future classes to know if they should hang onto everything, even academic only acceptances, until May 1.
@rickle1 - funny one of my d’s coaches actually spearheaded that common pre-screen. I can see his point in that it levels the playing field for kids who don’t have the money to hire coaches and jump through all the hoops - but I agree that it probably made it more competitive - on another coaching site (not the pre-screen coach one) I do see that some kids - particularly a few of the boys all got into all the top schools and it does make you wonder if you had to work a little harder for that audition if that would be the case. Although with that said, there are other things like essays and personal statements - why “whatever school”… that come into play. It’s definitely interesting to consider how much that came into play vs the COVID and money.
Although with Elon in particular money already comes into play - to audition - you have to go to them - for us it was a plane ride, rent a car, you had to be there the entire day so it was two nights at the hotel etc… Not cheap, so you would have thought that would have weeded some people out - it’s not like - you are at Unifieds anyway let me audition.
@sarahsmom02 In this case, the student was redirected. They appealed earlier for the original place in MT but were told, politely, they could not offer that. There was a WL but they weren’t on it. Now, they were told their submissions and audition was reviewed and they were offered a place. If it had happened one week earlier, I think maybe a different outcome. But I honestly feel excellent about where they are going. I always say “you will be where you were meant to be” and in this case, I feel very, very good about that!
There certainly is a lot of waitlist movement! It seems that many MT applicants have applied to a HUGE number of college programs, more than is typical or that I’ve seen or recommend, and it has resulted in each student having many acceptances that they will have to ultimately pass on. Add in the repercussions from Covid, such as some taking a gap year, or not having the funds to attend college, etc.
Until now, I have never heard of a college offering an acceptance after a rejection. Most unusual. It appears that these colleges did not have adequate waitlists in place.
I respectfully disagree with @onette that a student who has committed to enroll at a college cannot or should not “renege” if given a spot from another school’s wait list. This is not like employment offers. In college admissions, it is common policy that when waitlists make offers, which often come after May 1, and students by then have put a deposit down at a college already, that they can accept the offer from the waitlist school and back out from the original school, which then will go to their waitlist and so on, which can continue throughout the summer. Colleges expect this to happen. It is not seen as disrespectful to accept a waitlist offer (which again, most often happens after May 1), whereby the student has to back out of the original school. That simply is the nature of college admissions. If nobody accepted an offer from a waitlist, due to having already deposited at another school, these schools would all sit with empty slots, and there would be no point to ever having a waitlist.
I’ll just go on record as saying that if a school that rejected her comes back to offer my daughter a spot now, I sure hope I don’t hear about it because I will unleash a fury that school doesn’t want to receive.
I can’t be the only person who thinks offering a slot (a real slot in a BFA/BA MT program, not “please enroll in our school with a different major”) to a student after a rejection (not off a wait list, but after REJECTING them!) is grossly unethical and, quite frankly, playing a lot dirtier than I’m comfortable with. Keep a long wait list – it’s hard on the students who are on that list, but within the limits of ethical behavior!
@Dance3Looks3 I agree that it is highly unusual to offer an acceptance to a student after rejecting them. That is what waitlists are for! I can’t imagine what that must feel like to get an acceptance after being denied. This is the first I have ever heard of this happening. I believe the stories, but can’t believe it is happening.
@Dance3Looks3 - this brings up an interesting question. Honestly thinking about this process my d was in what I thought the most over-represented demo - white, female, and brunette. Honestly, I have to imagine these schools have 10-20 applicants who can fill the spot and maybe they accept 2 wait-list 2 - then all 4 say no and they have nobody in that demo and they think about those few that may have been close and think why not reach out and see if there is still interest… Who knows, maybe there is - its not a bad thing. These schools didn’t date our kids for a year and dump them and then come crawling back - they saw them for ten minutes - we didn’t take any rejection personally. My D is extremely happy with her choice but if she wasn’t we wouldn’t mind if the phone rang with a re-consideration…
@soozievt I can’t really mention the schools, but in this case (and many others), I feel that it would not be advisable. I do not disagree that if you have compromised your school choice and settled for a program that wasn’t on par with what you are being offered, that is different (BA Theatre and Performance vs BFA MT). But if you were accepted into a solid BFA program in the area you want to be in, especially where there is contact and casting within that region and overlap between the schools, you should probably not consider it just for another similar program. In the area and market we live in here in Texas, there are a lot of schools in our area and in a 400-mile radius where there is overlap.
And there is also this. And please forgive me if this sounds wrong out of context, but I told my students I wanted them to find directors who saw the “spark” in them that I first saw when they auditioned for me. Who saw someone they wanted to work with. They were enough schools’ “first choice” that I am not sure I would want them to go where they were not even on Waitlist. However, If they had NOT gotten those acceptances, I would definitely encourage them to go for it! Get in – and prove you’ve got it. I want people to be excited about working with them. As I stated, this isn’t to detract from any WL acceptances. We know what WL means, really. Not lack of talent, but lack of space. There was already one…or two…or more of you in the class or dept. WL are a wonderful thing. But the “no” to acceptance is really new to me. And in this case, that’s what it was.
@onette Just to follow-up, I guess that is exactly my concern. Once my D had a BFA acceptance, she withdrew from schools with BA redirects (and walked away from hefty academic scholarships). She knew she wasn’t interested in a BA redirect and wanted other students to have the opportunity for the scholarships. But, is the new normal going to be to hang onto every redirect just in case? Are the schools reaching out based on auditions such that a subsequent withdrawal doesn’t count against someone, or only those that kept academic admissions?
Considering this is the first year that most colleges took the common prescreen route, I agree that it is the most unusual to see an acceptance after a rejection but still understandable to me because they probably failed to establish a perfect decision matrix in response to the record number of applicants. A top MT program may not necessarily have the most competent administrative team (e.g; audition coordinators, admission officers) as I noticed that some top MT schools were pretty disorganized during the process.
I had no idea colleges used to run different pre-screen guidelines as my D was late in the game and didn’t do my research early enough so I didn’t take it seriously whenever I kept reading “the record number/unprecedented number of applicants” in D’s rejection letters. I thought it was their typical phrase to use in a reject letter to help denied applicants feel less hurtful. (Maybe it IS a typical phrase IDK!)
@sarahsmom02 The only reason I feel (my opinion here) that you should on is if you don’t:
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have a clear understanding of the program – faculty, curriculum, students, expectatitons
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don’t have your actual cost of attendance (one of the reasons my students had to pull several off their lists…not that they didn’t like the programs – some were amazing – but nothing regarding final “money” before deadline. Some people may be able to work without knowing the “price” but most don’t.
Because of COVID19, many financial aid offices at the schools were and still are behind. I think that also kept people slow to release. I know it did for both of the students I work with.
My S had two waitlists and with those two schools he kept them in his thought process while making decisions. He was able to understand that they must have seriously considered him, but there are limited spots and that’s how it works, and the possibility existed that they would make him an offer. If that happened he would have considered it right along with his other offers. One of those, for various reasons, he knew he wouldn’t choose so he released it. It all made sense. With the school that sent him an outright rejection, including the phrase “please be aware that we do not operate a wait list”, for them to then send him an acceptance was completely different. Even though it’s a wonderful program, he had already moved on long ago. No hard feelings, just saying that from personal experience and having it happen this week, it’s very, very different than being accepted from a waitlist and it would have been a lot harder to renege on a commitment to a school that accepted him in the first place, than if he had been on a waitlist.
The common prescreen is a blessing for applicants - I hope it isn’t a curse for colleges because going back to every school having a different prescreen requirement is a big step back for sanity and equity.
I’m not a BFA admissions expert at all - I just had one kid go through - but I think the rules of academia apply in many cases. If you’ve found a great program, don’t go chasing a bunch of others. If you are doing your best to “love the one you’re with” and you get an offer from a different program you loved more naturally, don’t be afraid to take it. If the exchange of your deposit and some face gets you a much better fit, then it’s worth it. I don’t think you can make hard and fast rules about accepting a late offer but I’d never take one as an insult, just as the rejections weren’t insults.
@sarahsmom02 - my guess is (and this is only a guess) - if a BFA program wants to offer a student admission late they wouldn’t look at the fact that you turned down the BA. If they can ignore their own “rejection” decision they can ignore yours, now that they have more to offer you.
If I were a high school senior, I would be thrilled to get an acceptance after a rejection. Looking back to my college auditions, they were very hard on my self-esteem (as I’d imagine they are for many). When I was rejected from schools, I kept thinking “what’s wrong with me?” and wondering if I wasn’t as talented as the people who got accepted. To be accepted after a rejection, to me would have helped me reframe the whole process, because it highlights that there’s NOTHING wrong with you if you get rejected from a program, there’s just simply too many students that a program would love to take, and the line between being waitlisted and being rejected simply lands somewhere arbitrary (based on calculations that, as we’re seeing, schools have gotten wrong this year!).
It reminds me of an email that I received from a Canadian program during my audition cycle (which I still have, remarkably, even though I auditioned in 2013, so I’ll post it here):
“We enjoyed meeting you at your audition/interview recently. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you passed your audition with flying colours. Congratulations are in order! We just completed the last round of auditions and sorted out all the numbers, and we have almost 100 ideally qualified candidates for the 24 spots in the class. Unfortunately that means that a great many people must be disappointed. So here comes the bad news. Despite your fine achievement, there are so many people ahead of you that I’m afraid there is no realistic prospect of getting you onto this year’s Waiting List.”
I remember this note being of great comfort to me when I was a senior. Even though it was disappointing to know that I had auditioned well, met the criteria, and still was going to be rejected, it highlighted that this decision had nothing to do with me or my work and everything to do with class sizes and arbitrary math.
I caution anyone against saying that that being waitlisted (or offered after a rejection!) means you’re a second choice or a second-class candidate. I have my BFA from a school where I was initially waitlisted, and I never felt that to be the case. As the letter above highlights, most programs could fill their classes (at least) four times over with candidates they would love to offer a spot to–those people are all first-class candidates. I think a lot of class formation and waitlist formation is also a lot more arbitrary than we think it is, too. Faculty members see these high school students work ONCE (maybe twice or three times, in the event of prescreens or callbacks), and then have to take their best shot at forming a class based on that tiny amount of work they’ve seen them do, without truly knowing how well personalities are going to mesh with each other, with the program, etc. Compare that to a professional theatre audition process, where you may have an audition, a callback, and several work sessions where a team can really get to know you and see who is exactly the right fit for a project… You can see how someone who is a great fit for a program and is 100% qualified for admission might get rejected just because the faculty have to make a gut (not an objective!) decision about all the qualified candidates in front of them–which leaves a lot of talented people rejected and wondering “what happened?” Nothing. You did exactly what you were supposed to do. You were in the pool! But the people putting together classes are working within a flawed system, and on that day, the system may or may not work in your favor.
@DivaStageMom my daughter is also in that demographic, and I agree with @onette that every school has a long, long list of students who could be successful in their programs and it’s not lack of talent/ability, but lack of space that ultimately decides a student’s fate if they’ve prepared and brought their A-game to the audition. My daughter didn’t take any of her many, many rejections personally – the reality of this business is that they’re going to spend their lives being rejected, again and again. It can’t be personal!
Still, those schools have no right or business to accept students they previously rejected. Missed the mark on your enrollment target this year? Don’t mess with these kids. Saw 50 great female brunette mezzos who dance and can only enroll 5 of them? Put 15 on your wait list. Burned through the whole wait list and only enrolled 3 this year? Suck up the 2 you lost and put 25 on your wait list next year. And don’t lead #25 to believe she’s a “priority” or “near the top!” Be real with it.
Because if “waiting for schools that rejected you to change their minds” is going to be a thing, this process would officially have the lawlessness of the wild west, and why would anyone take any notification seriously? “I got rejected, but I might still get in there.” This isn’t like re-casting a role after the actor who won the audition didn’t work out, or ended their contract, or whatever. THAT is a thing. THAT is something that our kids can learn to hope for. But I would be furious with a school coming back and offering my daughter a BFA MT spot after not even wait-listing her.
**I’m genuinely thrilled for students for whom this sort of event was a game-changer and a dream come true! I really am! It’s nice when the universe throws you a bone, especially after the hard work and complete roller-coaster this process has been. I have nothing but well wishes for the students and families in this community!
One benefit to faculty in minimizing WL size is fewer student inquiries regarding WL status. I picked-up on that reading between the lines on mass emails from 2 different schools communicating when results would be released. I know the common advice out there is to send thank you cards, thank you emails and to keep faculty informed of interest, however, I imagine all that correspondence is challenging. But maybe I dislike email and correspondence more than others… ?
I doubt that the correspondence is the reason for a shorter WL. Schools don’t want to end up with unfilled seats. They gauge their WL numbers and yields based on research, past years, and so forth. Also, they welcome such correspondence from WL students because if they have to go to the WL, they prefer to make an offer to someone who they believe WILL enroll and has shown continued interest in attending.
I don’t think it’s the reason… just pointing out a possible side benefit. Especially with so many kids applying to more programs.
On a different note, I just read that Texas State is resuming in-person classes for their summer term that begins July 6. Fingers crossed all our kiddos will have in-person class this fall.