Thoughts entering the ‘big wait’…
Acceptd, the common prescreen, and the common app have removed significant barriers to ‘shotgunning’ the schools participating in the common prescreen. This has various predictable if possibly undesirable consequences for everyone.
First of all, it makes it easier to apply to programs across the board. The incremental cost of an application is not a barrier to entry except possibly for people only just disqualified from fee waivers. This democratization of the process ALSO lowers the incremental investment of time & effort required for other prescreens.
As a direct consequence, prescreen numbers are rising to historic and apparently unmanageable levels. As they do, the process introduces more variation into the quality of adjudication because the number of available person-hours for watching prescreens does not scale with the number of prescreens received. Thus even though “production value” of prescreen requirements is not an explicit requirement, it becomes a subjective element, in addition to type, skills, readiness, resume, and so on.
Prescreens are selected based not only on talent but also on a school’s recruiting goals. So you could be the greatest voluptuous brunette mezzo in history, but if the school already has several Beanie Feldsteins ahead of you, you’re probably not going to pass the prescreen. Or maybe they just don’t get to your submission until November and they already have 50 other auditions scheduled for your type. Or any of several other reasons…thus the apparent ‘randomness’ of the process. Of all of our prescreens, all
for highly selective to ‘dream’ schools, we passed 3 ‘dream’, 3 ‘highly selective,’ and ‘failed’ an equal number in each category. Are any of those ‘better’ than the others? Completely subjective. Does it mean our kid is untalented? No, just not necessarily what they’re looking for this time around.
OK. If you’ve stayed with me thus far, thanks. It’s actually about to
become interesting for this stage…
Because more kids are applying to more schools, the schools in turn do not have a good feel for what their yield is going to be. I’m not talking about the lottery schools, who are going to enroll a significant majority of the kids they accept.
Everyone below that level are going to accept kids who will have multiple acceptances yet can only choose one. If the schools are smart, they will have long-ish wait lists. And there will be movement.
They need a certain class size to maintain and improve their program/goals.
However, being artist driven, many of them haven’t really fully considered the consequences of the statistics above. Those that don’t plan accordingly may see their yields drop. A lot.
Several other schools are aggressively improving their nationwide profiles with recruiting and scholarships, effectively buying enrollment (caveat emptor here!!) at the expense of others.
Bottom line is that we should expect longer wait lists AND more movement on them than historical norms.
Unfortunately this means more waiting, but also more opportunity for proactive behavior. As discussed further up the thread, if you’re waitlisted, COMMUNICATE. Ask to go to the accepted students days. If it’s really your dream school, let them know. What a school really wants is an engaged and happy troupe. It helps to start with the kids that really, truly want to be there.
Having just finished the last audition yesterday, the whole family slept like the dead this morning. Can’t wait for life to resemble ‘normal’ for at least a couple of weeks.
BAL everyone! Each kid will find the path that’s right for them.
At this point I don’t even care where my kid goes, I just want those darn socks!! I have a bad case of FOMS (fear of missing socks syndrome.)