D did 14 auditions in three days back in November. This was at a Unified audition put on by her MT audition coach so they were all in one hotel. A lot of the kids’ voices were giving out toward the end, but D’s held up just fine. Next week we go to Unifieds in Chicago where she has three auditions scheduled, and will spend the rest of the time trying to grab walk-in auditions. We’ll go from there to NYC to visit one campus she already auditioned for and then a final audition at another.
We also traveled to one school in Florida separately. So all together, 18 plus any walk-ins she can nab. The MT world is crazy, y’all. Crazy.
Thanks all for the great comments. This is a fun and helpful thread and it is exciting to follow everyone’s story. If I could change the trip (aside from scheduling only two auditions), I would have let her rest on that final day. There was no reason for her to be at the school 4 hours before her audition, walking in a cold city, and sitting with all the other stressed out participants. There was nothing in the orientation that she had to see and the extra rest would have served her well. Lesson learned.
Her voice teacher was great about cheering her up. She told her “well now your a professional because it happens to all of us who perform.” Can’t overstate the power of this relationship. She is now starting to realize this and has moved from “where can I go” to “who is going to teach me.”
Final comment: dogs are all sick. Yuck! (is it bad that I googled to make sure it wasn’t contagious to humans?) [-O<
@BearHouse lol about the googling if kennel cough is contagious to humans! Yea, I’d do that. Her voice teacher’s comments are very true. This is where “the rubber meets the road” so to speak and honestly your D will learn a lot about what to do and not do during auditions. It is personal. Each singer responds differently and that’s OK. I learned during auditions that it was best for my D to kind of “seclude herself” and not be that involved with orientations or “talking” to others. We cut any attempts to have a private lesson after the first one bc it was just another thing for her to worry about…and as school work and absences and auditions and travel and sickness were all looming, I just started cutting everything but the essentials. So the idea that you can really see the school at audition time may or may not work depending on your kid and their workload and how sick or not sick they are. Still for other kids, being social and busy is fine…so it’s hard to predict. But this is when my D started figuring out her audition routine…highly recommended and discussed in college…which you can’t figure out until you audition a lot and see what works and what doesn’t. So she IS living the life!
@BassTheatreMom I feel for you as my D did Unifieds…but being somewhat ignorant of the intense competition she only auditioned at 5 programs for MT and 3 for VP (all on campus - the VP were much easier and shorter). It was Unifieds where she made some silly mistakes in her interviews due to the volume and chaos. If you are going to audition one weekend at one school and you are focused, you should be able to answer questions easily. The problems come up in the chaos of many auditions and fatigue. At Unified, you can be at one school, then another and another and then back to the original one for a dance call…and then asked a question that in the chaos you answer poorly…it is crazy. My D spent a good chunk of time in the hotel room - not in the hallways - partly since she had a ton of school work but that is also where I started to see for the first time her need to be “alone” before an audition. She left the room only to audition and for dinner. There were tons of kids all over the hotel (some of my D’s friends) but she just told them she wasn’t feeling well and stayed in the room…bc that’s what she needed. Of course, I was out running around the halls figuring out where the rooms were…and how the auditions were progressing to let her know when to come down…I didn’t have any homework so that was fine for me!
Finally, for singers, having a slightly longer list of schools with auditions spread out may be the way to go. Even with your best efforts, sickness happens. It can wipe out a week in February. If you have auditions spread out a bit hopefully for a good percentage of them, you will be well rested and healthy.
@BearHouse I’m so sorry about your poor pups! Hopefully it’s a treatable respiratory thing. Kennels are tough on dogs and they are at risk of getting sick. Just like being in a hospital for a human…we always say hospitals are the worst place to be for a sick person! I doubt very much that your dogs are contagious to you all or even vice versa.
@bridgenail my D is 100% in the same camp as yours. She needs quiet and seclusion. We have a friend that lives in Greenwich village in NY and offered up her place for us to stay when we are there for her NY auditions. I politely declined. I knew it would be a crazy scene staying with them and she would be pushed to talk and socialize and interact when she needed some downtime to rest and recoup. So I booked us a really nice (and surprisingly cheap) vrbo apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for less than a hotel. We have kitchen facilities which will make it comfortable for us to get breakfast items and snacks and she can make tea easily etc. and take care of what she needs. In fact, I have booked VRBO for every location from Miami to Boston to NY. I found it to be either cheaper than a hotel or the same but with lots of space and the comforts of home. I actually found a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment within walking distance to NEC in Boston for CHEAP. Half the price of a hotel room and great reviews!
You’ll laugh at my last moment of stress yesterday. I was scheduling myself an appointment for next week on Tuesday when I looked in my gcal and it said “flight to Miami”. I thought…wait, what??? I had written in my old paper calendar that we leave on Wednesday. I had completely forgotten in all of the travel bookings that I’d been doing for all of her auditions and our family vacation this summer that I had added an extra day in Miami for us for some R&R and also to give D 2 days to sit in on classes and get a feel for the U. Good grief!! Good thing I saw that or we would have been in a panic on Monday morning when we all got “check in now” alerts on our phones for our Tuesday flight! I honestly can’t recall a time with when we have been so busy with travel. March is going to feel like a slowly moving turtle after all of this is behind us.
Keep updating the thread with audition stories and college acceptances as they come! Good luck everyone and STAY HEALTHY!
You are all doing so well! @bridgenail and @BearHouse ‘s D’s teacher are so right. This is really the beginning of figuring out how to manage the audition business (which will be part of their lives ad infinitum). I am always reminding my D (and myself) that Failure is part of the process and has to be embraced! It takes some figuring out to know what works best for each person, but like your D’s ( @SpartanDrew@BearHouse and @bridgenail ) my D needs her downtime. She was able to do trial lessons and campus visits along with auditions, but only because she had several days in each case to do them. And we ALWAYS scheduled a down day (in addition to the travel day) between auditions; sometimes this down day included a trial lesson or a tour, but was relatively peaceful and left time for a solid practice session and sleep catch up. On D’s 3 week audition trip, we also took 3 days completely off after audition #5 to sight see. Like @bridgenail , some students prefer to make a second trip after offers of admission to do tours and lessons, but this was outside of our ability financially, so we needed to do it all in one trip.
These strategies were instrumental in helping D be successful with auditions (luckily, i knew a little bit about what she might need from previous competitions, etc., and her teacher was SO helpful in outlining a good audition strategy, since she knew D so well as a singer). Part of this was for my own benefit, too! By making the super expensive trip also about fun and bonding time, I was able to reduce my own stress about what would happen if she didn’t get any offers at all, by making it worthwhile nonetheless. Also, weather and travel are always concerns in winter, so having some extra days in there can reduce stress if there are delays (sometimes a 5 hour flight can turn into a 16 hour travel day if the weather is bad…and then everybody is cranky and tired). If you don’t have loads of time, I second @bridgenail ‘s advice to just concentrate on the audition and leave other stuff for later…
@SpartanDrew alternative lodgings with kitchens and practice-at-home ability are the best! And @BearHouse I would have been getting 2nd and 3rd opinions regarding kennel cough and humans, lol!
@SpartanDrew - good luck with all that travel! Auditions are for auditions…they are not for socializing, sightseeing, trying new things. High schoolers can feel “stress” by sitting in on a college class (what if someone asks me a question?) or meeting with a faculty member. A low key evening of dinner in front of the tv may be what they need. I could also see the wheels turning in my D’s head…I think she needed time to process what she experienced. If you have a kid who thrives doing more, that’s great. But I would not plan much and see what they come up with for stimulation.
The only MM audition I went on was in NYC (for obvious reasons…it was NYC!). I got there…and thought…oh yeah this isn’t fun. My D gets really intense and quiet and has “rituals”. We did have some fun after the audition.
It’s such a journey of discovery…you can’t help but be proud of your kid in the end.
So question then, do you all think we shouldn’t have D sit in on a class at New School when we are there? I want her to get a feel for the school. We have never even toured it at all and there is nothing that a 15 minute audition on Saturday will tell her. I wish we had a day in between Purchase and New School but it was impossible. We travel from NEC to NYC on the only other date that worked for us. I know Purchase will be a long day with train travel there and back etc. We arrive in NY on Wednesday, Purchase audition and travel is Friday and New School is Saturday. I was thinking she should sit in on a class at New School on Wednesday unless you all think she should just chill. Appreciate any thoughts here.
@SpartanDrew I would let your D decide at the last minute. If you need to set things up beforehand, you can do so, and simply email with an apology about travel issues, etc., if she decides not to go…it’s not like canceling a trial lesson. No big deal. I don’t think either of you can know what she’s going to feel like doing now! So much depends on what snafus you encounter along the way! We did a fair amount of sitting in on Opera rehearsals, etc., on D’s trip, but often, we would go to the first half of an evening rehearsal and excuse ourselves at a break; everyone understood very well that D was in audition mode and needed her rest, etc… (and again, we had lots of time!)
Ditto to the above. I would keep expectations and plans “loose”. You can always cancel due to “travel issues” as said above…and no one will take note of that. The audition is what matters. I understand that a 15 minute audition does not tell YOU much…still it may tell your D something. My D’s audition process at IU was probably the most short and impersonal overall (but professional and organized - incredibly important to my D)…but one teacher addressed her a couple of times during the audition and just gave her a big warm and fuzzy. It made the room feel jovial and friendly - unexpected for the school. Two longer auditions at other schools were very well-done and she had more interactions with more people… all positive…but not that ONE somehow special interaction. So…you never know what can happen in that room…and hanging out in the hall…and warming up…and registering your name with that cute guy or gal smiling at you… Let her decide what is enough.
I have noticed that my daughter has rituals as well! She gets quiet, prefers to be alone and only wants to communicate with me via text. She always sends me a text between practice room to accompanist telling me she is lost and doesn’t know where to go! I pretty much answer the same way and then I get another text telling me “never mind, I found it”. Six auditions so far and this has happened all six times.
She has San Diego State this Saturday and Cal State Fullerton on Sunday. Travel won’t be too hard (driving) but this will be audition-only experience unless she wants to do more. My wife is staying home with the dogs so that should reduce some of the stress too.
I’ve also noticed that the three auditions she has felt the most confident with her singing were at places that she could wait outside of the music building. She was able to remove herself from the other applicants and the audition atmosphere. I can’t imagine a Unifieds type of experience. I think she would have to hole up in a hotel room.
Wow!! Catching up on this thread, lots of good stuff. My D also needs quite time. We are leaving for Boulder tomorrow and a friend from high school offered to have dinner with us Friday night, her daughter is in her third year at Boulder (but not in music). I told her I really appreciated her offer, but D is nervous and meeting strangers would really stress her out. We are also staying in VRBOs for every audition. Love having the kitchen, and I even booked only two bedroom places so that D could have her own room (I snore, so I didn’t want to keep her up). Each audition we have a free day before, which also acts as a buffer in case there are travel delays due to weather.
I am looking forward to finding out where all our kiddos end up! So exciting.
Hahaha @BearHouse ! Laughing out loud at those emergency texts from your D (followed by the “never mind”)!!! Sounds so familiar! And @coloraturadad , I am dying! We seasoned parents should have mentioned the need to find the local liquor store a LONG time ago!
Believe me…wine will be the first thing on the shopping list when we hit the grocery store at each audition city! I hope my liver survives the month of February… :((
What about the parents left behind with the other children? We want some wine too!
Big weekend coming up, with S18’s perhaps most competitive music admit audition at USCal. :-S If he is admitted, he would get half tuition Presidential scholarship as a NMF, but to be competitive with his other offers and be affordable, he would probably need full-tuition Trustee. They are going to give Trustee to some of the music school applicants, so why not S18? Then again, he could be denied admission totally. Such a crapshoot!
Should be a fun weekend though. He has a music lesson scheduled and will go to see the opera scenes event at the school. Will also have lots of downtime. All in projected 80 degree weather. Would be even better if his sister were there (she’s a drama student at USC), but she is abroad this semester.
Hope everyone knocks it out of the park this weekend!
Speaking of rituals, my daughter (dancer) always has some chocolate before an audition or performance, just a little. It’s superstitious since that started when she was young. For some, doing the exact same thing beforehand is really comforting.
We visited after admission, separately from admissions, but we only had 4 total (musician kid). We did drive to Ohio twice, and the rest were Boston or NYC.
@vistajay Have a great time at USC! California is having another dry winter. Makes for great sunshine and a nice winter visit but we will pay the price in the summer. @compmom I love the chocolate before the auditions. At SFCM, my daughter had chocolate after the audition. I think it was serving a different purpose!
Due to travel issues and family commitments, D is deciding to video audition at University of Arizona rather than audition in person. If she is admitted and it is a viable option, we will visit in April.
Ughh! Influenza b has hit out house for the second time this winter. First was DH and D25…now it’s D18. So glad she is done with auditions. To all of you traveling…I’m sending healthy vibes! This flu stuff is nasty business.
