I am a parent of a HS junior who is looking to go to Unifieds in Chicago. I see from some posts that some do walk-in and some are scheduled. How do we schedule? Is it done at the Hilton? Is it done through the school Where are the sign-ups? Do we plan to be there all 4 days? I am totally in the dark. ANY help is appreciated! Thanks!
Although I have heard of high school juniors attending Unified to get an idea of how it works, I do not believe they actually audition until their senior year.
If you decide to audition at Unifieds, each of your auditions will be set up individually with each school to which you apply. You will contact each school individually to do this. Many require you have completed the school application prior to scheduling an audition. But you will need to check with each individual school to find out when and where they are holding auditions and also to find out what their process is for applications. Be aware there are schools not on the official unifieds list that will be in the same city on the same days as the Unified schools. So again, check with each school We created a spreadsheet showing which schools would be auditioning where on which days. It was then easy to look and see, for example, which schools were going to be in Chicago on the same dates. But it did take a little research on our part. I would recommend that you schedule auditions for any schools you absolutely want to apply to.
Walk-ins are auditions you do while at Unifieds if you happen to have extra time and they happen to have time to see you. Many of these will not require that you have applied to the school in advance. Some students find these a great way to get feedback and get rid of the jitters before doing their “big” auditions. Others have found the perfect hidden gem they didn’t know existed but just felt that connection in their walk in audition. So if you have time, they can be a great thing to do. To get a walk-in, most schools will post a list outside their audition rooms at the noting any vacant audition slots they have. Students can walk around the hotel or audition studios and see which schools have time available and sign up on the spot.
As far as number of days to be there, it depends on which schools you are auditioning for and how many schools you are auditioning for. Some schools ask for a 4 hour block of time. Others only need 30 minutes to an hour. So it really just depends on which schools you are wanting to audition for and what days and times they have available when you do your scheduling.