<p>Since it is Unifieds season, I have a couple questions:
Do the same schools go to each Unified?
When do the dates of Unifieds become public knowledge?
Is it difficult to find hotels nearby?
When you do a walk in, have you already applied to the college? How is the application process handled?
Thanks so much!</p>
<p>The Unifieds are very confusing! Don’t think of it as a single event. Really it’s more like a crafts fair, where the organizers rent the space on particular dates, and beyond that there is no uniformity. </p>
<p>Usually the college websites don’t even say “We will be at the Unifieds.” They’ll say, “Sign up to audition on campus, or in these cities on such-and-such dates.” </p>
<p>You don’t sign up to attend the Unifieds as a whole. You arrange separate auditions with the various schools you are applying to. Each will have its own process, both for the application and for audition sign-ups. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Not all schools go to all the Unified cities.</p></li>
<li><p>Some schools have auditions in the Unified cities at roughly the same times, but rent their own space and are not under the aegis of the Unifieds. People don’t really bother with making that distinction, they still say “I auditioned for X school at the Unifieds” even if it wasn’t. </p></li>
<li><p>Some well-regarded schools will only audition students on-campus. I have noticed these seem to be schools with especially nice campuses or climates, so maybe it’s a selling point?</p></li>
<li><p>Some schools accept walk-ins, some do not. But if you do a walk-in, you are not expected to have already applied for that school or to have done a pre-screen, even for a school that usually wants a pre-screen. You would apply afterwards if they encourage you to do so. There is always a lot of discussion here about walk-ins, so do a forum search both in this forum and the Theater major forum.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Hotels are not a problem because these are not prime tourist dates in any of the cities. It’s a big help to be walking distance. Shop for deals. </p>
<p>I’m not sure when the dates for next year will be announced. Probably in the summer so the schools can start their planning. This year they had to change the NYC dates because of the Superbowl! Here’s the website: <a href=“http://unifiedauditions.com/”>http://unifiedauditions.com/</a> </p>
<p>Thank you so much for your explanation! That helped! But yikes it is scary!</p>
<p>Great explanation Prodesse. I realized how confusing it is last night, my mom though ALL the colleges were in one big room and you did one audition for all of them.</p>
<p>It’s a reasonable supposition. Some auditions are like that. </p>
<p>The website for the Unifieds is not even remotely helpful in providing an explanation. </p>
<p>Thanks prodesse for the explanation! It’s really a big help!!</p>
<p>Prodesse nailed it! The website is horrible. The dates for NYC are usually the first weekend in February and in Chicago the first Mon-Wed in February and LA the 2nd weekend in February. The term on the college websites for audtions during Unifieds seemed to be “Regional Auditions”.</p>
<p>…and to be listed on the Unifieds website the school must be attending all Unified audition dates. That is why there are schools at Unifieds that on not on the website list (see “regional auditions” above).</p>
<p>Ok now I am a little confused. Let me see if I got this:
If a school is listed in the Unified website they have to be at all 4 sites. But many colleges go to just one or two?
So they would be considered regional auditions.</p>
<p>Ok, have any smart meticulous people made lists of what schools are at any particular city, that are NOT listed under the Unifieds list?
(I guess you would just ask when you apply…) it would be nice to know if you should be prepared to head for Chicago vs NYC.</p>
<p>That changes year to year but. schools list their regional auditions on their websites. </p>
<p>As far as I’ve understood it over the last few years. The schools listed on the Unifieds website are member schools. There’s a whole 'nother website that I found accidentally for the member schools and had better information even for the general public. There aren’t that many official Unifieds schools. The non-member schools and programs take advantage of Unifieds and schedule regional auditions during the same time, usually in the same hotel/studio or nearby. The best thing to do is go to the website of the school or program that you’re interested in and look at the audition dates and locations. You can match that up to the dates and locations for Unifieds. You have to schedule auditions individually with each school and can pick your location unless it’s a school that only does on campus auditions which will be clear on the website.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to a bunch of schools, and we had decided early last year that she would do Unifieds to save time and money. We would have preferred NYC because, well, heck, IT’S NYC!! However, when I looked at the school’s auditions dates and locations and the sheer number of schools on her list, Chicago won. Chicago is 3 days compared to 2 days for NYC and LA and there are schools that go to Chicago that do not go to either LA or NYC. The con to Chicago is the fact that it’s Monday through Wednesday so that your child misses school. The other locations are held on Saturday and Sunday.</p>
<p>With all that being said, the non-Unifieds schools and locations may hold auditions a day before or a day after the official Unifieds dates. The most important thing to note when doing your research is the date and location of the schools’ auditions. You can do that now by going to the websites and looking at this year’s dates. While they could decide not to take advantage of Unifieds dates next year, chances are great that they won’t.</p>
<p>Like GSOMT, we focused on schools that would be at Unifieds, or holding auditions in the same cities at the same time. We are in Maine, so there were only a few schools that were in driving distance. I was in your place last year, and though it seems daunting, you will be able to figure it out. I could not have done any thing without this forum! We will pay it forward and help you through it too. I can’t tell you the sense of accomplishment felt when your child has made it through the hoops to finally be auditioning. Of course I hope my son receives oodles of acceptances, but this journey has been wonderful, if not nerve wracking at times, and I feel lucky to have been part of the process.</p>
<p>To add to the Unified complexity, a few years ago when my D auditioned, we ended up going to both NYC and Chicago Unifieds as one of her schools had a MT (with dance) audition in NYC but only offered an acting audition in Chicago. We decided it was cheaper to travel Home → NYC → Chicago → Home to include Miami’s audition than the roundtrip travel to Miami for its audition. Be sure to check–if a school is part of Unifieds, make sure that the program you’re interested in will be auditioning in that city. </p>
<p>That is so true, @cawrd. I know someone who saw the University of Michigan listed on the Unifieds website and thought they’d be able to audition for Michigan’s MT program at Chicago Unifieds, so they made a trip there during the summer to visit the campus. However, Michigan only does Acting auditions in Chicago, so they had to make another trip to Ann Arbor to audition and could have saved the $ from the first trip. </p>
<p>Love this quote: “There’s nothing unified about Unifieds.” As soon as audition dates are up - my D made her “college chart” spreadsheet early August last year & most were posted. You can pretty easily figure out if they will be at Unifieds or not. The trick is to apply early enough and request Unifieds dates if you need them. She had one school that was a late addition to her list and Chicago spots were filled. The school actually ended up letting her audition, knowing she was very interested in them and it was a long distance for us to travel. </p>
<p>maMTma - is that a change for Michigan? I know my daughter and a number of her friends auditioned for Michigan MT at Chicago Unifieds last year with several of them getting acceptances from that audition. </p>
<p>Oops, I meant to say NY which is the only Unifieds that student was planning to attend and where Michigan doesn’t do MT auditions! Chicago on the brain! </p>
<p>They had MT auditions in Chicago this year. I know several kids who auditioned. In fact, the dance call was at the Joffrey right before TX State on Sunday. </p>
<p>As MTMom2017 said, apply early in order to schedule your dates as soon as the school allows. Son attended both NYC and Chicago Unifieds and there was only one date he needed to switch. Son had nine scheduled auditions and one walk-in and could have fit more walk-ins into Chicago.</p>
<p>When S and I toured CCM in fall of junior year we were told that the Chicago Unifieds were the first audition dates to fill up - generally by early/mid October - with on campus dates close behind. Plan EARLY if this is part of your overall strategy. This is a little off topic, but I can’t say enough about S’s experience at SETC in March of junior year. The difference there is that you get to audition for about 100 schools/summer programs in a single audition. Then in the “callbacks” you get to visit the reps from the schools/programs - who were set up in a “college fair” type exhibition hall. Many of them gave terrific feedback to be used for upcoming senior year, some offered on-the-spot acceptances and scholarships, some asked him to come to a callback dance audition, some waived prescreens for upcoming year. It was a terrific way to “meet” schools that might otherwise be off the radar, and a good way to “test the audition waters”. My S felt much more confident about what was to come after that experience. Seniors can also audition at this conference, but it’s late in the season and might be reserved for a “let’s see what happens” opportunity. SETC is of course geared for schools in southern quarter of the US (which covers A LOT of the programs on these pages) but it varies from year to year, and there are programs from outside that region. Our city university (attached to a "small’ program at CCM) offers a “visual and performing arts” college fair every year, but it does not hold a candle to the number of programs/schools specific to the theatre arts that this conference does. Have I gushed enough??</p>
<p>After this experience we decided that auditioning on-campus was preferable, but we did add a school to his “top 8” list that otherwise would have been off our radar (auditioned there yesterday, fingers crossed). That said, S decided to audition only at schools that were with-in a day’s drive of our city. If he had chosen schools that were farther afield, we definitely would have done Chicago Unifieds.</p>