My daughter has passed all of the prescreenings at Boston University, Jacob School of Music, Vanderbilt, And Northwestern. She will be auditioning live at all 7 schools (the only exception is Princeton who has not made their regular decisions yet, although she did send in videos as an art supplement). I am a little surprised as it was not a perfect recording of her pieces. Does anyone know how they determine if the student is good enough to audition live? Do they watch the entire videos? Perhaps they over look imperfections? I was concerned when she had to submit videos of lesser quality than she is capable of playing. She had one shot to record at a studio due to time and money constraints and she had an off day.
Also what are the percentage of students they invite to audition live? She is a pianist btw.
I hope some fellow pianists or parents of pianists can chime in, because I’m sure this varies from instrument to instrument and from program to program. Here’s a reply from the MT major forum from a few years ago that indicates that prescreen pass rates can range from 25% to 50% depending on the institution:
Broadly, though, I think most conservatory-style performance programs are looking for potential rather than perfection. These programs want open, dedicated young artists who have not “locked in” their approach to their craft, as they are looking for artists that they can train and take from “potential” to “product” (within reason…I know this is different for BM musicians who often go on to study at the MM and DMA level, which is far less common in musical theatre) in line with the artistic philosophy and training objectives of the institution.
I encourage you and your daughter to think about what “perfection” means in the context of her performance videos–I’m a working actor and I seldom submit a self-tape or do an in-person audition where I feel everything went perfect. Especially over the past 3 years where ALL of my auditions have been digital, I’ve had to rewatch a lot of my work onscreen again and again and I will ALWAYS be able to find imperfections in my work. But even if I submit a take where I think “I wish I could have done [this specific element] better,” there is always something ELSE in the video that is screaming to me “you couldn’t have done [this other element] better, though.” I think it’s important to know ourselves as artists and make sure that our performance videos are always representing ourselves REASONABLY well across the board (and of course you will have smaller elements that are perfection and other elements that are less great. It’s so rare to have EVERYTHING you know you are capable of gel at once).
To me, it sounds like your daughter’s prescreens were strong, if she has passed 4 prescreens so far. Congratulations to her and toi toi toi as she moves on to live auditions!
Over and over and over and over we have been told that passing pre-screens depended on potential, not perfection. It made me think of what we heard in sample lessons…it’s not necessarily that they perform to perfection, but potential AND how they are to work with. Do they listen to the corrections and make immediate changes? Are they able to put aside how they’ve “always done it” and try something new without hesitation? Are they communicative, engaged, and knowledgeable enough about the program to ask intelligent questions? I think all this is important.
I can only speak about voice, as that was our journey, but the sample lessons PRIOR to application season, but in the fall so she was still memorable was a huge help, both for her to get to know who might be her first choice of instructor and school (OR not! She ruled out two schools entirely based on how the sample lesson was conducted and what she learned about the school in said lesson) and for being a “known entity” .
This journey really is crazy. We have two auditions next week that we are flying to, and then we sit in the longest wait ever to find out admissions and $$. Wishing you all the very best of luck.