How many programs should you audition for? A "Freakonomics" approach

Wheaty · December 3, 2011, 10:58am

EmsDad,

I want to return to one of Soozievt’s comments early in this interesting thread: from a math model standpoint, how do you handle the non-serious applicant?

Without meaning to sound mean (I’m not), every year there are applicants to elite BFA programs (Fine Art, music, MT, acting, film, etc.) that have zero chance of acceptance. In some cases it’s not knowing how high the bar really is, and in other cases the application is treated as sort of a lottery ticket. In either case the real chance is still zero.

How could you calculate the real odds for the serious applicant?

Best Regards,
Wheaty

PS. I’m an interloper from the Fine Arts / Film forum and I got sucked in to this interesting topic.

Flossy · December 3, 2011, 11:16am

This is interesting but largely meaningless in my humble opinion. Firstly, not all students have the same chance. Some are simply more talented than others. This will increase their odds. Some dance. Some don’t. Some schools care. Some don’t. Also, not all BFA programs are created equal. There are some very selective schools where the odds of being accepted are put at 2-4 percent while at others acceptance rates are closer to 30-percent. And while there are no shoe-ins anywhere anymore, there are certainly some students who end up with many nice choices and every year there are many more who are shut out completely. Most of them are not posting on these boards but I personally can name half a dozen right now without much effort so I’m guessing the number is quite large. Quality of program also was a huge factor for my kid. Just getting accepted to program somewhere with a BFA, regardless of overall rep of school or training was not the goal. It’s a very individual process.

EmsDad · December 3, 2011, 12:16pm

@Lookin4ward: The short answer to your question is no, in trying to estimate what probability or set of probabilities may apply to the model in the OP it is not possible from the available data to account for bias from the applicant’s location. However, you can factor the probability derived from the available data to reflect a bias that you believe applies. I will add that I was not aware that an in-state/oos bias existed in any general form in the MT BFA application process, in fact, my impression was just the opposite, i.e., BFA programs wanted the best talent no matter where it comes from.

EmsDad · December 3, 2011, 4:02pm

@Wheaty: you are correct, the odds for a well-qualified applicant are obviously high, while there are some applicants whose odds are basically zero. It turns out that the applicability of the model in the OP encompasses both high and low probability applicants.

Let’s look at the example of soozievt’s daughter. According to the data provided by soozievt, her daughter achieved 5 acceptances in 8 auditions (counting only the definite acceptances noted). This gives an observed average probability of acceptance of 62.5%. For someone who had similar skills, type, and talent who applied to a similarly-applicable set of schools, their probability will be basically the same.

Therefore, using the model in OP, an applicant with a probability of success in any given audition of 62.5% (0.625) would only need 3 auditions to achieve a 95 percent confidence of getting at least one acceptance. Soozievt’s daughter did more than 3 and, with that high probability of success given her talent and skills matched against the schools for which she auditioned, received 5 acceptances in 8 auditions.

Meanwhile, there were probably applicants in the same set of auditions as soozievt’s daughter that had a lower probability of success and received only 1-2 acceptances and perhaps none. That this occurs is substantiated by the very low acceptance rates quoted in this forum for many of the top schools (some quotes are as low as 1-2%). Trying to determine how many auditions to do based on the very low overall acceptance rates would NOT be a very good strategy because it would include many applicants that had basically ZERO chance of success in the process. Hence, a well-prepared, talented applicant choosing wisely would be well-served to base their audition strategy on a higher probability of success.

But what probability should you use for your personal strategy? As noted in my previous posts, if you look at the CC “acceptance” threads you will see that the average number of acceptances is around 2.37 and the average number of auditions is 8.24. Therefore, using these numbers, the average acceptance rate for people who succeed and post on CC is around 29%. To achieve a 95 percent confidence of gaining at least one acceptance with a probability of success of 29%, applicants who are able to match their talent and skills in the same manner as the average of CC posters should therefore do 9 auditions using the model in the OP. If you do 9 auditions and match your talent and skills to schools BETTER than the people who post acceptances on CC, then odds are that you will receive several acceptances. If you don’t choose as wisely, then you will perhaps not fare as well.

Hence, for any individual, the question is “how good do you feel your chances are for the set of schools that you have chosen?” The math on this is actually a little complicated, since you may adopt a strategy something like this:

3 auditions at “lottery schools” where your odds are 1 in 10 (0.1 or 10%) [this is not to say that the odds are only as low as 1 in 10 for very competitive schools, they are probably very close to zero for many applicants. This is assuming that your talent/skills/type gives you a 1 in 10 chance at these schools, whatever they are]

3 auditions at “decent fit and higher acceptance rate” schools where your odds are pretty good, say 1 in 2 (0.5 or 50%)

2 auditions at “solid fit and relatively high acceptance rate” schools where your odds are very good, say 3 in 4 (0.75 or 75%)

Your overall odds of success are not exactly the average of the individual odds but a simple average gives a reasonable estimate for the purposes of our analysis, in this case it turns out your average overall probability would be around 27.5% and the probability of getting at least one acceptance would be approximately 93.5 percent. So, using the approach above looks reasonable. However, you may want to add one additional school to get your odds above 95 percent and the school that you add should be one where your odds are at least 27.5 percent (around 1 in 4). Adding another “lottery school” won’t help your odds much.

It may be that the odds for certain applicants at certain auditions are very close to 100 percent, but that seems unlikely, given the very low number of slots available, the large number of applicants, and the desire for diversity in the entrant pool on the part of schools (they don’t want to have all short, blonde, sopranos). It seems likely that several applicants of the basically the same talent, skills, and type will audition and the school will not choose all of them, no matter how high the level of talent and skill they possess.

Times3 · December 3, 2011, 9:13pm

I asked a college rep this very question–whether at her public university there was any advantage to being in-state for an auditioned program–and she said no, they don’t consider in-state status. I’d guess that this is pretty typical (the state is Virginia, btw).

lojosmo · December 3, 2011, 9:15pm

There are no Michigan residents in the freshman class at UMich.

MichaelNKat · December 4, 2011, 2:23pm

In follow up of austinmom’s post 65, this is a link to a post describing the type of process we used to determine fit from the perspective of my daughter deciding where to audition and later when deciding from among her acceptances. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/477658-preparing-apply-information-h-s-juniors-seniors-27.html?highlight=preparing+to+apply[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/477658-preparing-apply-information-h-s-juniors-seniors-27.html?highlight=preparing+to+apply</a>

And as onstage and others have recounted, my daughter’s list also changed as we went through this process. School’s at the top of her list came off entirely when she concluded they didn’t have what she wanted, schools starting at the bottom of her list jumped tp the top as she learned more about them. It’s a fluid process.

The discussion of the mathematics and statistical analysis by which to construct a model for comprising a list of schools has been fascinating. However, it must be partnered with an exhaustive investigation of programs to assure that the schools on your list are a good fit from the perspective of what the schools are looking for and to assure sufficient diversity, both of which are necessary to maximize the likelihood of an acceptance. It’s this process, not the sheer number of schools to which you apply, that will most impact the outcome.

austinmtmom · December 4, 2011, 5:17pm

Here’s a link directly to MichaelNKat’s great post about fit:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12893004-post405.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12893004-post405.html</a>

tutu17 · December 5, 2011, 7:56am

There are programs out there for students to attend prior to auditioning. They are run by admission counselors from various MT/acting colleges and not only do they prepare the student with monologues, songs etc, that are appropriate for that student BUT they also help the student make realistic choices about which schools to apply to and even if they should apply early action/early decision. The counselors insight and experience can certainly affect the probability quotient. My D had only one choice for early decision and that is where she auditioned and that is where she was accepted.

alwaysamom · December 5, 2011, 10:24am

halflokum makes an excellent point here. There is a relatively small pool of kids who are able and willing to act professionally at this stage of their lives. For many professional shows, it is often very difficult to cast the very few roles in this category with age appropriate actors. These are often cast with older actors who can play young. The other issue that arises with teens who act professionally, or who may have the opportunity to do so, is that many do not want to get their Equity card at that stage. This is a valid concern and should be given considerable thought should the opportunity arise.

ActingDad · December 5, 2011, 11:46am

One further comment on the chasing equity jobs. Kids who are shorter and who can play younger have a huge advantage in that process. My daugther has had a manager for a couple of years and has gotten a few TV roles and commercials. She has also auditioned for a few TV pilots. But she can’t get anywhere close to being considered for any paid stage work musical or otherwise because she’s 5’10 and looks more 17-18 than her 16 year old age. She’s been told her height an look will serve her will when she is older but the roles she can play now have suge a huge pool of 18+ girls who can play them that there is no point to consider someone under 18. This is issue is obviously in play for chasing TV work as well but they seem more open to casting under 18 than the theater does for 16 year old roles. I just throw this out there for anyone thinking about investing energy into chasing this work.

ActingDad · December 5, 2011, 11:55am

Halflokum:

I had to laugh at your how did “he/she do that” comment. We had our first moment coming out of Monsters, Inc. which goes back to however long ago it was the movie cam out. In one viewing, my daughter had captured every aspect of Roz’s voice style and mannerisms and that was when I had the – thats just not normal – moment.

So I do think there is truth to what you say. As a parent, however, I worried for a long time as I kept seeing more things that blew me away that I was perhaps somewhat a victim to parental bias. I feel much better knowing that she’s had her manager, casting directors, college/conservatory faculty (at Stella Adler), and others in the business confirm what I was seeing.

halflokum · December 5, 2011, 2:07pm

ActingDad:

Great story about the “Monsters Inc” moment. Glad that the professional encounters bore out what you already knew in your gut. Parental bias is certainly a risk. You see plenty of it out there and if it isn’t paired with a kid that truly has got it, it does set the kid up for heartbreak down the road. I worried about it too but not any more. At some point you have to trust what you’re seeing.

EmsDad · December 5, 2011, 4:31pm

To use a probabilistic model effectively as part of an audition strategy obviously requires an accurate assessment of the probability of success for a given applicant and a given set of schools. This is obviously difficult to obtain objectively since the whole process is inherently subjective.

I had some fun thinking about it this way (I am always interested in determing whether the “accepted wisdom” is grounded on some solid principles or anecdotal evidence):

People working in human resources management have spent a lot of time and research looking into how people evaluate themselves vs. how others evaluate them. I know that I have attended more than one HR class where it was presented that one of the biggest challenges for a manager is the tendency for lower-performing staff members to overrate themselves (which is one of the reasons that makes them lower-performing). This tendency was apparently identified through research, according to my instructors, who charged a lot of money, so they must be right… I did go look up one such study, “Factors Affecting the Convergence of Self–Peer Ratings on Contextual and Task Performance” by Jennifer L. Mersman and Stewart I. Donaldson that described the following results (apologies to all HR professionals and people who know a whole lot more about this than I do for the naivety of my summary):

<ol>
<li>People who tend to be very accurate in rating themselves on 360 evaluations tend to be high in “self-monitoring” (relatively high situational awareness coupled with the tendency to modify behavior to match the expected “norm” ) and high in “social desirability” (as I read it, in the context of the study, this amounts to more or less a measure of “modesty”). </li>
<li>People who tend to underrate themselves were low in self-monitoring (low situational awareness) and but high in social desirability (“modest”). </li>
<li>People who tend to overrate themselves tended to be low in self-monitoring (low situational awareness) and also low in social desirability (“not very modest”).</li>
</ol>

This fits what some would consider an intuitive model for any self-evaluation process: people who are not “situationally aware” (i.e., unable to objectively evaluate where they stand in the situation) and who are inherently not very “modest” tend to overrate themselves.

One could easily conjecture that many parents would fit this mold in assessing their children’s abilities.

An obvious conclusion might be that soliciting and acting upon assessment from 3rd parties with a high level of ability to determine the probability of success in the audition process seems to be a good thing for parents and auditionees to pursue in order to obtain a realistic probability of success to use, whether intuitively or mathematically. To do so would seem to represent guaranteeing good “situational awareness” in the terms of the study summarized above. Money spent on this process seems to be money well-spent, as long as the feedback is received from evaluators who have the knowledge and experience to provide an accurate assessment of success in the MT audition process for colleges.

Conversely, relying on limited indicators, such as success in a restricted talent pool and/or environment with limited capabilities for accurate assessment might give one a somewhat false sense of security (and a corresponding overestimation of the chances for success). This might represent the dreaded “low situational awareness” and “low modesty” noted in the study.

There are other ways that would seem likely to improve the accuracy of the estimation of the probability of success as mentioned in previous posts, i.e., research into the talents and skills desired/evaluated by individual schools on an applicant’s list compared with the applicants talents/skills, research into the talent pool auditioning at each school, determination of the overall odds of success at each school (the level of competition), etc., etc.

TrueAce · December 5, 2011, 5:41pm

I take issue with this model.

It assumes that since there is a 15% admittance rate average to the top universities in the country (Let’s say HYPSM + Duke, Cal, Darmouth, whatever).

That if ‘the average applicant’ to these schools applied to 6 of them, they would have a very high (>70%) chance at getting into at least one.

In reality, the exact average applicant to these schools (truly the 50th percentile) would not get into ANY of them (assuming only the top 15% of the applicant pool generally get in).

Now yes, those schools have different applicant pools, etc, but given the general concept, you logic is faulty, unless you could somehow “guess” a correct admittance percentage, which seems awfully arbitrary, to be honest, in something as subjective as acting ability.

EmsDad · December 5, 2011, 6:54pm

@TrueAce: I never stated nor implied what you contend. You are not interpreting the OP or subsequent posts correctly. Not every applicant has the same probability of success nor does the “average applicant” (whatever you mean by that) have a probability of success that is the average of the total population. What I did say is that if you stack up evenly in talent/skills/schools against a “typical CC applicant who posts on the acceptance thread” then you could expect the same probability of success as they experienced - and remember, almost all of them gained at least one acceptance.

Using your example, I would say that an applicant with a 15% chance of entry who applies to 6 schools will have a 62.3% chance of gaining at least one admission (not sure where you got the >70 percent from). I would not say that every applicant has a 15% chance of success. Obviously, across the total population attempting to gain entry, if the average probability of success is 15%, then a few will have a very high probability of success, some will have a “middlin’” probability, and many more will have a very low or zero probability. But to figure out how many schools to apply to in order to achieve a specific level of confidence you have to determine the odds for the individual in question based on their metrics.

Within the MT world, you are correct that you have to “guess” (estimate) your own probability of success within the set of schools that you are going to audition for in order for the model to be effective in helping you figure out how many schools you might want to consider auditioning for. It may be hard to estimate, but it exists. The process of researching schools, evaluating your talent based on various metrics of success (“I got the lead in my school show”), looking at the level of competition, etc., that everyone does is a subconscious (or perhaps conscious) process of determining odds of success. The challenge that I have pondered in this thread is, “how might you approach the problem of figuring out your actual odds?”

Flossy · December 5, 2011, 7:53pm

It sounds like the conclusion of all of this is apply to 9-12 schools with a mix of reach, fit, and safety to be sure you get into at least one program. Isn’t that pretty much conventional wisdom? I still think it’s much more an individual process than a numbers game and I’m not sure that getting into just any auditioned BFA should be anyone’s goal. They are not all the same, and some BA’s are far more well-regarded than even some of the most sought after BFA’s. If you just want to be sure that you will have somewhere to go I would strongly suggest that you find a safety you would be happy to attend.

EmsDad · December 6, 2011, 1:26pm

I used “Freaknomics” in the title of this thread for fun (because many people have read the book and find its approach fun and informative) but to be specific my posts have been an attempt to play around the edges of Behavioral Game Theory as it may apply to the MT college audition process. Here is a quote about this somewhat arcane area of computer science and mathematics from the book, “A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature” (John Nash is the title character in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”):

Game theory originated in efforts to understand parlor games like poker and chess, and was first fully formulated as a mathematical tool for describing economic behavior. But in principle, game theory encompasses any situation involving strategic interaction—from playing tennis to waging war. Game theory provides the mathematical means of computing the payoffs to be expected from various possible choices of strategies. So game theory’s math specifies the formulas for making sound decisions in any competitive arena. As such, it is “a tool for investigating the world,” as the economist Herbert Gintis points out. But it is much more than a mere tool. “Game theory is about how people cooperate as much as how they compete,” Gintis writes. “Game theory is about the emergence, transformation, diffusion and stabilization of forms of behavior."

Today, economists continue to use game theory to analyze how people make choices about money. Biologists apply it to scenarios explaining the survival of the fittest or the origin of altruism. Anthropologists play games with people from primitive cultures to reveal the diversity of human nature. And neuroscientists have joined the fun, peering inside the brains of game-playing people to discover how their strategies reflect different motives and emotions.

Game Theory has been applied to the college admissions process in many ways beginning in 1962 with the seminal paper by Gale and Shapely, “College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage.”

“Freakonomics” is a very enlightening read if you are not familiar with the application of mathematics to understand how people make decisions.

In conclusion, let me repeat this quote for emphasis:

Of course, there are many independent and personal considerations involved in any applicant’s approach this complex problem. By looking at the math involved in possibly optimizing the time and effort to be spent in the audition cycle, I do not imply that the entire process can be reduced to a simple set of equations and numbers.

As I stated in the OP, it turns out that, as far as I can tell, the “conventional CC wisdom” appears to be backed up by the available data.

beenthereMTdad · December 6, 2011, 5:52pm

^^^^^^Re POst #90
“halflokum makes an excellent point here. There is a relatively small pool of kids who are able and willing to act professionally at this stage of their lives”.

Every broadway audition I ever witnessed was “PACKED” with kids of all sizes, shapes and ages. Many traveled via car, train and plane to get there.

The biggest problem one faces casting someone under the age of 18 is the added cost to the production. The production company must provide tutors and wranglers (chaperones) to all under aged actors.

halflokum · December 6, 2011, 7:32pm

@beenthereMTdad. That may be true, but it doesn’t change what I said. For every talented kid that is there, there are plenty of talented kids that are not there. And of course there is also equity work that doesn’t have a thing to do with a Broadway call. I have no doubt the turnout for something like that is packed.

How many programs should you audition for? A "Freakonomics" approach

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