LA Unifieds or Chicago Unifieds or both?

ashleybashley
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:18:55 +0000

Sopranomtmom – We are from LA, too, but we still decided to do BOTH Chicago and LA Unifieds this year, and it was the right call for us. (We took D out of school for the full week and just let her focus on the auditions. Teachers were notified early of this plan, and they have been good about allowing her time to make everything up.)

Our reasons:

First, we did not want to spend the money (and time out of school) flying from campus to campus. We felt it would be more economical to do all the schools we could at the Unifieds and then, AFTER she had received all of her acceptances, fly only to see those schools she was seriously considering. D’s POV, why see campuses now and possibly fall in love with a school that may not even accept me? And we have been told that campus visits are a much more enlightening experience if you have already been offered a spot; they roll out the red carpet to make sure you see everything. (Of course, if some schools are reasonably local to you, there is no reason not to audition on campus, but that was not the case for us.) In addition, there were 2 schools high on D’s list that only offer on-campus auditions, so we had to fly to those – no choice (Shenandoah and Elon). Needless to say, we could not do any more flying around the country and taking time off of work and school until we had acceptances in hand.

Second, I wanted a “hedge” against illness and/or vocal fatigue, so I was NOT willing to load D up by squeezing every possible school into the LA Unifieds, and take a chance that she could get sick and there would be no other audition dates possible unless we flew to all the campuses. So I scheduled the bulk of her schools (8) for Chicago over the 4-day period (Sunday thru Wed.), and then 4 more schools for LA the following weekend. (BTW - There were schools auditioning in LA Friday thru Monday, although most do only the “official days”, Saturday and/or Sunday. We started off with Hartt on Friday in LA which helped to spread things out a bit.) Since most of D’s Chicago Unifieds’ schools were also coming to LA, this gave us “the hedge” against illness that I wanted; we knew we could possibly reschedule some auditions for later in LA if she got sick in Chicago. Like other parents have described here, we spread out the schools in Chicago by scheduling a few early auditions on the Sunday before the Chicago Unifieds officially began. For example, D did the dance call for Roosevelt CCPA early Sunday morning, then we spent the afternoon (1 to 5 pm) with Syracuse which was not high on D’s list so it was a good one to shake her nerves loose a bit before the higher priority schools. NOTE: D was lucky to have received an acceptance - before Chicago - from a school she really liked so we avoided adding walk-ins (she did 1 on a whim) to ensure she was vocally well-rested for her “higher priority” auditions. That Sunday night, was the Program Overview and dance call for Texas State (6 to 10 pm); this was a callback from the prescreen evaluation phase.

Third, we had 2 schools located in Chicago to tour. We planned to use any free time in Chicago to tour Roosevelt CCPA and Columbia College (BA to BFA program that was her “non-audition safety” and where she had already been accepted). In the end we did not tour Columbia because D had been accepted to Shenandoah.

Finally, neither Rider nor Texas State came to LA Unifieds, and both were high on D’s list.

As it turned out for us, D did not get sick for ANY of her audition days. What a blessing! I think one reason was that we were very careful not to over-schedule her and we tried to minimize her exposure during the weeks prior to auditions. Flu shot was a given, of course, and as much sleep as we could scrape up. You know how busy these kids are. One last thing to keep in mind, when I say that D “auditioned for 8 schools over 4 days in Chicago” that may sound pretty sparse, but in reality that translated to: 8 singing/acting auditions, 7 dance auditions, 1 callback singing audition, 2 vocal health/music theory evaluations, 2 separate interview appointments, and 1 campus tour. Sometimes the “sweaty dance call” ends 20 minutes before the private singing/acting audition so it can get hectic. 8 schools in 4 days was good for us. We could have squeezed in a few more, if necessary, but I am so glad we didn’t have to!

Hope this helps! We JUST finished so the details are still fresh! Excellent results so far!
Best wishes to you and your D!