Looking back on the audition season: Celebrations, mistakes and 20/20 is hindsight!

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
1

<p>Hi All, </p>

<pre><code> Now that the audition season is mostly over, I thought it might be fun and informational to share our stories. I use the word “our” because although my D was the one auditioning, the process was difficult for me too. I had to make all of the travel plans, and live in a hotel room with her for several weekends. She’s great, but there were moments…
</code></pre>

<p>What worked well: (For us)

  1. We started the applications early and had them done by Oct.1. This was hard, REALLY hard, but once it was done it was a huge relief and D could focus on the school year, training and auditions.
  2. My D auditioned on campus at all of the schools on her list. We tried to stay two nights if possible. It gave us a chance to meet people in the departments, visit dorms and really get a feel for the whole campus.
  3. While making audition appointments, we always tried to do it when they were doing a show of some kind.
  4. My D worked w/Coach C and Mark. It was very helpful on many levels.
  5. We made appointments to have a massage or facial after each audition.
  6. We read and followed all of the lists that have been posted on “what to bring”, “what to expect” and “where to go”
  7. Travel plans: Buy some good atlas’s or go to a travel agency and get maps, lots and lots of maps. Don’t rely on map quest and make sure that you’ve studied your maps before you leave. It will make life in the car w/ your stressed teenager much nicer.</p>

<p>What didn’t work: (For us)</p>

<p>) Map quest. We missed a couple of important turns due to bad directions and ended up driving way out of our way when we went to Syracuse.
2) I messed up a step while booking our flights to FSU. When we got to the airport, we were not on the flight. We had to buy tickets that day… BIG mistake.
3) My D made a beautiful excel spreadsheet of all of the schools and their requirements. She messed up some how and did not have it down that she needed a classical piece for her BoCo audition. None of her other schools on her list required it and so she blew her audition. Oh well…
4) We scheduled her Hart, Emerson and Bo Co audition all in the same week. This would have been fine, but we had a death in our family and so she missed her opportunity to audition at one of the schoolsall together.
5) D was in four shows at her school this year. The pressure that it put on her was very intense. Her acting coach had suggested that she only do the musical in the spring. I wish she had taken this advise.<br>
6) I allowed crabby admissions and audition schedulers to color my initial impressions of one or two of the schools. Wait until you get there and talk to the MT people before you judge. At one school, the person was really so unpleasant that I wrote to the department head a few days ago.<br>
7) D left her dance bag at home when we went to one of the auditions. Have a list and check it twice or three times before leaving EACH TIME. This happened on audition #7 and it was because neither of us checked our list!</p>

<p>Anyone else?</p>

2

<p>you had a lot of mishaps, it sounds like, despite all your organization!!</p>

<p>well, a few suggestions I have would be:</p>

<p>1) if you can, audition at your #1 school as late in the season as possible…b/c i found out that my auditions only got stronger. by the last one, i was really enjoying myself singing and acting, and i wish my first one had felt that wonderful.
2) work on your monologues WAY in advance. like, NOW. haha
i waited a little too long to start working on them, and it took me longer to get comfortable and really act the pieces.
3) don’t lose your water bottle. this happened to me, and i couldn’t find it after the dance audition…my throat was extremely dry while singing!!
4) bring extra copies of resume/monologue
5) relax and enjoy the audition experience!!! it’s fun!!
~Amy~</p>

3

<p>Sarahsmom:</p>

<p>“5) We made appointments to have a massage or facial after each audition.”</p>

<p>You rock!</p>

4

<p>Hi Sarahsmom42–Thank you so much for sharing!!I know as a junior mom I appreciate you taking the time to list the good and the bad and will heed your advice–Hope there are other CC’s senior parents out there that would like to contribute to this learning process:) Also congrats to all those who have been accepted to MT programs and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of the CC family gets good news down the road!!</p>

5

<p>My most important piece of advice for the kids to follow is most DEFINITELY do your most important auditions last! I got so much better and better and really got into the groove of things after the first few auditons… especially with the dances!</p>

<p>Also, SONG CHOICE IS EVERYTHING. I saw so many girls with inappropriate songs that are very overdone, and you want them to REMEMBER you. BE DIFFERENT!</p>

<p>I’m sure I will think of more ;)</p>

6

<p>Amen, Benzy!</p>

7

<p>A couple of more suggestions:

  1. Set up your schedule of auditions as soon as a school permits. That way you minimize the chances of getting closed out on a date you want and can control the sequencing.
  2. Be aware of which schools are rolling admission. If possible, schedule them earliest. As time goes on, the spots fill and odds fall.
  3. Make a separate audition binder for each school with the right cuts, miscellaneous materials the school wants and info on the audition (like what building it’s in, driving directions, info from the school’s website and this Board about how the audition is run). That way it’s just grab and go knowing you have the right materials with you.
  4. For girls, choose dresses, skirts, wraps etc that are easy to throw over dance tights. Gives you flexibility particularly for those auditions where you don’t know what comes first.</p>
8

<p>More ideas:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Whittle down your list and get those apps in early! It makes the whole year go better…even if it is PAINFUL! D was able to be done with all but 2 apps by the time school started. Now this meant spending our beach vacation writing and rewriting essays…but again it made the school year more smooth!</p></li>
<li><p>Spreadsheets and folders… (I like the binder idea also) I created an excel spreadsheet with all the web info I could find. It got refined and updated all summer as the list was whittled down. I included everything that might matter program , curriculum, SATs, dates - including distance from home (driving) so we knew. As schools were added or dropped I adjusted. It made it easy to get the list to a manageable level and comparisons were easier to do (A PARENT PLUS - I could refer to it and not seem so uninformed!) </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Also,I made folders for each school with a label on the front listing items like: app submitted/fee sent/ counselor forms/ teacher recs/ scores sent/ audition scheduled. I would also include the specs for each school on the front. Each day before we left, I grabbed the folder for the school. This is where we kept all emails , directions, etc so I was pretty sure we had it all. I also had another folder with extra headshots and resumes that came with us.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Whose email? I might suggest getting an email account just for this purpose which you can check if you are scheduling things. It also is helpful if your child needs something a bit more professional to put down (sometimes 2sxy4myshrts is not good to have on an app!)!!! Get a gmail or hotmail or some other free service name. Have access to it and use it only for this purpose. If you and your child agree you can check this, it will help! so many schools do only email confirmations and there were a few cases where I needed to know that things were confirmed ( so I didnt do the mom panic dance!)</p></li>
<li><p>Keep that dance bag packed… and keep the audition clothes and other stuff ready also. THINK about pantyhose!! And dont forget the flying rules on sizes unless they change again!! We only had a few mishaps…none major!</p></li>
<li><p>We did the visit when auditioning unless very local also. Saves $$ but does give you a chance to see the school in action. I think that is a good model (I have no idea of the value of unifieds however as we did not do them!)</p></li>
</ol>

<p>And lastly, as many have said, enjoy the time with your child…appreciate their stress (they wont understand yours but so what!!) …be there for support in case of meltdown and remember it is THEIR moment! Just love them!</p>

<p>MikksMom</p>

9

<p>I asked my daughter to help me compile some tips from her auditioning experiences this year. She auditioned at all schools on campus. We live in Syracuse and were too worried about weather and/or illness in February, so we opted not to do unifieds. I know this is long. I hope it is helpful to the junior parents!

  1. We agree with a lot of what has been said already. One that my daughter didn’t agree with was putting your favorite auditions last. She had some of her favorites first, and would agree that was not the best strategy. However, she felt that although she got more comfortable auditioning as time went on, she was almost TOO comfortable or familiar with her material, particularly the one monologue she used the most, by the time she got to her last few auditions. She felt she did well, but perhaps the material wasn’t as FRESH as it could have been. So her suggestion was to do your favorite schools after you have done several auditions, but if you are doing a lot of auditions, maybe put the favorites in the middle.
  2. Agree completely about getting the applications done early. My daughter had ALL applications finished by the first day of school which for us is right after Labor Day. It made for a stressful end to the summer, but a far LESS stressful school year. And even the stress in the summer wasn’t THAT bad because she didn’t work on the applications for hours every day! She still had plenty of time to relax.
  3. I agree with Sarahsmom,four shows would have been way too stressful. Daughter did a community theater musical from late September to end of October, and her school musical which was the first weekend of March. She did much of her auditioning before Christmas, was able to cancel some due to acceptances, and did four in late January and over February break. I think she would have never survived if she’d tried to do more shows than the two!
  4. Get all SAT and/or ACT testing done during the junior year if at all possible. We started in April with the SAT, immediately followed by the ACT. She felt the ACT was a better test for her (and results bore that out) so she studied for two months almost daily and retook the ACT in June. She improved in all areas to a level we felt was competitive, so she was done. Took a lot of pressure off knowing she wouldn’t have to worry about retaking in the fall.
  5. Agree about the folders for each school. We had a very similar system to Mikksmom, and took the whole folder with us to each audition. Also kept a manila folder in the larger pendaflex folder which had a copy of the actual application, essay, etc. and on the front of that wrote important dates, usernames/passwords for online information, etc.
  6. Computerized audition packing list. We tried to itemized every conceivable thing she might need, as detailed as Fruit breezers, small bottle of o.j., sheet music, each type of dance shoe, etc. then for each audition trip we printed out the list, and checked off each item as it was packed, or as it was purposely NOT packed if it wasn?t needed at that audition (ex. didn’t pack tap shoes if there was NO possibility for tapping?but if we weren’t sure, she packed them, which turned out to be a good thing because at two auditions she was asked to tap if she could, even though it was never mentioned anywhere on any information from the school, so she was prepared). We might have been over prepared, but she was never caught short anywhere.
  7. Extra audition outfit, just in case of emergency. Or in one case she auditioned for three schools in three days, so she used both outfits. Look professional. She chose dress pants with a dressy top or nice sweater for both outfits, others wore dresses or skirts. DO NOT wear jeans, or track pants (yes, we saw kids wearing t-shirts, track pants, etc. yikes).
  8. Orange juice to rejuvenate vocal chords after a dance class. Apple to help with phlegm. Water. Fruit breezers candies, recommended by CoachC! Granola bar or something like it in case you don’t have time to eat much, but need something! She had all of these in her “audition bag” which was a small rolling carry-on bag. Her Dad and I were the “pack mules”. She had a small dance bag, the rolling suitcase, and a garment bag with her audition outfit, if she wasn?t wearing it to the audition (at a couple of schools, the audition was a full day, and she wore a cute, but more casual outfit for the morning activities, then changed to her formal audition clothes later).
  9. Find out as much as you can about the order of the audition before you get there. That will help you know what clothes to wear when, when to warm up, etc… For example, if the dance audition is first, wear your dance clothes under your audition outfit, then you can just take the audition outfit off, dance, then change back into the audition outfit (don’t forget to bring undergarments). If you might have to sing first, warm up in the car or hotel or whatever before you get to the audition site. You might not have any time when you get there!
  10. Daughter put a complete vocal warm-up on her IPod, so she was able to warm up anywhere. She also felt, for her at least, she could focus on her own warm-up and how her voice was feeling without hearing as much of what was going on around her. She also felt, for her, that she DIDN’T want to listen to others warm up if possible, because it only made her more nervous. Too many great voices out there!
  11. Use the first couple of auditions to figure out what works for you! Some kids feel they need to warm up for a long time, others don?t. Some kids need to run their monologues again right before their audition. My daughter didn’t want to think about them that close to the audition time. She needed to take her mind off the audition, visiting with other kids, talking/joking around, etc. with current students when they were around. For another kid, that might make them totally unfocused and would be a disaster. So you really have to figure out what works for YOU!
  12. If you are a female, and a strong dancer, wear a bright colored leotard to help you stand out from the crowd. Some of the dance classes had 40 kids in them, and you WANT to be noticed!
  13. My daughter?s final piece of advice is “Be yourself”. Try to have a good time. Try not to put too much stress on any one audition. Embrace who YOU are, and let the auditors see who YOU are and what makes you unique! And remember that rejections are pretty much inevitable (she knows this from experience), but that if a particular program doesn’t take you, it wasn’t the right program for you! Keep trying! And have a very balanced list which includes at least one safety!
  14. My advice as a parent, to the other parents, is be the support system. My daughter has told us more than once how much she appreciates everything we did to help her. We stayed out of her way when that is what she needed. We tried to think of all the details, so she could focus her energy on her audition experience. We carried things. We tried to remain calm at all times, even if we didn?t feel calm, so SHE could stay calm. Enjoy the time together. I can honestly say, we enjoyed every one of the audition trips, and we traveled a LOT! I’ll miss the time we spent together.
    We are hoping for great results for all our CC friends and acquaintances in the next couple of weeks!! The time has come!! And for the junior parents, YOUR time has come! Start now, if you haven?t already! Begin the preparations! It’s a roller coaster ride you’ll NEVER forget!</p>
10

<p>We always made sure to bring Throat Coat Tea, Shower Soothers and throat lozengers. We visited all the campuses as well, but I do not know that I would do that again. Cost A LOT of money and I think the travel added a little stress to the whole audition process. I know many kids who ended up at great schools through unified auditions. We thought it would be beneficial to audition at each school, but in the end, I really do not think it matters. Live and learn!</p>

11

<p>Oh I just thought of one more thing. Ask for letters of recommendation from two academic teachers and a MT person (daughter used her chorus teacher who also co-directs the school musicals) before the end of junior year. That will help the application to be ready to go in the fall. Our daughter’s school requires these to be sent from the guidance office, so by asking her teachers before the school year ended, they were able to get them done, sent to guidance, and then guidance just made copies when they sent out the applications. If the college had a particular form required of the teacher, we gave them to the teachers when school started in September and then they just had to fill that part out and attach a copy of the letter they had already written. Pretty easy for them. Daughter’s guidance counselor was brand new, and the school really isn’t familiar with this whole MT process, so we just took the reins and made sure things happened when they needed to!</p>

12

<p>Some things that worked for my daughter were:

  1. Getting that application done early and being organized (we also used the folders which worked great!) so that they auditions could be a fun and no-stress experience.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Being reading for anything! Make sure you have that extra monologue and a longer or shorter version of it. Have a well put together book with a variety of vocal options. Even if you are a legit or belter singer, make sure you have some of the other in your book too. At a few of my daughter’s auditions, she was asked to sing something else that was in her book which she wouldn’t have necessarily picked for her audition.</p></li>
<li><p>Try to pick an outfit that doesn’t need to be ironed! My daughter’s dress could be thrown in her dance bag which made it so easy to travel with.</p></li>
<li><p>Try to audition at a rolling admission school or two in the fall. For my daughter this worked out great because she had a couple of acceptances by the holidays and it took a lot of the pressure off of the rest of her auditions.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t give up the school/community shows. My daughter also did 4 shows this school year and although she kept extremely busy, she had such great experiences and loved every minute of them! She did have to give up the dance lessons though this year.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I guess the last note would be mine…for those of you who will be doing this next year, get a group of cc people or other friends who are going through this process to talk to through e-mail, IM or on the phone. It has been the biggest saving grace to me to have a great supportive group of people to chat with every day with what we are all going through! Even my best friend could just not understand all that this entails. It has been a Godsend to be able to meet many of you at auditions and keep me company and to share this experience with. So reach out and e-mail a fellow cc’er. It could make all the difference!</p>

13

<p>Newbies, stock up on printer ink! Print any info on this thread that has been helpful and look through posts by MichaelNKat, Wallyworld, alwaysamom, miksmom, Kaysmom and Ericsmom. (I’m sure there are many others, but these people have been able to write concise posts about this process that I have printed myself, and that have been invaluable to me in this process.)
Good luck!</p>

14

<p>Kaysmom is so right about reaching out! My other friends and family had no clue about what this process was like. My cc friends DID make all the difference!</p>

15

<p>Wow - what a lot of wisdom here. This thread will be invaluable to future cc’ers! Just one more to add - consider getting a GPS. These little gadgets are always up to date since they’re satellite based and when you get off track they immediately recalculate your position and give you a new route. The prices have come way down and if you’re doing a lot of driving are a good investment.</p>

16

<p>I totally agree with what others have said; including reaching out (anybody else notice how many moms named Kathy, Cathy, Kate… are on cc? – Love you gals!) and the Navigation system (double check a real map though too).
Also:

  • We had great luck with Priceline, name your own price. Once I knew where we were going to be I put a bid on 4 star hotels in the area and we were able to stay at great hotels for little money.
  • If you can swing it, order room service breakfast for the morning of the audition, a very nice treat!
  • It seemed to work well for my D to have the steam from the shower on in the morning and I learned to ask for a humidifier from the hotel to combat dryness in the room.
  • Use CC for support but don’t hesitate to take a break from the computer if your stress level is increasing.</p>

<p>Thanks everybody!</p>

17

<p>Several comments:</p>

<p>To evasmom - Thanks for putting the Cathy with a “C” in there! The other 2 appliances which helped my D tremendously were a personal steamer (CoachC’s advice) and I also got a Venta humidifier/air purifier for her room. They are $200 to $300, but after I got that, she didn’t get sick nearly as often.</p>

<p>To Kaysmom - boy are you right about the CC friends. Not only are they great to correspond with via e-mail/phone, but almost every audition there were either one or more (at Unifieds especially) Moms there which gave me someone to socialize with, and very often gave my D someone to go thru the audition with, which was calming and fun for her. Between that and the friends she made at CMU Pre-College (whose Moms became friends of mine through CC!) she really never felt alone.</p>

<p>Especially if you are from a small or rural area like we are, GET AN AUDITION/VOICE COACH! Coach C is one if you are in the correct geographic area. Be sure that they are well versed in the specific MT arena. This is probably the most intensely competitive college process in existence, which we knew, but not clearly enough. If I knew what I know now, my D would have dropped competitive dance a year earlier and we would have used that money to travel for coaching, since it is not available in our area. CMU Pre-College was valuable for her confidence, her audition process knowledge, some acting and voice work, but not enough, and not in the extremely difficult process of selecting monologues and songs. If you have your selections before you attend and take them with you, they can help you with them, but they accept too many (many more last year than they EVER had) to pick material for them.</p>

<p>From what I know now, what they are looking for specifically is in general more voice and dance than acting - although this does vary from school to school. If the school does not emphasize dance as much, it would seem from the auditions that almost anyone can be accepted if they like your singing and acting, and I guess their thought is that they can teach ANYONE to dance (my D is an excellent dancer, and knowing the training involved in that, I would dispute that notion, but MT dancing is a different animal, I guess). If you have a good dancer, don’t count on that to push her in - if her voice is not trained enough, it will not happen. For a guy, it is a total different picture - dancing is not important at all from what we saw and heard.</p>

<p>Check each program carefully in terms of the choices in BFA Acting, BFA MT and BA Theatre majors. With some schools, my D auditioned, or is planning to audition within the next 3 weeks, for BOTH Acting and MT. At some schools, the Acting and MT majors are very similar, and you can supplement the dance and singing with minors/lessons if need be. From some of the recent posts on another thread, maybe the acting training is superior with an Acting major anyway - we do not know. Handling things this way is more complicated, but gives a fallback position if the voice is not strong enough.
Also ask the schools if you can audition for both simultaneously - some schools look at the whole picture, some schools require you to state your desires along those lines, and as I said, some audition separately. My D is going to re-audition at U Arts for BFA Acting, because every year they ask a relative few to do that if they do not make it for BFA MT. This is kindof the way her audition experience is going - she was accepted to PSU for BA Theatre and is going to audition for the dance minor and take voice privately if she decides on that school. </p>

<p>Get to know the person/people in the theatre admissions office if you can. They can be invaluable, and in most cases I have found them to be very nice if you make the effort with them. They KNOW how hard this is!</p>

<p>Audition for a LOT of schools - my D ended up with 11, and as I just said, with some of those she auditioned twice in some fashion. 5, 6, 7 or 8 are not enough unless you are pretty certain that you are FULLY a triple threat or very close to it. It is a fact that many of these kids are trained incredibly well if their family have the resources in time, money and available coaches to do that. Some have been to multiple summers of training - we did not even know these existed till I started reading CC in July of 2005.</p>

<p>Sorry this is so long, but going through this has been crazy and also wonderful in some ways - you will meet great people in general and these kids DO have to be able to accept that this is only the beginning for them of a lot of rejections during their careers, so this can be looked at as a training process. BE RUTHLESSLY ORGANIZED as others have already discussed - check and double-check everything - follow the previous posts and you will be fine. Plan ahead and then enjoy your time with your D or your S - you will always treasure the memories, that I can tell you! Most parents do not get to experience that kind of quality time with their senior children - quite the opposite!</p>

<p>GOOD LUCK!!!</p>

18

<p>On behalf of the HS junior families who are reading this thread, all I can say is: Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!</p>

<p>This is so incredibly helpful, and I am so appreciative to all for sharing these wonderful ideas.</p>

19

<p>I bumped a similar thread from this time last year if you all don’t have enough to read already.;)</p>

20

<p>Coach C can work w/people via web cam and skype so that you don’t have to actually go to her. It was incredibly helpful for my D. She also told us about Vick’s personal steamers. These are absolutely wonderful little devices! They’re cheap (under $20) very small and portable. Hotel rooms are very dry and can be hard on singing voices. Pack one of these babies and spend ten minutes doing some relaxation first thing in the morning… Very helpful even if you don’t have a cold.
I can’t say enough about making sure that you eat well and take extremely good care of yourself during the audition season. Zinc lozenges a couple times a day from Sept-May, lots of vitamin C, water, water, water and was very careful handwashing can make all the difference! What a drag to spend several hundred dollars applying and auditioning at a school only to be sick and blow it.
Recommendation letters: Ask people in May. No kidding.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>