MT Prescreens/Unifieds-Help

MTisNutz
Sun, 04 Aug 2019 07:18:33 +0000

1. Create a spreadsheet as mentioned. If your son is interested, this should contain a list of minimum 8 schools. If your daughter, probably double or triple that number. The disparity is because the majority of applications are from women while schools have an equal number of slots for men and women.

2. Buy or borrow and read cover-to-cover a book on the college audition process. This will be one of the best (and cheapest) investments you can make in the process.

3. Create an account on getacceptd.com (there is no E between t and d at the end). Populate the “discover me” in order to gain experience with the uploads, editing, etc. features of the site.

4. Create an account on commonapp.org and fill it out, then find the schools on your interest list and add them to your dashboard. You can add/delete schools but not exceed the hard limit of 20. You will find that in addition to about 2/3 of the schools requiring the 650 word common app essay, most schools will have additional short answer or essay questions that you can only see once you add them to your personal list of colleges. These school-specific writing requirements can range from 100-800 words, and some are specific to the music/musical theater track. Most of them center around questions like “why do you want to do this, why do you think you’ll be successful, and why is our school a good fit for you?” This means that a lengthy career goals discussion is a good thing to have your S/D avoid in the common app essay and prepare some general thoughts they can customize for each school in the supplementary questions.

5. Even though about 25 popular schools are participating in a “common prescreen” for the first time this year, that doesn’t mean it’s standardized. In the simplest combination you will need (and we have already submitted these): one contemporary monologue 60-90 seconds, one ballad 60-90 s, a contrasting uptempo 60-90 s (one pre-1970, one after 1970, your choice which is which), (BEWARE: Some schools want the vocal cuts limited to one minute), and a “wild card” which can be a special skill or whatever you want (60 s).

Other schools will require a second monologue 60-90s and differ whether this should be contemporary (1900+), classical (pre-1900) and specifically Shakespeare or specifically NOT Shakespeare, and finally some want the “introduction and why you want to attend our school” video 60s.

If your schools are NOT on the common prescreen their requirements may or may not align with the above, but probably not. Decide on the range of schools you will target and figure out

6. Each school will charge an application fee ($30-80) and often a separate prescreen fee ($50-115). Some will waive them if you have a common app fee waiver, others will not waive the prescreen fee no matter what. You pay the application fee on the common app through cashnet (it’s an automatic redirect) and the prescreen fee either directly on acceptd or sometimes through the school. Some schools will combine the prescreen & application fees in some way.

7. Acceptd is great once you have your videos uploaded. Find a fast internet connection (10Mbps upstream or better) or it will take you 10’s of minutes to hours to upload one mp4 file and you will wind up with at least 4 and probably more like 12-15 files of substantial size on your account.

8. You will have to refer to the websites for the schools that will evaluate a prescreen before you apply (Emerson and Otterbein are the only two which come to mind). Most will only look at your prescreen after you apply or require you to have information derived from the application process in order to submit a prescreen or request a live audition.

9. Start this process ASAP. Once your future star goes back to their senior year, getting them to focus on this process will be like pulling teeth. The hard deadline for most performing arts programs to submit application and prescreens is Dec. 1, 2019. The ones that tend to fill up will do so earlier than that, and they all state that they may run out of audition slots before the deadline and that is not their problem. The good news is that most schools are still not accepting prescreen materials, but they will start any day now.

10. This process is fun, but also stressful. It is a good training ground for keeping a positive mental attitude in the face of uncertainty, imperfection, and rejection. Your S/D will look to you for cues. Good luck and BAL!!