<p>ActingDad, I agree completely. We tried to put the occasional bad (or great) tour leader or the inept admissions department out of our minds. It’s difficult to say what is representative of the school. A second visit, if you get to that point, can help a lot.</p>
<p>But the audition process is something else again. The audition is a department event–most obviously in the presentation, if any, but also in each audition. If a school seems to go out of its way to put its applicants off balance by making them wait in corridors for an hour or more; or takes a third of the total time to hype itself to the students, thereby shortening the audition time for hundreds of applicants; or allows auditors to use what little time is left to lecture the students on what they don’t already know; then I think it’s one indicator of the kind of education you will be getting there.</p>