@MTisNutz We are in the same boat! My D is also half way through her junior year and I, too, read the 108 pages a few nights ago. I recently approached her with the urgent timeline including multiple essay drafts, ACT/SAT, prescreens and recommenders completed by August…lost her attention immediately. Currently crafting a more subtle approach. PM me if you would like to compare notes/strategies! Honestly, I have been silently following these threads for a few years (I know, I know…don’t ask :D). Congrats to everyone on acceptances thus far and break a leg with upcoming auditions!
@MTisNutz and GeddyMcNutty welcome (officially) to the boards! As a parent in the current cycle, it really isn’t too stressful most of the time :). We are on the more organized front and my daughter finished out her junior year by working hard academically and completing SATs. She was also in multiple dance and acting ventures and enjoyed those along with a part time job and fun times with friends and family. Once the summer was there, she worked on her essays a little in June and then in August. She had the majority of her applications done by the first week in September.
Artistically, she had a consult with Chelsea from MCA in April. This was extremely helpful in targeting her school list and honing in on her rep. She finalized her rep and rehearsed through the summer and filmed prescreens at the end of September. We also have less schools than most and cast a targeted net with a balanced list.
Of course the season has given us ups and downs, but for the most part, it’s been a fun and enjoyable season.
Anyway, hopefully this is helpful in saying the experience doesn’t need to be stress filled most of the time. Also, a coach is there to guide and support your journey, but no one person can get somebody into a school. It sounds as if both of your kiddos have passion and talent and I think you have lots of time to find a good fit for each of them…
Happy New Years to you and BAL.
@Classof23MTmom - In answer to your question- if you did not pass a prescreen for a particular school, it is frowned upon for you to try and do a walk-in. It is not recommended and will not change your original no. On another note- congrats on CWU and PLU! We are from WA as well and have friends that have attended both schools (though we know the most MT kids who attended CWU).
@Classof23MTmom to answer your prescreen question. If one receives a no on a prescreen. Move on. Told by coaches last year it’s frowned upon to try and sign up for walk ins for a school at Unifieds that declined your child’s prescreen already. This scenario has been discussed few months ago on this thread if want more details. Move on & find another “fit” school. A no to a prescreen is a no to the school’s program one sent in a prescreen for. These prescreens are a tough part of the journey. Told by our coaches last year that the MT heads at some schools don’t even review the prescreens. So try not to take a no on a prescreen too much to heart. Our coaches said some schools have Adm Assts or theater grad students or teacher’s aides reviewing prescreens. So “go or stop” on a prescreen can be beyond ones control. It’s someones opinion in the end. Actors will experience this as well in professional world after college. So many great MT programs out there … a no is a yes elsewhere.
Some thoughts for parents w Juniors planning ahead for next year…
When my D was a sophomore, I asked her voice coach when we needed to get started preparing for college auditions. She told me 1 year ahead or more. During Fall or my D’s Junior year, she studied for the SAT. Got a private tutor and studied weekly and did weekly practice tests during the winter leading up to the Winter SAT test. She nailed the test, and got a high score. This completed this important task, eliminated the need to take the test again to get better scores, and set her up to get substantical merit scholarships (some of which she has already been awarded here in her Senior Year). Investing in private SAT tutoring had a huge Return on Investment for us. From what I have seen on the college net price calculators, the SAT/ACT score seems to make more of a difference than grades, though a high GPA is important too to get the highest merit scholarships.
During Winter of her Senior Year we hired Chelsea at MCA to help us plan out the process of applying to colleges and round out a college application list. Sure, we new all the big name fancy schools, but the less well known colleges with great programs we couldn’t figure out on own. Very, very worthwhile investment hiring Chelsea! Got a list of schools and new what to focus on, and what not. Knew which ones were reaches, fits, and safeties.
Next my D and Chelsea worked up a list of possible monologues. My D then refined this with her local voice coach. (FYI she’s applying for BFA Acting, not MT). By end of Spring, she had her monologues picked and was practicing them.
Over the summer she went to a couple of camps and continued to practice and refine her monologues.
By end of summer D started on Common App and reviewing other applications. The applications and the essays turned out to be a constantly growing monster of sorts. At first we thought there was 1 common app essay and a couple other private college essays. By the time D was done with all essays and questions prompts, she probably wrote 40-50 essays/question responses. Some colleges have 5-8 essays and questions when you included their supplemental apps. And often you don’t get to see that until you’ve completed the main app, and they give you access to their acceptd or slideroom supplemental area for performing arts students.
The prescreens we started working on in end of August. We did those ourselves. I am a very skilled with video shooting and editing. But I am not an actor. So I didn’t really know how to coach my D’s performances on screen. We would shoot a number of takes, and then meet with our vocal coach to review a few days later. This was a lot of back and forth over weeks, but we eventually got these done by the end of September. They are not as simple as they might seem. She had 3 different monologues to shoot, and some schools wanted closeups, some wanted 3/4 shots, some wanted full body, some didn’t care, some wanted 1 minute cuts, some wanted 90 second cuts, some wanted the videos uploaded separately, some wanted them edited into one video, some wanted simple introductions, some wanted detailed personal introductions. I had to create matrix of all the shots and edits I needed to make. It was lot of work. By the end of the process I had done this so much with my D that I had learned how to coach her shots, and figured out what to look for in a good take. But that’s after 70 or more takes.
There are some coaches/companies that offer video for prescreens as a service. If this is not your skill set, then hiring one of those might be a great idea. Production value (i.e. how professional it looks) doesn’t matter that much. What does matter is getting a great performance on video that meets all the technical requirements they spec (i.e. time length, slating, etc.). Having a great coach that can be there during the filming would speed things up immensely. I understand Chelsea at MCA offers this, as do the MTCA people. Others probably do too I am sure. We didn’t use Chelsea as she is in Boston and we are in California. And MTCA works with MT kids, and my D did acting. Plus I knew how to do all this, so I thought it would be easier to do it ourselves. Frankly I don’t know which is better… by doing it ourselves, we did get to constantly refine it. Which maybe gave us a better result. Hiring someone else would have gotten it done faster, but I don’t know if that would’ve been better or not, as we would have a time limit on the shooting sessions.
By the end of September, D had all prescreens done, and her main essays and applications done. She applied to a few early action schools. She got accepted to two audition based BFAs and one BA so far with scholarships at all 3. She got declined on 4 of her prescreens with one painful rejection from her first choice school. But we now have a full slate of good audition opportunities coming up here in January and February.
Getting started early is ESSENTIAL if you want to maximize your chances. You should have your college list done early in 2019, get your audition material chosen and start rehearsing it. By summer you need to start preparing to shoot prescreens. August and September are fine to shoot them. But you need to be rehearsing and ready to shoot ahead of that. And to do that you need to know the schools you are applying to and what their specific prescreen requirements are. Then doing all the essays and applications takes time. It’s just a grind. Oh, and we also hired an essay coach through Chelsea at MCA. VERY helpful to have this advice. I am good writer, but knowing what to write about is the key to success with these and I did not know what to write about to advise my kid.
My D has applied to 20+ schools - I have lost track of how many 
Some are BFAs and some are BAs. In March of 2019 she will have some very good choices to pick from with scholarship money.
I know to some people this process seems random or sounds like a “lottery”. That’s not accurate. Preparation and casting a wide net will get you some, possibly many great choices. There is no sure way to get your kid into their top school of choice though. That is where the random element does come in. Many of these programs only take 10-15 kids a year and get hundreds of applications. But if you cast a wide net, and prepare, you can get a few great choices out of it.
@Kkrazie It is so interesting that you say that about who watches the prescreens. I had posted that a while back. It makes you wonder…who is deciding the fate of our kids? Prescreens are the new “game changer”
@artandtechmom @SoCalPops Thank you for all the detail. It will be helpful to shape our approach.
Hello! I would like to add that our experience has been a good one so far, without paying for outside coaches or completing things way in advance. We started organizing in late August, and my daughter submitted the prescreens a few at a time pretty close to the deadlines. She filmed and edited on her phone (I think most kids know enough just from their social media skills). She was not exact with the seconds but close. She passed 9 out of 10, so DIY on the regular timeline is doable too.
@Kkrazie and @Notmath1, it makes me sad that that the actual decision makers do not always view the prescreens when so much is riding on them. We had 6 prescreens and passed 4, and not complaining. You would think that with so many schools adding prescreens, more than Admins or TAs would review and give the ? or ?! We were told during a tour at a “Top 3” school that an Admin reviews the prescreens first! Kind of shocking actually!
As for going it alone or using a national coach, that is a personal decision. We did it on our own and worked on rep with voice coach and monologue coach. Voice coach was a long-term coach so he was very familiar with my son. Monologue coach was over the summer before senior year. Both coaches advised, gave us choices with rep and filmed with us. I filmed on iPad and edited as necessary. There are apps out there where you can crop so film full body and crop as necessary. I also had to film several versions of the slate since schools have many, many different requirements! Very annoying! It’s all over the place — some want the slate with fun facts about yourself, some want just the titles, etc and some want slate individually before each live and not up front! Crazy really!
We started with apps in late August. The Common App essay was mostly done by then because it was a writing assignment for class in junior year. Prompts come out soon for next year, so you can get a head start. Yes. There are many supplements and you don’t know what they are ahead of time but once you have one or two done, you usually can adapt them for the different schools so your not starting from scratch each time. Write them in Word and save them and copy/paste into app or Acceptd/Slideroom.
We’ve had good success going it alone. 6 auditions scheduled in fall cycle (all academically accepted), 5 auditions completed (we withdrew from Hartt after some acceptances) 3 acceptances (2 BFA and 1 BA) including DS’s #1 & 2 choices. Have a bunch more scheduled through March 2 but will probably be eliminating some
While I agree that it can be disheartening to find out that the “decision makers” (i.e. faculty) aren’t necessarily the ones saying yes or no to your child’s prescreen, I want to point out that this is the reality far past college auditions. Your child, when auditioning professionally, won’t always get in front of directors/producers (those who have the power to make a final casting decision) at an initial audition. Not to say that it doesn’t happen, but every professional actor will have the experience of having to pass through ‘gatekeepers’ (interns, associates, casting directors, etc.) while trying to get a job. As with so many of the frustrating things about the college audition process, this is just one of those aspects of the industry that doesn’t go away, and I hope that my mentioning this makes it a little easier to bear as your child encounters it (perhaps for the first time!).
Fabulous, @NYKaren! Just curious - if he’s already into his top 2 schools why is he still applying to other programs? Are you hoping for better aid at the other schools or is he auditioning for practice?
@CaMom13, Thank you! We are stil awaiting the full FA package at one of the 3 he’s been accepted to. I advised him not to cancel everything because we can’t commit to a school until he receives this paperwork. I expect we will receive after the holidays and then accept his #1 choice (or appeal FA). Then he will officially withdraw from everything else. I think he is ready to commit and just enjoy the second half of senior year with this all settled.
I hope it works out - that would be GREAT!
@CanadianMTgirl, I get that it happens in the real world, but it just seems wrong when it is for college. If the department is trying to put together a class based on certain needs that change from year to year, you would hope that they give the Y or N power to someone other than an admin. I would hope that some professors look them over too, if not the department heads. But I realize that my hopes are not often reality, so it’s probably better to be in the dark about how these decisions are made :))
I don’t think the prescreen is addressing the needs of the class. I think it is truly a screening for a certain level of talent to then proceed to the audition phase. An application can be read as a screening at first to see if a student is in the ballpark to a college, and if so, it goes on the pile of apps for admissions officers to read and look at holistically. Likewise, a video prescreen of a performer is simply screening for a certain level of talent, but not looking thoroughly and in depth to make any decision. Those who review a prescreen surely have some knowledge to ascertain a level of talent as a baseline or ballpark to pass or not pass. It is not like a car mechanic is doing the prescreen. 
@soozievt, I’m not sure if that’s always correct (not the car mechanic part. I would hope the janitor or the woodshop guy isn’t reviewing prescreens). I have heard others say that they use the prescreen to get students with the “look” that they want. Also, that doesn’t explain how some uber-talented kids do not pass a single pre-screen. Or how some kids do not pass for some “second tier schools” but pass UMich, CMU etc. If they were just going for a baseline level of talent, most of these kids would be passing all pre-screens. Let’s face it, at this level, all the kids are good!
Thank you @NYYFanNowMTdad! It is exciting and made the 2 “no thank yous” that much easier to swallow.
One more piping in to say we’re also still waiting on USC! (Took a break away from the laptop during the holidays…) Happy 2019, all - wishing everyone all kinds of good things in the upcoming year!
Correction to something SoCalPops said above: MTCA works (and always has) with lots of straight acting kids as well as MTs.
Happy New Year to all!