<p>…at Collin College in Plano, TX. I think Unifieds are unlikely for us so this will be her main and maybe only chance for far away schools to see her. (haven’t decided for sure about Unifieds yet…)</p>
<p>What is the venue like, and please tell me anything else about the experience!</p>
<p>I attended NTDA last year. I was called back to quite a few “big” schools, and this caused me to decide to go to Unifieds to audition for them, most of which I ultimately wasn’t accepted to- so just beware that that could happen to you. However, it was where I got passed on to OU to go to their on-campus auditions, and I was accepted to OCU’s BFA Acting program and Sante Fe’s BFA MT through it. Also, some schools asked if you could send in a dance tape and then they’d accept you because they liked your acting and singing. So it has its ups and its downs.</p>
<p>You are held in an auditorium area and brought into a big ballroom where all the schools sit and you sing and then you leave and wait for the results! If I remember correctly there were 2 main groups (morning and afternoon) and at lunch they’d post callbacks for each school from the morning group and then after the afternoon group finished they posted those results. However, if you’re in the morning you can’t really visit the booths of any schools because they are still in auditions so you have to wait around too. There’s no real “advantage”. Then you collect all the schools you were called back to and visit with their representatives.</p>
<p>Only SOME schools accept people off this. Most of the big schools just let you know if they’re interested or not, which is good so you know if you want to waste your time and money to audition for them or not. But, it’s not the entire faculty that goes, so who knows what staff member is on that board and if all the others at the school would want you? So it’s definitely good practice and some people do get call backs, pre-screened to on campus auditions, or other things from it, but there’s almost no final answers at NTDA.</p>
<p>Great info, thanks, Alexa! Weeding out the schools that aren’t interested in her to conserve the resources can’t be a bad thing, and neither is getting some practice in!</p>
<p>D is in the last group; in fact, she’s going to be one of the very last kids to audition the whole day! Trying to make that work for us. ;-)</p>
<p>That really isn’t too terrible! I’m not sure what the policy for signing in this year is, but I don’t think you have to sign in at the beginning at the day so you can get there later and you wont have to wait as long for the results to be posted! :)</p>
<p>I am pretty sure we aren’t expected to sign in at the beginning because I talked to one of the program heads and he knew we were coming from out of town and suggested to me that I request a later slot so he obviously knew we wouldn’t be there at 8 in the morning! Which is a good thing as she has an audition the day before at SFA in Nacgdoches. (not an MT one but it will be her first actual audition! The BFA program there has a fabulous study abroad program, it’s the main appeal) SFA is two hours from home and NTDA is 3 hours from home in the opposite direction so I’m glad they are flexible about when we arrive.</p>
<p>~that hadn’t occured to me about not having to wait so long for results. That might be quite a blessing really!</p>
<p>If SFA is Stephen F. Austin than I have a few friends who I was recently in a show with that have an acting degree from there. Very talented people! Break legs! 
It’s always good to have a warm up audition that you really love the school but isn’t your “top top” one, you know?</p>
<p>And yep! I was in an afternoon group so I only ended up waiting about 2 hours, which wasn’t awful.</p>
<p>Yes, SFA is Stephen F Austin and it was the first school we visited after determining that she should quit pretending she was going to major in something other than theater. It’s almost a safety school. It WAS a safety school when we visited, but over the summer they decided to make auditions for admission to the program where previously they had just been for scholarships. It’s a friendly, medium sized state school in a beautiful little college town and it’s fairly affordable with very good scholarships. I adore the woman in charge of the costume department, she is AWESOME and I don’t think D would have any trouble getting work there. She told us all sorts of very useful tips about applying for the scholarships there.</p>
<p>So I do feel pretty good about it being her first audition; as we know it’s never a slam dunk if it’s an audition, but it’s not going to be anything like OU or TSU (should she be so lucky as to be invited to a call back). It’s not like it doesn’t take focus and work to do a great monologue but it’s got to be at least a bit less stressful than doing a monologue AND singing.</p>
<p>~SFA does not have an MT program but they have a good dance and music program AND their BFA either junior or senior year is an internship/study abroad program for the ENTIRE year - not a few weeks or even one semester. There are domestic choices if you don’t want to go abroad including Minnesota Guthrie (!!) among several other prestigious regional programs, but if you go abroad, it’s a whole semester in the UK and then a whole semester in Spain ~at SFA tuition prices! ~ and they do have some fin aid for travel and other expense. KILLER. As study abroad is one of the most exciting prospects about college for D, it is a big plus for this particular school.</p>
<p>It’s funny how every school has that one unique thing about it that makes it so exciting but that none of the others have. If she gets several good offers from schools with very different advantages it might be a difficult choice!</p>
<p>Any choice is often a good choice! I hope that your daughter does extremely well with her auditions but, in a competitive major like this, just having choices at the end of the year is a blessing. Some people will not be accepted at all or only to one or two places. It’s beautiful that you can see the positives in a lot of schools, and it will be good when it comes to making a final decision!</p>
<p>I am almost afraid to say this but it would almost be a blessing to only get a couple (though REALLY GOOD) offers, and that way not have to agonize so much over deciding.</p>
<p>Though having to agonize over deciding about too many good offers is the kind of problem I don’t think is a bad thing to have…</p>
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<p>I’m not sure that this is a good way to determine what auditions to do. Unless you are positive that you cannot attend Unifieds, I have never seen the real benefit of attending auditions like this. As far as I know, the vast majority do not make offers based on these auditions. Some invite you to attend on campus auditions, but you can sign up for those without having attended NTDA. Is this what you’re referring to when you mention callbacks? I guess I just don’t see the point, as this seems like an unnecessary step in the process if you’re not getting an actual offer. Unifieds is a much better and productive venue for auditions. Many schools also hold regional auditions which are similar to Unifieds in that the entire purpose is to make a decision as to an offer or not.</p>
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<p>Which of those schools make offers solely based on the NTDA audition?</p>
<p>As you can see from her posts, my D (AlexaMT) attended NTDA last year and did receive offers from several of the schools there. Millikin accepter her for the BFA Acting program and told her she could send in a dance tape if she wanted to go for the MT major. She was accepted to Santa Fe University of Art and Design (was the College of Santa Fe) MT program and OCU BFA Acting directly from NTDA. She received a number of other acceptances to less well known MT programs directly from NTDA. And you have to receive an invtiation to audition on campus at OU, which she receved from NTDA as well. She had fun and felt like it was well worth the day off from school and the 3 1/2 hour drive.</p>
<p>Not everyone can afford to go to Unifieds. And even if you can, auditions like NTDA can be great practice for Unifieds or on campus auditions. Alexa received some really good feedback at the callbacks which can also be helpful in preparing for future auditions. snapdragonfly is in the north Texas area so why not go? </p>
<p>And on a final note - not everyone who wants to study musical theatre in college is going to get in to one of the “big” programs. Or they needs lots of merit aid so they really need to cast a wide net. So why not go to some place like NTDA and get accepted to Northwestern State in Louisiana or Southeastern Oklahoma State or Nebraska Wesleyan and perhaps get to pursue their dream major in college.</p>
<p>austinmtmom, that’s pretty much exactly it. At least six of the schools she is very interested in are going to be at NTDA and they all told us (because we did ask) that it can’t hurt and most likely would help for them to see her at NTDA even if they are going to also see her on campus. You are not the only person who has told us they did get offers at the end of the day. (Nobody is sure exactly how the schools can do that, apparently, but somehow they do!) And also in the case of OU MT and TSU MT (her top two pleasepleaseplease dream schools) it is required that they see you FIRST either at NTDA or another regional audition, or via DVD, and then be invited to audition on site. NTDA is two months before TETA (the other big Texas audition) and OU admits on a rolling basis and when I spoke with them the other day, they said they have already filled some slots from their early fall audition dates. So going there next week is hella better than waiting for January unifieds if OU is a top pick.</p>
<p>NTDA is a three hour drive away. The closest Unified to us in Chicago is a 16 hour drive and would entail considerable expense, and at this point, it would mean having to sacrifice something else as there is a finite budget for this process and the something sacrificed would be voice or monologue coaching, or on site visits and auditions to schools where she has a pretty decent chance of getting in.</p>
<p>The east coast and northern schools are really a reach for us cost wise, and we decided at the very beginning of this process that we would be limiting our financial reach schools to just a few in order to concentrate our resources on actually getting into the schools she has a shot at being able to afford (we also are dead set against loans) Texas State University is in her own backyard and is in state tuition and so are a couple other really excellent programs; there are also some regional private schools who are generous with scholarships. We just think she’s better off really busting her butt to do a fabulous job of auditioning at the dozen and a half schools in our region rather than spending money visiting schools that are so very far away, and having that much less to spend on coaching and other related expenses.</p>
<p>snapdragonfly - Break a leg wishes to your D! Hope she has a great day at NTDA.</p>
<p>Break legs to all the kids at NTDA! Hope it is a call back frenzy!</p>
<p>Well, we made it home in one piece which I consider an accomplishment on it’s own. I’m just about so tired I swore the numbers on the Garmin were upside down once or twice and I bet I have dreams about swimming through an ocean full of seaweed that looks exactly like orange traffic cones. </p>
<p>I’d like to say she got offered full rides at all the prestigious schools who were there - which I can’t, because she wasn’t - but she did get some nice call backs, some from schools she was unfamiliar with (but they sounded pretty good when she visited their booths) and some from schools she did know of, and one was from a school on her want list so that’s nice. There are a couple scholarshp offers too. So - we didn’t get any out of the blue, amazing, shocking, lottery winning type news, but also, it was her second audition ever, and her first big one, and her first one to sing. And she’s had SO little experience and polishing compared to some who are fortunate to live in areas with access to more resources than are available to us. So overall - I’m very proud of her. She feels she did well, she did her pieces the way she intended to; she didn’t croak, faint, forget her lines, trip over her feet, burp, or run her hose, so that’s a win in our book. </p>
<p>Mainly it was just kind of overwhelming and I think the most valuable part of it was learning just how the casual interview can kind of leave you stunned - some of them asked questions that had absolutely never occurred to her, but she’s thinking now and I bet it makes a big difference. She did start to get more comfortable with asking questions. </p>
<p>I held my tongue except for just once or twice when she omitted information that I knew would be significant. 
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<p>Overall it was a real eye opener. There were certainly a lot of talented kids there.</p>
<p>Now to just get through Hairspray, her last ACT, her 7th semester, tying up the odds and ends for her applications, and then steeling herself for when auditions start in earnest.</p>
<p>Congrats to your D and to you snapdragonfly! Sounds like a good experience for her, And yay! for call backs and for scholarship offers!! Best of luck with all that is left to come.</p>
<p>What a great experience for your daughter! We’re from Oregon and so won’t have a large experience like that to benefit from, aside from mock auditions that my daughter’s coach holds, and the interview questions raise my curiosity.</p>
<p>Is there a possibility you or your daughter could make a list of the questions she was asked? Might get all our kids to thinking!</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that it was a good experience for your D, snapdragonfly. I think we’d all be interested to hear what kinds of interview questions stunned her. They tend to be fairly innocuous and of a relatively standard type, so this year’s applicants might be interested to know if some schools are veering off-type. Am I misunderstanding your comment about holding your tongue, or were you present for the interviews? Has the experience there influenced your D’s decision as to whether or not to attend Unifieds?</p>
<p>You know, I am not sure why the questions stunned her because they weren’t ridiculous or odd in any way - quite what you might expect if you thought about it - but I think there is a huge difference between doing practice interview role playing with her acting coach who she loves and trusts and feels safe with, or with me, and these intimidating REAL schools, especially after a scary and new experience and 10 hours of road time in the past 36 hours.</p>
<p>I’ll add more to this post as I think of them. Yes I was there, but I really didn’t want to answer for her because first of all Soozie and others have said it’s really best if they speak, and I agree, and also, if I speak for her she won’t learn to. I DID speak up when I knew there was a good answer that she was just simply too overwhelmed to remember.</p>
<p>Let’s see. If they called her back and she’d never contacted the school before they didn’t expect her to know about the school and were happy to tell her about it: but one thing she did, because the girl at the Welcome center suggested that it was okay to do this, is she approached a couple of schools that were on our list that did not call her back (when they had nobody else sitting there) and said, “hey, she didn’t actually get a callback, but she is interested in your school, would you mind talking to her” and they said “sure!” (the girl had told us some of them would be like, If we wanted to talk to you we’d have called you back, and others would be happy to. Nothing to lose by asking.)</p>
<p>In those cases they wanted to know exactly why she was interested in that school, and she had to fumble around to remember what that was because the truth is, none of the schools stick in her mind real clearly until she visits them. We have a list and all of the schools on it are schools that she has looked at their online info and thought it might be a good match for her, but except for one or two, if she hadn’t visited, it was hard for her to remember the specifics. It’s like they are in her mind as “schools I know from the visit”, “schools I know about even though I haven’t visited”, and “schools that are on my list that I liked but now I can’t remember why.”</p>
<p>It’s that third category I would suggest working on.</p>
<p>(part of this is because she has NOT had time to prepare for this as much as would have been ideal…she’s barely had time to shower…)</p>
<p>She did approach one of the only-takes-ten-kids-a-year schools and asked if she could visit and they were very nice. The reason she was interested in this school was specifically because her coach told her she thought it would be a good fit, the reason being that D has a lot of dance and this particular school is very big on dance. So they asked her about her dance and I could tell whenever they liked her answers because their ears all pricked up like cats and their eyes flashed. They liked that she could tell them which school of ballet theory they used. They asked what her strength was and that is an answer that is hard for her to say, in a way, because it’s hard to evaluate your own self: it’s not that she wouldn’t expect that question but I don’t know if she’s really figured that out yet.</p>
<p>So I would suggest knowing that. Maybe she should ask her school’s director, “hey, how would YOU answer that about me?”</p>
<p>Another question they asked her that she has been asked before and again, it’s hard for her to say, is “do you think you are a singer who acts, an actor who sings, a dancer who acts,” etc etc. I mean, she did answer that, but I think she needs to really analyze and just be a lot more sure of why she thinks what she does.</p>
<p>A question that really threw her because she just doesn’t have a good answer for it really, is, “what else is in your repertoire?” (we think they didn’t like her song selection, because when she finally found her tongue, they seemed to like the ones she listed better than what she did.) But you see, she doesn’t have this nice little notebook of two dozen Broadway songs she’s done because her drama teacher only finally just THIS year gave her a leading role with a song (because she wouldn’t give her any big roles at all until she practically quit dance, because her teacher thinks dance is a waste of her time, which, don’t get me started) and though she’s had voice lessons for 4 years, she only JUST this past year decided to quit pretending that she was going to do anything other than theater; so most of the songs she’s learned have been popular songs, not Broadway.
And apparently the few Broadway she did learn on her own, were wrong. She told them she had done “Maybe this time” and they tactfully said that was quite an interesting choice. I think she was just intimidated to say “well, I’ve done “lullaby” by Billy Joel and “a Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton.” If they didn’t like that she did “Maybe This time” they’d probably have hated those. (maybe - or maybe not - that is something else she needs to be more confident about.) But see - what does that have to do with her potential to learn how to sing well? All her song choices mean is that she hadn’t had the fortune to have run across someone, anyone, tell her what was “wrong” and “right” to sing yet, and that’s hardly her fault. As soon as she did discover there were “rules” she started learning them. Maybe I am misinterpreting their reactions - I don’t know. </p>
<p>But I would be really well prepared to explain any odd choices of repertoire if you don’t happen to have a big list of vetted Broadway songs.</p>
<p>What we wanted to say was something to the effect of, “look, we are fully aware that she’s not much more than a rube who fell off the turnip truck out here in a podunk nothing town that cares for nothing except football, who has to skype with her coaches from New York because there is nobody within a two hour drive of us who knows the first thing about any of this, okay? We KNOW she must seem horribly backwoods to you, because, she is! She knows NOTHING except what her coaches have taught her starting in August! But she’s so hardworking and she’s fought so hard to acquire the teaching she has gotten and she WANTS to learn everything you will teach her, really really really she does!!!” I mean, it’s as simple as that for us. She didn’t know any better. Now she does and is working as hard as she can to catch up.</p>
<p>But, she was just too dazed to articulate all that, and I don’t even know if that would have been the right thing to say or not. But really it’s the truth. Thank GOD we did get her coaching because she does feel she did well and obviously she did do well because some schools did call her back. So nothing to be ashamed of at all…but she started from behind compared to a lot of kids and she is fully aware of this. But you can’t really go in saying that. It sounds bad.</p>
<p>So I guess you need to really know who you are when they ask you “who are you” and that is not always an easy thing to do.</p>
<p>I’ll post more questions as I remember them. She and I will discuss it more as soon as she recovers. </p>
<p>:-)</p>
<p>I’m sort of pouring my heart out here so please excuse if anything I say doesn’t sound exactly professional. But you all know how this field can be and how it can yank your heart around - that’s part of it and the kids (and we) have to know that’s part of it and take it all in stride. We did get some WONDERFUL advice and information from everyone we talked to. Everyone, even the school who was surprised at her music choices was nothing but kind, supportive, helpful, and encouraging, and I’m not just saying that, they really were. I really felt like they were all searching as hard as they could for a reason to call back, rather than a reason not to. IF, you could get their attention. I think just standing out from 220 kids is a big part of it in this kind of experience, maybe bigger than we realize sometimes. I don’t know how they managed to stay focused from 8 in the morning until almost 5 on all those kids one after another - I am in total awe of the auditioners. As hard as it was for us, it must be insanely grueling for them, and I expect it’s their training and years of experience that lets them carry it off with the grace they do.</p>