Advice from an Alum: Scheduling your College Auditions!
September 27, 2019
Written by Songbook Academy 2017-'18 alum, Lucy Breedlove. Lucy hails from Vienna, Virginia and recently graduated from James Madison High School. Lucy will be attending Otterbein University this fall to pursue a BFA in Musical Theatre.
Want to read "Step 1: Choosing Schools" first? Click here.
What about "Step 2: Academic Applications"? Click here.
What about "Step 3: College Pre-Screens"? Click here.
Step 4: Scheduling your College Auditions!
Yay! You finished pre-screens! The next thing you get to do is schedule all of your auditions. Another perk of submitting pre-screens early is that you hear back sooner, which leaves more time for making travel arrangements (your parents will be SO glad). When I talked to a few of my friends we all had different opinions on what we did that worked well and what we would change, but there were a few commonalities:
Don’t schedule the schools that you care the most about as your first fall auditions. Your dream schools will likely change; but it helps to schedule a few auditions at schools that you know are not your absolute top choice, so that you have a chance to work out the kinks and find a routine before the thick of audition season. For me, at least, it made a big difference in my composure, preparation, and attitude. Also, if they have winter auditions, they might be more conservative with who they accept early on (not necessarily, but it’s an interesting thought to keep in mind!).
Start mapping out your auditions early. My mom and I made a big chart early on with all of the possible audition days for each school. It ended up being a life-saver, because we could find out how to fit every audition around the others. Sometimes when you submit the pre-screen they’ll ask you for a preferred audition day, so it might be a good idea to start looking into dates early.
Keep a document with your schedule and what you need to bring with you. This included details from school specific dress codes for the dance calls to how they wanted your sheet music prepared. It served as a final checklist and proved especially useful during unifieds.
Check back next week for some tips on unifieds! In the meantime, check out this website where we found some helpful spreadsheet templates for those of you who are staring at excel or google sheets and feeling lost. These templates are specifically for the college audition process and many of the fields are already filled in.
Disclaimer: Make sure you do your OWN research to pull the most up-to-date audition info for your schools. This is just a template to get started! Click the image below to check it out.
Spreadsheet credit: MacTheatre
