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It is a mystery to anyone outside the industry why drama schools routinely charge auditionees for the privilege (usually) of being rejected – and that everyone simply accepts this practice as the way things are done.
After all, an audition is only a specialised form of interview. If they interview prospective students, other sorts of higher education provider do not charge the applicants – and many of them are pretty incredulous when you tell them that this is the modus operandi in performing arts and that a keen applicant who auditions in several colleges can spend a substantial three figure sum.
Now, this is not a loaded question because I really don’t know the answer. Will someone please tell me why it has become established practice to charge potential students for auditioning and what the reasoning behind it is?
A few observations and a bit of speculation while I wait to have it explained to me.
Surely if you pay money for the audition experience you should at the very least get some decent feedback? My discussions with students indicate that, far too often you’re told nothing if you’re rejected
First, if the reason is that running auditions ties up costly staff and premises then how does that differ from any other form of higher education? Seeing and assessing potential students always ties up resources and although many, universities for example, don’t interview most students but rely on the written applications, there are plenty which do. But they don’t charge.
Second, could it be the numbers game? Major drama schools get thousands of applications and audition large numbers of students. I’d be very interested to see the figures. How much does it cost exactly to run a day’s auditions compared with the charges received from the students? Could there – let me spell it out – be a profit in this for the school? If it isn’t that, then why don’t the schools cap the numbers they audition to save time, money, effort and disappointment for all concerned?
Third, even if we accept that this is a perfectly reasonable way of working, do the students get value for money when they pay for drama school auditions? I hear upbeat stories from happy students about very enjoyable, formative all-day auditions with workshops and so on. But I also hear hair-raising accounts of schools which start rejecting and dismissing auditionees very early in the day. How can it be fair to travel to, say, London, from, say, Manchester, at your own expense only to be ‘eliminated’ in the first hour?
Fourth, surely if you pay money for the audition experience you should at the very least get some decent feedback – whether or not you are offered a place? My discussions with students indicate that, far too often you’re told nothing if you’re rejected.
I wonder if the performing arts training industry could use a stringent code of practice for student auditions to ensure standards? Yet another job for DramaUK?
Meanwhile I’d be really grateful for some answers and comments both from schools and from auditionees. Put me straight please, why don’t you?
Jobs & Auditions
Comments 36 comments
One argument you have not looked at is funding for drama schools. Many drama schools in the UK get little or no funding from the government, in which case, the audition fee is a form of generating income to sustain the school.Report comment
I do agree somewhat with the statement made that for your money you should be offered some form of feedback, notes are made in the room so there’s obviously going to be some useful information written down, even if it is, should never act again. At least those people would then know and possibly not try again the next year…oh wait. So that’s why….Report comment
We agree that an audition should be value for money and no matter how large we got we would never make a student sing 32 bars and then send them home. Our audition is always a full day of ballet jazz , singing, monologues, interviews and often all auditionees get feedback and advice on the day. All our auditionees love their time at PPA and often this is why they accept a place here. It also takes a full day to really get to know a potential student and vice versa. We charge but that covers all teaching costs as we audition on a Sunday.Report comment
As the Principal of The MTA (currently The Stage School of the Year….have to get that in when there’s only a month of the title left!) we run our audition days at a loss, however we do charge the standard going rate of £40. Our auditionees are guaranteed a full days audition where they get to show us all 3 disciplines. They get to audition in front of 4 of the senior faculty and work with them throughout the day so that both parties can get a ‘feel’ for each other and see if it ‘fits’. We only ever audition 22 on any given day as to be honest we couldn’t get to know that many more within the timeframe, and give every auditionee a good experience. We also give EVERY auditionee written feedback on the day, whether they are accepted or not – after all £40 is alot of money and we want them to have something tangible out of it. Unusually we also cap the number of audition days we will run – neither myself nor my senior faculty want to spend weeks auditioning thousands of people when we have a college full of students that need our attention. The point of our audition process is simply to find the right 22 people that will work well within The MTA Way…we are confident that we can do that and cap the numbers. The fact that 100% of our graduates have gained agent representation on leaving college and throughout this year at any given point 75% of our graduates were in paid acting work….demonstrates that our audition process seems to be working just fine for us. Just in case we get complacent though all of our auditionees are asked to complete a questionnaire (anonymously of course) on the day – the questions include whether they have enjoyed the day, whether they felt that they had received their monies worth, and whether they were treated as an individual. We are about to enter our 4th year of auditions and to date we’ve had 100% positive feedback via the questionnaires.Report comment
Central’s new fee for acting applicants – £60…Report comment
I think Annemarie’s comment makes perfect sense; I’d hope most/all decent schools would write back like hers does. I’d add that, with acting being a career fancied by far more than are suitable for it, a fee will prevent a lot of people from auditioning out of a whim. Even with the fee, there’s a lot of people who haven’t thought it through properly.Report comment
Unlike universities, the vast majority of drama school tutors are freelance and charge for their time by the hour. A Uni can have interviews etc a part of a job description for a faculty member on a salary, which is harder for us to do. Here at Read Dance and Theatre College our fee of £35 reflects the small number of students we like to have in each round so we can pay great attention to them, talk to them, answer their questions and clearly assess their potential for training. They are in for a minimum of 4 hours and the auditions are class-work based in ballet, jazz and acting so they get tuition and personal attention from the college directors for about £9 per hour which we think is pretty good value for money. If the fee were cut then we would have to show horn folks into much bigger rounds of auditions which would be no good to anyone!Report comment
The situation is even worse in the case of Music Colleges. The Royal Academy of Music charges £90 for an audition. The Royal College charges the same, and specifically says ” The fee covers the cost of administering your audition/interview”. The Guildhall charges £90 to music and £60 to drama applicants. It should be noted that in many cases, applicants for music college will have a 15-20 minute audition only. It is true that the services of an accompanist are required (but typical rates might be £30-£35 an hour); external panel members will need to paid, but many will be faculty members and this work included in their basic duties. I have always assumed that the fee is there to discourage frivolous applicants, and above all to make a profit.Report comment
Perhaps independent drama schools do need to charge. It strikes me as outrageous that institutions like Central, with massive government funding and many contracted faculty, are still charging though. Those institutions that are part of a University with government funding (eg: Central, E15) should not be allowed to charge. Not only because making a profit from applicants is immoral, but also because it undermines any nod to equal opportunities that the university will undoubtedly have. Even applying for a means tested waiver risks students having to climb another hurdle to be auditioned.
At Mountview we charge £35 for an audition and cap audition numbers at 1000 for acting and 2000 for musical theatre. Our acting auditions are a full day process including two workshops, full Q&A session and the audition. Musical Theatre auditionees get a full morning, with those called back getting a whole day. Audition places are currently available for spring 2013.Report comment
At a private college, charging for auditions makes sense in as much as the fees their current students are paying go towards the current students’ training rather than funding the audition days. (I still don’t think the auditionees should be paying for the privilege but until the schools find a way to fund it themselves it’s a necessary evil). It’s the ‘university adopted’ drama schools that seem particularly unfair here. I don’t know about the intricacies of funding etc but I would guess that these schools are more able to subsidise the costs and the auditionee fees are extortionate because you pay twice! It’s very galling to go through UCAS or CUKAS and pay an ‘application’ fee there, then receive a letter from the drama school asking for the audition fee. The initial fee may not actually reach the institution you’re auditioning for but they still choose to use these systems and then their own on top? Some are better than others and it’s a simple e-mail with a date selection and payment link but when you get sent forms and payment details from the college to send back before actually getting an audition date which you then need to confirm… Why bother with the umbrella system in the first place? The argument about it deterring people who audition ‘on a whim’ is, I think, a little odd – in terms of going for any one school, I don’t think it’s so steep an amount that it would put them off auditioning when the application forms and prepping pieces and actually attending the audition don’t. It may well force people to select from within the Accredited Courses list rather than just casting the net over those ‘safe’ schools though.Report comment
I am a recent drama school graduate and like all my peers ‘did the rounds’ when auditioning. In fact as I was unsuccessful my first 2 years so I went through this process 3 times. Originally from Glasgow I had to pay the cost of a return train/bus, all my audition fees, travel around London and sometimes overnight stay. One re-call in particular was held over a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, with no choice but to stay overnight, and it could easily have been held in one day. For the audition fee paid I was often cut within an hour or so, without the feeling that I had shown anybody what I was capable of. I received no feedback whatsoever, no advice on how I should proceed.
Of course auditions cost money and charges need to be there. It is my opinion however that if you are asking for money that something should be given in return, and every effort should be made to make it as cost-effective as possible for the auditionees. The thought of schools actually making a profit from this process (and I’m well aware it happens) is sickening.
At an audition you need to be there long enough to lose your nerves and show the panel what you are capable of. You also need the opportunity to audition the school, as it were. Why should a school assume they are right for you? And you need to receive value for money; workshops, proper feedback.
Perhaps this is why The MTA is School of the Year?Report comment
Pandy – the explanation from GSA about the notes written in the room was that ‘the notes are for us’, the implication being that they may be unhelpful as currently only the one writing makes use of them and writes accordingly. Should the panel write them knowing the auditionee would read them after, it may influence their notes to make them become a teaching aid rather than assessing suitability for the course. The former may be fairer if the truth of the notes is ‘can’t consider her this year, she’s a spitting copy of our current first year’ but I can understand that the latter may interrupt the panel’s job in the moment. Writing feedback notes afterwards using the’room notes’ would be best but is an additional task that some schools clearly don’t feel obligated to provide and see as separate from the audition. (As an aside, GSA told me in my audition last year that our feedback equivalent was the opportunity to watch and learn from the other auditionees perform to the panel and, to be fair, this can be an extremely helpful process when the recalls are on the day.)Report comment
As an auditionee from this year, I spent over 400 pounds on the number of auditions I did all over London for entry in October. Various institutions (that shall not be named), were perfectly happy to take 60 quid from me, and have me in the audition room for a total of 90-120 seconds . This was followed, at one particular institution by an “interview” with the admin staff. I find it hard to believe that the admissions staff, however qualified at their jobs, could have made an educated decision as to whether I was right for the “acting” course or not. At another school, I waited 5 and a half hours in the canteen for the privilege of 90 seconds with the audition panel. The drama school I ended up choosing gave me full and detailed feedback, and my audition was for the whole day – they knew my name after 40 minutes, and continued to refer to me by it (as oppose to “number 243″) – and this was definitely a factor in me choosing to go there. There is a lot to be said for treating auditionees as adults – as people not just numbers on a page, and with respect. If only I’d kept my 380 quid and just auditioned at my chosen school, I’d have less fundraising to do for my fees!Report comment
This is certainly an issue that needs addressing. I was a freelance panellist for several drama schools in the ’90s – and paid a (moderate but reasonable) fee for each attendance. I did some rough calculations and worked out that – then – all 5 schools were losing money through time spent on their audition processes. I have never told the schools concerned of my financial conclusions.
Since 2006, I’ve been doing periodic surveys of the details of drama school applications. The most shocking part is the increase & wide variation in audition fees. In my last survey in early October ALRA, ArtsEd, GSA, Man. Met. Mountview & Oxford were the cheapest: RADA & LAMDA the most expensive – although the latter offered a significantly lower rate for online applications.
I hope that this adds fuel to the debate and I’ll be updating my survey in the New Year.
SimonReport comment
I’m intrigued by your comment Simon – how on earth are the larger colleges losing money on auditions when they audition students in such large batches? As Matthew says above Mountview cap their auditions at 3000(between the acting and MT courses) thereby giving them an income of £105,000 on auditions alone! Whilst I appreciate that Matthew isn’t claiming to be running these at a loss – I know that other high profile CDS colleges deal with similar numbers. If they are running at a loss it is bad management. I also have a query – if students apply through UCAS do they also have to pay an additional audition fee as well?Report comment
Hi Annemarie- re: UCAS and CUKAS- yes, at least I did last year.Report comment
Thanks Sarah – I didn’t realise that you had to essentially pay twice to apply.Report comment
Yes – it’s ridiculous! I also think it’s quite unfair that some schools will charge you twice for auditioning for multiple courses when it just doesn’t seem necessary. I had two separate auditions and two fees for MA and BA Acting courses at one school where the audition preparation requirements were the same, as was half the panel. I understand specific staff members may have to make the ultimate decision on you but both courses had recalls to make this possible at a later date.Report comment
Dear Annemarie
I used the past tense, “were” for my ‘losing money’ calculation. I did it in the mid-1990s when audition fees were (as I vaguely remember) around £10-£15. Unfortunately I have no records to verify this – just a memory of doing that back of an envelope calculation in about 1996. [I also seem to remember that there were far fewer applicants at that time.] Audition fees started rising radically about 10 years ago, but my detailed records only date back to 2008 (for my “Actors’ Yearbook”) – and only include drama schools with ‘accredited’ courses.
I’ve just done some random rechecking and it seems that Guildhall now has the highest fee at £60. Which means that fees (for ‘accredited’ courses) currently range between £35 & £60 (plus UCAS/CUKAS fees where appropriate).
All the best,
SimonReport comment
A correction to my previous post: I only started recording application/audition fees in 2010. I suspect that I’d been thinking about researching these for much longer…. “Between the idea and the action lies the shadow” – a rough quote from the very great, T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”.Report comment
Hi Simon
Interesting how the prices shot up along with the numbers isn’t it? Thanks for the clarification though. Here’s hoping that Drama UK (or whatever it’s called) starts adding all these facts to their new website (whenever it’s finished) so that applicants can make an informed decision as to a) Where they’d get the best training and b) Where they’d get the most fair audition. Speaking of which I wonder if Drama UK will launch soon?Report comment
I guess it’s looking at the schools audition fees and what is particularly offered. Can they all say that they are truly just looking for talent, it’s a shame it can’t be the case anymore. If you’re not exactly “well off” and don’t get a scholarship you can’t attend so someone less talented with more money perhaps gets a place. At musical theatre auditions for me, Mountview, Arts Ed and GSA all charged £35 for the audition. The differences: Arts Ed – a good dance class but just 32 bars of singing (it was clear they just wanted people with a “look”) & they obnoxiously claimed they were the “best musical theatre school” HATED IT. GSA – £35 for 32 bars of a song & then BYE BYE for 1st round… How ridiculous. Then Mountview, they were incredibly friendly, didn’t try and boast about their status and were just down to earth. They made clear that they were rooting for us to do well and in the first round was a great dance class, I got to sing a WHOLE song & in the recall sang another whole song, two monologues and not at any point was sitting around doing nothing. The day was nearly 8 hours long and there were 120 auditionees nearly. Mountview was brilliant and great value for money & what an amazing school!Report comment
A friend had to correct the information concerning the audition planned programe more than once. This was Trinity and it cost an extra ‘rip-off’ cukas fee on top. The head of audition panel didn’t even remain in room and dance teacher was very odd in terms of giving very unclear instructons. They obviously wanted ‘A’ level music ad did not like the Btec but were not honest. What they thought they were looking for all for a poultry foundation degree was a joke! These situations are confused, they treat students with contempt, are affronted when one asks for feedback then make you request it at least twice. These auditions should be ‘policed’ as they are bordering on dishonesty! Our friends went off to Central and witnessed foreign students get through the first rouns when they couldn’t even recite their monologues. Evryone came back to college wit a similar story so it was happening all of the time. GSA DIDN’T even have the correct application form and were clearly bored with listening people perform their sons. Their ACTING audition asked auditiones to embody an egg at the same time as watching a football match working as a team! They charge good money for all of thios utter nonsence? The only superb auditions in terms of being able to show one’s potential and aptitude for training were PPA and ALRA. PPA called back my riend and said they felt she had fa more immediate potential as an actress when she had spent a day with them earlier for ‘MT’. They were all lovely, honest, genuinely interested professionals and that can be said for ALRA personnel too. Now GSA are benefitting from funding from Surrey University they should be watched as their methods are ‘unusual’ in terms of their whole process. They also never phone back when one leaves a message. The giovernment claim Hefce funding will no longer applies to such courses yet their latest prospectus boasts hefce funding. Their own administration office did not understand how Hefce as quoted on their own website actually applied to GSA which is somewhat telling!Also now these schools are offering their own Foundation courses with absolutely NO guarantee of a place on a three-year course it is even harder to know whether there is actually any point in auditioning. Arts Ed last June huded way too many auditiones into a hall when they were only ever going o take through just two males. The trutgh is this is a great money-spinner and no-one is overseeing whether the whole operation is legitimate or otherwise. The schookls never state how many places have still to be taken up. This could only happen in the orld of performance surely. Why uis it there are NO CHECKS AND BALANCES IN PLACE?Report comment
If teachers anywhere cared about their students (which since going to university they seem to care much much less than college, school etc) then they should give their own time to regulate which people become their students.
When we audition it’s forgotten that we are human beings and that we are the reason that they may make their salaries. We are hearded like cattle at drama school auditions like we are not real people, making some poor souls actually believe it.
A thought should come to each student “do I REALLY want to invest my hard earned money to _____ ?”
With the slipping standards of drama schools and the new lack of talent coming out of them compared to students who did not go to drama schools, is it really worth it?
On the matter of time and who’s is more valuable than who’s? Because somebody has a PHD they have a right never to remember your name let alone enough for feedback? I believe I’ve learned four times as much, in a better more positive way from my college teachers than I have at university. Maybe they should consider hiring based on personality and teaching talent rather than the grades and qualifications that they have. Save the depressed PHD owners to their “specialist” classes, while I would like to have a teacher who cares about me, really cares like they did in college.
On the subject of charging for auditions? No. So wrong. Absolutely disgusting, you should be precious to them, not them to you.Report comment