How To Handle Prescreen Rejections
At MCA, we have a hard, tried and true 24-Hour Prescreen rule. We have a 4 step process of what to do when you don’t pass a prescreen and I’d strongly encourage you to adopt this for yourselves. Here are the steps:
After receiving a prescreen rejection or redirect, put down your phone/computer and head to the kitchen. Get your favorite ice cream or dessert.
Head to your couch. Turn on the saddest movie you have ever seen.
Cry it out. Snap a sad selfie and send to your coach, drama teacher, mentor, best pal or whoever understands the crazy process that is college auditions. I have a collection on my phone of “sad selfies” that I like to send to students when they book their first major gig after graduation to remind them of how far they’ve come and what it took to get there.
Go to bed. You have 24 hours to feel sad, mourn the loss of the school and then it’s a new day. Moving on! They don’t know what they are missing!
While this 4 step process is not to minimize how upsetting rejections can be, I think it can be helpful to give yourself the space you need to feel sad but then after 24 hours bring it back into focus and get back to work! Unfortunately, rejections are part of the process. While they sting at the time, they will bring to light the school where you are meant to be.
If you receive a good amount of prescreen rejections, it truly could mean nothing. Some people perform better in a live audition setting than they do on tape.
Not passing prescreens does not directly correlate with what type or caliber of school you will land at.
Please read that again and remind yourself of that throughout the next few months.
However, if your list appears to be shrinking and you want to take stock of where you are and how best to troubleshoot, I would suggest the following:
Get an honest assessment of your prescreens. Perhaps your sound quality is not as strong as it could be or there is an easy fix to be made for live auditions (and any remaining prescreens that you have yet to submit.) You can submit them to MCA here to have coaches provide comprehensive feedback.
Make a game plan of supplementing with additional schools wherever you see gaps on your college list due to prescreen no’s. I would suggest consulting with a professional to decide what schools would be good additions, which ones have rolling deadlines, etc. if you feel a little lost or want some outside perspective, you can schedule a time to chat with an MCA Consultant. We’ll get you back to feeling confident and ready to rock!
Add schools that do not have prescreens to your list so you are guaranteed to get an audition slot. Then work hard to swap out any rep that didn’t do you justice during the prescreen rounds and get ready to go for live auditions.
Big breaths!
This process has a funny way of working itself out in the end. Remind yourself that no one applies to this many schools for the fun of it - rejections are inevitable. The school you are meant to be is out there, I promise, and by the end of this wild journey it will reveal itself to you.
Not passing your prescreens? Want to make sure you are as prepared as possible? Schedule a call with us to see how we can help!
