The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University

If you want your audition heard during our February audition period, the application deadline is December 1. If you intend to take part in regional auditions (undergrads only) the deadline is also December 1. If you want your audition heard during our May audition period, the application deadline is April 15.

For those applying in majors or programs that involve pre-screening, it is important to get the pre-screening materials to us by the application deadlines. We will be in a rush to get them to the faculty as early as possible, so that (in turn) we can have results to you early enough for you to make any travel plans associated with your audition.

Some materials do not have to be submitted by the deadline. These are listed in the application package. As a general rule, we can schedule an audition to be heard if we have the Electronic Application submitted, and the Supplemental Application form (and application fee) in our hands by December 1st. We suggest you send just those items if there is danger that waiting to complete the rest will cause your application to be late.

The December 1st general application deadline is the day on which we want the application in our office. It is not a postmark. Except for the DMA stuff I mentioned in the previous section of this FAQ, we don't get too upset if the application gets to our office a day late. However, each year we encounter problems if we run out of audition slots and have to establish a wait list.  In those cases, we schedule auditions in the order the applications arrive.

There are two times in the process when we will communicate to you the status of your application file. After listing them, I will try to give you the "big picture" of how it comes together.

1. When we initially receive your application, we will send you an e-mail confirming that we have entered it into our computer system. Thus, it is critical that the email address you give us is one that is checked at least once a day.

2. When auditions are complete, and the admissions staff is entering results, we will inform you by email of anything that prevents us from coming to a decision.

Now for the "big picture." There is a huge amount of paperwork involved in creating an application folder. You do most of the writing. Our job is trying to make sure we get all the papers in the right folders without suffering too many paper cuts on our fingers and hands. So, rule #1 is that admissions is a messy business. During peak seasons, mail arrives in bins about the size of a case of milk cartons. Rule #2 is that we are never completely caught up. Typically, we have one pile of unsorted documents waiting to be entered into the computer, another pile waiting to be sorted (alphabetized), and yet another pile of sorted documents waiting to be filed.

There is a third Rule: High Schools and Colleges NEVER care about sending an individual transcript out as much as you do. That, combined with the mails, mean that you will be telling us "They should be there by now." And yet they won't be. And if they are, we may not be able to locate them in all the piles.

Here is a little secret that should keep us all from getting ulcers. First, about transcripts: For those auditioning in February, we can operate just fine getting transcripts as late as January 15th. We call transcripts "stoppers" because even though we can hold an audition without transcripts being in the files, we cannot send an accept letter unless we have your transcripts. This stops the process. However, in a worse case scenario, we will discover the missing transcript as we process audition results (before the end of February). We don't send acceptance letters out until April 1, so there will be plenty of time to send you an email, and for us to complete the decision process within the usual time frame. If you have reason to be concerned that a transcript has not arrived, you might want to check first with the school from which it is being sent. If you fear it will not get here by January 15th, give us a call so we will know to look for it. Certainly there is no reason to call us after we send you the initial message (item 1 above). It is typical for us not to have the transcripts by that time. Either they have not been sent yet, or they are in a pile somewhere.

This is a second little secret. One of the reasons we ask for three recommendations is that we know sometimes one won't arrive on time (or at all). No one is going to throw a fit if we don't have three recommendation forms in an audition folder (unless you are applying for Artist Diploma—a program for which professional credentials are critical). The truth about recommendation forms is that we use them for supplemental data in conjunction with our own impressions. A missing recommendation form will not prevent the folder from being processed. However, two missing recommendation forms may cause raised eyebrows among the faculty.