MissEmily

@Dancedreamermay I ask how old your child is? I’ve heard of some 14 and 15 year-olds being offered places yesterday and wondered if any places for younger ones had come up? Still desperately hoping for a place for my Year 5 pupil!

I’m a teacher and I have not heard these rumours or had any official correspondence 🤷🏻‍♀️

No views! And must remember not to click the links myself 😄 

There may be one or two offered early next week, given the deadline for acceptance is today, but not many people would go through the whole rigmarole of taking photos etc. and expense and then turn down their place. If travel restrictions aren’t eased by the summer, more places will open up then as the foreign students who’ve been offered places won’t be able to come.

Thank you so much @DanceMum03 ! I changed browser and it's working now! Phew!

Has anyone had "Based on your admission item, you need to have at least 1 courses." pop up after page 2 of the application form?!

Waiting list for my pupil! Overjoyed it’s not an outright no!

Interesting they're now saying results will be out by mid-March for the Summer Intensive. I feel sick every time I get an email! As someone else said, goodness knows how they're administering the return to school, organising the Spring Intensive, running White Lodge and Upper School auditions, selecting children for the Summer Intensive and working their way through JA video auditions...all at the same time! Fingers crossed everyone!

The photos for JAs are, I am led to believe by a JA teacher, only used in discussion and if it is really close between two dancers. For this reason alone, it's worth getting them as good as possible but they are not selected purely on the basis of their photos, as they are for intensives.

@TwoDancersthat’s wonderful to hear that your children have enjoyed their associate classes. 
 

I do think they could have made a fresh audition video for this year and reduced the audition fee or, even better, held Zoom auditions as other programmes have done. If my pupils are desperate to apply, then I will, of course, support them, but many families look to me for advice and I cannot in good faith recommend the process as it is at the moment. 

As a teacher, I have been so deeply disappointed by the RBS JA’s response  to Covid that I am suggesting my pupils apply to different associate programmes this year. It is so frustrating for last year’s auditionees that these videos have been publicly shared, and I find it shockingly unprofessional that such a world-renowned organisation is simply reusing last year’s videos this year! The instructions clearly say that students may not watch the videos in advance or practise but now that anyone in the world can see them, how likely is it that that will happen?! I stuck to this rule to the letter with my pupil last year, when of course she would have performed better if she’d known what was coming. Also, I could not recommend to my pupils’ families spending £55 on a second-hand audition video and no feedback.
 

Other departments of the RBS have done an amazing job of adapting to Covid; the online summer programme was second-to-none, for

example. I don’t know why the JA programme seems to be floundering so badly.

It’s a no again for my pupil, as expected. She was never going to shine in a video audition. I do feel, given the £50 audition fee, the least they could have done under the circumstances is send a proof-read email! My pupil is also currently in Year 5 but the letter mentioned auditioning next time for WL/MAs 🤦🏻‍♀️ Enjoy celebrating “yeses” and don’t let it bother you “nos”. JAs is far from being the only option out there 😊

Does anyone know what they're looking for in the pictures? Presumably all the usual things: proportions, nicely arched feet, good turn-out, long achilles, but they must get hundreds of children with all of those things applying? How do they decide between them?

@Firebird21Ugh, literally identical. 🤣

@Firebird21I thought as much 🙄 It would be good to know if they actually meant it or not.

I would be interested to know if everyone's "no" letters have this same paragraph:

"...we would like to acknowledge that that your dancing was of a good standard and that we still see potential for improvement.  It is for this reason that we feel that with further training, you might be ready at the next opportunity and would therefore like to recommend that you train hard and consider re-auditioning in the future."

Do they say this to everyone? Thank you!

We also received a not yet, but with personal feedback which is brilliant! No wonder they didn't get them all out in one day!

Have any girls at all heard?

@BalletBoysDadAmazing news!!! Well done to your son.

Hoping beyond hope for lots of happy news on here tomorrow! I don't know how I'm going to concentrate on anything all day!

@MillicentNo, it was definitely just the first few seconds. As @Spamcatsays, they may well do a first rejection sweep as they would sometimes be able to tell immediately if a body is just “not right”, and then they’ll go back to look at the remaining ones in more detail?!

@Spamcatbetween 9 and 12ish minutes.

Ours were looked at on Thursday and, although they looked at all three, I'm pretty horrified to see that they only watched 1 minute 53 seconds of the first one, 50-odd seconds on the second one and just under two minutes of the third, meaning they didn't actually watch her dance until part 3 as they would only have seen her learning the exercises in parts 1 and 2. Very much hoping they'll at least watch some more of part 1 at some stage!

Yep, ours have been viewed 😬

Looking forward to meeting some of you on Saturday! Chukkas everyone!