You wake at the crack of dawn, sit up and clear your throat, which feels oddly scratchy. Did you catch a cold, or just a bit of phlegm? For your sake, you hope it’s the latter. You rifle frantically through your carry-on bag to find your elusive accoutrements of CD, rêsumês and headshots. As you fall in line with a crowd of jetlagged cohorts on your way into the lobby of Chicago's Palmer House Hilton, you finally understand why your favorite self-help forum referred to this proceeding as a “cattle call.”

Though such a scene is not unfamiliar to many a nervy Broadway hopeful, these particular auditionees are only in high school. They're applying to college. Some of them don't even have drivers' licenses.

The path toward the bright lights of Broadway is not an easy one. The first step is earning a spot at the University's prestigious Department of Musical Theatre.

Anxiety: The Audition

At the start of each year, hundreds of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old musical theatre hopefuls congregate in Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York City for the National Unified Auditions, where they compete for select spots at some of the most prestigious performing arts schools in the nation. Though it marks only the first milestone in many performers’ careers, it’s also one of the biggest hurdles they’ll have to clear on the dubious path to Broadway glory.

“You get there and take a look around, and everyone just looks so serious, and no one’s saying anything,” Music, Theatre & Dance senior Carlye Tamaren, who is majoring in Musical Theatre, said. “There’s really no way to prepare for that.”

The tension intimates the possibility of an enormous payoff.

Students compete under the watchful eyes of representatives from the esteemed Cincinnati and Boston Conservatories, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Michigan, among others. The acting portion of the process calls for two contrasting monologues with a 90-second time limit. For those who want to showcase their vocal talent, an extra 30 seconds is added to accommodate a song of the students’ choosing.

After that, it’s on to the “dance call,” where students are expected to prove that their choreographic chops transcend the crude bumping and grinding of your average weekend warrior.

Some students audition as juniors in high school, others as seniors.

Only three percent make the cut each year and get into the University’s program.

Current students, faculty and alum of the Department of Musical Theatre all concurred that for those who value a formal education in the arts, the college auditions are even more intensive than the real-world auditions for paid roles that follow college graduation.

As MT&D alum Mark Ayesh puts it, “I’d rather audition for 50 Broadway shows than go back and re-do one college audition.”

Ayesh graduated from the University in 2010 and subsequently landed the role of Roger Davis in "RENT," which ran at the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Westchester, NY from August through September of that year. When applying to the University, he opted for an in-person audition because of his positive impressions of department alums, far-reaching enough to touch him in his hometown of Wichita, Kan.

“A lot of alums were working in my hometown during the summer, and I actually wrote my entry paper on one of those students,” Ayesh said.

Ayesh’s initial fondness for the program only raised the stakes when the time came to try his luck at getting accepted.

“At an audition at a New York theater, your next job may be based on the one minute you spend in that room," Ayesh said. "But at a college audition, that one minute determines the next four years of your life.”

The Unified Auditions are often preferred by applicants who want to save money, since they can kill around two dozen birds with one stone, but those with the means to fly to auditions at individual schools, like Ayesh did, often choose to do so for a number of other reasons. On-site auditions not only prevent a single debacle — like the flu or dancing missteps — from ruining your admission chances at all your preferred colleges, but also give prospective students an opportunity to explore the campus they may eventually call home.

Perks aside, the on-site auditions are just as grueling as the general ones. While some may see the process as arbitrary and more dependent on a certain “look” than anything else, the “well-roundedness” Ayesh noted in the alums he met wasn’t a coincidence — the judging process is tailored to immediately recognize the holistic potential of prospective students, down to the finest details.