Getting into SOTA: auditions and portfolios

Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, which everyone calls SOTA, is the public school that admits on art rather than academics. There's no lottery and no grade cutoff. Your student auditions or submits a portfolio in an art form, and that's what decides it. It also runs on an earlier calendar than everyone else, so if SOTA is in the picture, mark its dates first. Confirm them on SOTA's admissions page, because the details below move year to year.

The departments

SOTA admits into a specific department, so your student applies as a dancer or a cellist or a writer, not to the school in general. The art forms span Creative Writing and Spoken Arts, Dance, Media and Film, Instrumental and Vocal Music, Theater and Musical Theater, Technical Theater, Visual Art, and Architecture and Design. Each department runs its own audition and sets its own expectations, so the place to learn what's actually wanted is that department's own audition assignment.

How the audition works

Broadly, departments do it one of two ways. The performing departments hold a live audition in early January, where students present what they've prepared on the day. The visual and writing departments, like Visual Art and Creative Writing, have students upload their work by a deadline in mid-December instead. Read your department's specific assignment closely, because "audition" means something different for a pianist than for a filmmaker.

How to prepare

The good news is that SOTA is looking for promise and a real artistic voice, not a finished professional. Help your student choose the piece or portfolio that's honestly theirs and most alive, rather than the one that looks most impressive on paper. Give them time to rehearse or revise without turning it into a second job. The goal is your student showing up as the artist they are, not a polished version of someone else.