Dear Teachers and Colleagues,
I wanted to share with you the procedure that we have adopted that determines the order that students will play in the Washington State MTNA competition.
It will now be based upon their registration date and time. The earliest to register will be the last to perform in all categories. This was determined to be the most fair way to alleviate the huge deluge of last minute entries that so burdens the volunteers at the national level.
To give you a real sense of how impactful this is, 36 of 72 students submitted their application to MTNA on the last day that registration was open, September 11th. Of those 36, 12 registered in the very last hour that registration was open.
Each of those applications take considerable time to review and frequently take several emails back and forth with either the student/parent or teacher as there is missing or inaccurate information. This is especially impactful at the state level, as it delays the ability to create a schedule in a timely manner. Each student is assigned a unique date/time stamp once they submit their application, and this will significantly reduce the questions of how the order is decided upon.
There is one large exception: all instrumentalists require an accompanist, and must list their actual accompanist’s name (seriously, last year “United States” was the most popular first and last name used for accompanists – please give the name of the actual pianist!). The schedule must then make it possible for their pianists to actually be there (it still isn’t possible to be in two places at once), so there will be some juggling to avoid that situation.
Again, priority will still be given to those who register earliest whenever possible (and no, we don’t take requests).