Is it me, or were the judges' scores particularly harsh this time around. And how does that work if there were two days of judging with two different sets of judges? (as in, if one day's judges were particularly severe and another day's much more forgiving?)

Take what you want from it.

I gave what I have to admit was a rather poorly prepared audition that included a musical screw-up on my part, so I was not altogether surprised that two of my three judges gave me marks that might be summed up in the word "Meh!"

The third judge, however, gave me the lowest possible marks in several respects, which seemed to me unwarranted, and arguably incompatible with his or her writing below the numbers that my second piece (I presented two excerpts) was "much better all around" than my first.

I have not done a BSR audition in several years, and this is the first time that the judges were not identified on the form. In my last audition, one of the judges, who was someone with whom I have worked numerous times, seemed to me to overrate my audition, perhaps out of personal partiality. So I was not prepared for the severity of the ratings this time around.

I suspect that anonymity makes the judges feel more free to say what they really think. It's unpleasant and it can be seriously discouraging for a time, but in the long run they are probably doing you (doing us) a favor by showing how difficult it is to make a really favorable impression on them.

Baritonobasso

"The students are overstimulated. Willie, remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms!"

I did get into the finals, so I'm not complaining, but I've done BSRs a few times, and even when I did not make the finals, I got pretty decent scores - so I just wondered if this time around, I got the Simon Cowell judging panel, instead of the all-Paula Abdul panel ;0 Sounds like from your comments, that was probably the case. So now I don't feel quite as bad about the critique - some of which was right on target, it was just a lot "lower" numerically than in the past. And I'm just curious - if there are two different days, with two different panels of judges, how do they choose the finalists then (esp. if one group gets the Cowell panel??) Also, they did announce the three judges initially, but unless you know the person's handwriting, I guess you wouldn't know whose comments they were ;0