[casion]

I auditioned at a number of schools and prima vista was the only thing.

At a few of the auditions they would interrupt you if it appeared that you knew the piece and give you something else.

Honestly rather annoying. Even though I entered teaching, I did a lot of time in the pit and sight reading was never a skill that was needed. I can understand the need to weed out people with no/basic reading skills, but the idea that you need to be high-level fluency (particularly with oddly notated pieces!) is nonsense.

The worst part was that most students just gamed it. They would purposely ritard some part just to make it look like they weren't familiar with a piece they could play blindfolded. The net result is that the school I ended up selecting had a number of non-fluent readers that wasted everyone's time at some point because they were so slow!

/rant