I am wondering if there is a general sense of how getting an audition translates into acceptance? Do music schools plan to accept most applicants they allow to audition (for ones that select students to audition)? Is it generally a 50% or 33% chance? I know it is school specific, but is there a general rule or trend that people have found from years of experience. As a side note, I searched the forum and couldn’t find a similar discussion on this topic. If there is one, let me know and I will go there. Thanks
Yes it is different for every school, instrument, year etc. so anything anyone writes is … well guessing. I’ll give you some thoughts since I went down this lane of thought! It is easier for IU Jacobs since some info is on their website.
On the website it states there are about 1600 musicians - half our undergrads. It says they accept 25% of applicants for undergrad. I remember getting the impression that 30ish spots were offered to net a class of 20. I could be completely wrong but it was an impression…and I can no longer remember why. So strictly by numbers that would mean 125 applications for 30 spots (voice only). Still I would guess there are more vocalist than harp players so that number is probably low. But then you can think about time. There are 3 days of auditions and one voice panel (another guess). How many can they see bx 9 and 6 (my D had the last audition slot of the day). I’d guessed maybe 30 at most (not everyone shows - we saw that too). So if they see 60 on the low side to 90 on the high side to audition that would mean a third to 50% get an acceptance? I’ll stop here.
I write this out…just to show how one neurotic parent spent their time!! And you’ll never know…bc it’s so complicated and the schools won’t tell you.
Maybe someone will have a better “guess”. But the whole process is a leap of faith. If you pass multiple pre-screening and do a number of auditions, they are serious about you and you’ll most likely get an acceptance or two or three. I really think passing multiple pre-screens is a pretty good indication you’re on the right path.
@bridgenail - thanks for your notes. I love math and spreadsheets for sure. I still wouldn’t know how many video final auditions were also under review or if there were other ways into the system, but certainly your audition day census would be a pretty good piece of info. I wonder if anyone has ever made a “go-no-go” decision based on the acceptance rate - what would someone’s cut-off number be to make them skip an audition, or prepare harder, or prepare one more back-up plan?
Afterthought - if a school had 10 students on an instrument in each freshman class, and they auditioned 20. That could equally suggest that the school cut half of the auditioners, or that half of the auditioners chose to go elsewhere. Would that be important for those who can’t resist calculating? I am not actually calculating these things, but was drawn into the topic of thinking of what a calculation would “mean”. Thanks.
thanks @bridgenail I appreciate your input. I raised the question b/c in PM I have received on other topics, it seemed like their kids got into all the schools at which they auditioned, even when they thought their audition was not strong. I was trying to figure out if it was just a coincidence that their kids got admitted into all the schools at which they got an audition or if that was the trend that once you audition most kids actually get accepted. Thanks again.
Add yield to that formula, too. For instance, around 12 bassists did live auditions at Eastman for the jazz program last year. They had one opening. But their yield is generally only around 25%. Let’s say they auditioned 12, and made 4 offers before someone accepted. Was their acceptance rate of those invited to audition 8% or 33%? I’m not sure how they figure it. 
Add me to the neurotic parents list who spent way to much time thinking about all this last year!
To the OP, it really just depends on the school and the needs of that year. I could never figure out any way to generalize it, not for lack of trying!
I don’t know about your child or his instrument/style, but I do know that if a student is applying to top conservatories they might have a pretty good idea who their competition is. You also have to remember that the top performer or musician can only attend one school, so openings happen as students decide where they are going. Try not to get too obsessed with the quality of the audition or get too involved so your student gets too nervous. They should go in and play their best and BE THEMSELVES. My son’s auditions varied a lot. His worst audition happened to be at the conservatory he ended up going to. But the audition was bad because they were running late and he was the last audition before the faculty took a break for lunch and I think everyone was hungry. My son left the audition feeling unsure about it but also told me he played his best and that was all he could do.
So my suggestion is try to RELAX. Have fun. Let your child do their thing and focus on helping them stay relaxed and mellow. Chances are they will get in somewhere and have some place to go. And where they go undergrad really is not as important as where they end up at the end of four years.
For my question, that would be 33% because I was asking about acceptance rate for those who audition, not just apply. I guess time would tell, but maybe to re-frame my question - of the auditions your kids did, how many (or what %) lead to an acceptance?
A few more comments:
1.). I’ll start with the end. The numbers really never inform you on your kid’s chances BUT I get the need to at least ask. For me it wasn’t simply nerves. It was about dollars to audition and just plain curious about how this business works. I’m not used to investing time and money with NO idea of the return!!
2.). Some schools ARE more difficult for an acceptance. If Juilliard and Curtis are on your list, 100% acceptance probably ain’t going to happen. My D had 100% for undergrad at 3 schools for VP. One school few people on here would know. It was a gimme. Two were good schools. But if we had Juilliard on there…I’m sure that would have changed the story. I have heard off and on (and again I cannot verify this) but that music school acceptances hover around 20 to 25%. I’ve heard Curtis is in the low single digits. How many are weeded out before auditions? I would guess all schools are different. Word on “my” street is Curtis auditions a lot. So if that’s true their audition to acceptance is low. IU’s rate has to be greater than 25% in general bc that’s their application to acceptance rate. Curtis may accept one vocalist for the whole school. IU will offer 30 spots to freshman…if my info is right. But checking how many audition days and how many slots may give the mathematic side of your curious brain something to do during auditions! This sounds like a job for @GoForth
3.). In the end talent is talent. So a mediocre feeling audition can still show talent. Multiple acceptances for undergrad do happen (but grad school is usually different). But in the end as long as you get an acceptance that’s all you need. My D had rejections for MT. They helped point the way. Any rejection at anytime is just pointing you in the right direction. Nothing more.
So for me after much thought and no conclusion on numbers … I just went with blind faith.
And…forgot to say…no not all get in who audition. I know a good number of rejections.
And people who stick around on CC are the ones who had acceptances. The sample size here is skewed. Hence the high audition to acceptance rate.
Oh, I remember this from last year… you can drive yourself insane trying to calculate the odds. I know. (I’m an engineer… I couldn’t help it.) For most of the schools my son applied to, we knew going in that there was only going to be 2-3 spots in the freshman class for his instrument. It was a daunting thought. What I didn’t know was the “yield” game. Schools generally have a good idea what the percentage yield is going to be and over-accept accordingly. They also use merit scholarship offers to hedge their bets.
In @indeestudios example about Eastman, pretty sure they actually only accepted one bass and made additional offers only after they were turned down (my son is friends with the girl they accepted, but she went elsewhere.)
Once the auditions get underway, I think you will feel less anxious about the numbers. Having been invited to auditions is affirmation that the schools believe your child has the potential to succeed at the collegiate level. Just go with it and be supportive so that your child can relax and perform with confidence. Keep in mind that a rejection can be due to a lot of factors and the reality is that where your child ends up going to school may have a LOT to do with money.
For what it’s worth, my son applied to six schools, auditioned in person at all of them. He was accepted at five; made it to the call-backs at Juilliard but didn’t get in.
@ScreenName48105 - I was talking to a dad of the pianist in S’s jazz combo. He is one year behind us. College topics came up. It took about 3 sentences and he asked, “Are you an engineer?”
It is very, very hard to tell and it varies from year to year and area to area, to be blunt. For example, some of the acceptance rates I have heard are based on kids who applied (not auditioned), so when they say Juilliard has a 6% acceptance rate, I think that is who applied…and take it from me, a lot of kids apply to programs like Juilliard with the name who don’t stand a chance. Curtis doesn’t pre screen, they go through rounds of auditions, so their acceptance rate is based on those who apply on an instrument, and you can have 100+ kids auditioning on violin when only maybe 2 o 3 might be accepted that year…it all depends. One year at Juilliard on flute they had one opening (grad and undergrad), so even if they let’s say pre screened (I don’t recall if they did back then) and auditioned 15, 20 kids, the odds of getting accepted would be small. In a sense, with prescreened programs, we don’t know what percent of those who auditioned actually got accepted because we don’t know how many they took into auditions, or whether that number changes as the number of openings fluctuates. If they admin 10 violins hypothetically this year, and have 20 next year, do they double the size of the pre screen pool? I suspect not, based on what little I know, so one year you might have a lot better chance of getting in via the audition then another, 10 slots with 100 people auditioning or 20 with 100 auditioning is a lot easier with the 20 statistically.
There is something else that throws a kibosh on the numbers, and that is in terms of teacher choice. Many or most music school auditions don’t have kids audition and then they find a teacher, most require you to specify teachers and in theory, if none of them want to teach you, you don’t get in (some schools may place such a student on the waiting list and if they find a studio willing and able to take them, might get in, in a sense they have been accepted provisionally), and teacher selection affects the yield, if you chose a teachers who are relatively unknown or have large studios, you would have a higher chance then the ‘great teacher/performer’ who only has a few students. I can tell you that at NEC the official acceptance rate versus application is 33%, yet the studio my son is in based on how many kids apply to it is like <5%…
In the end, I think you would serve yourself better at looking at schools you would want to attend, where you think you would do well, and forget the numbers. Apply to Juilliard and Curtis (if you like them) or Rice or whatnot, knowing their yield is low, if you apply to the second tier program by reputation but there is a killer teacher, know you likely will do much better there especially if you are at the level of let’s say a typical Juilliard admit (talking things like merit aid potentially and the like). Trying to pick a school based on yield quite honestly is fruitless and I think will work against you, because auditions themselves are a crapshoot and past performance doesn’t indicate future value, to quote financial funds, you never know. My son’s teacher rarely takes undergrad freshman, and if my son used that stat he wouldn’t have bothered applying because it would seem fruitless, and it wasn’t. The biggest problem with stats is we are talking the arts here and stats have very little to do with that, getting past an audition has more than its share of magic to it, because there is little objective about it. A kid gets into Curtis and doesn’t get into Juilliard, a kid who won one of the top competitions in the world doesn’t get out of the first round at Curtis, a kid gets into a Juilliard and gets rejected at the decent but not stellar program in his own state (theory on that is the program knew he was ‘too good’, but what if the kid was doing that for financial reasons?).
My S just to give another view took another tack, he applied to a very small number of undergrad schools in the top tier and said if he didn’t get into any of them, he would either re-evaluate doing performance and apply next year academically, or take a gap year and then apply again, that for him those are the programs he felt comfortable with. As a grad student he is casting a wider net, because he isn’t sure what kind of teacher he wants and also wants to see what the financials will be like (he didn’t have that constraint undergrad, we had the money set aside), so that changed how he applied.
In the end, all you can do is apply where you think you would like to go (and potentially could afford), see if you get through the prescreen, see if you can get through the audition, and if you are lucky/unlucky to have a lot of choices (unlucky in the sense of “omg, I have all these choices, where do I go” kind of thing lol), that is great, if it is small you can decide one of those programs or maybe an alternative, like a gap year.
Agree with all…particularly the magic comment…if you focus on talent alone you miss the element of magic or personality. Does a teacher see “something” in you and want to spend a few years with you? Impossible to quantify.
But Curtis does do some pre-screening. My D passed their vocal pre-screen two years ago. This WAS a case of maybe not going to the audition as @GoForth questioned due to the low yield. My D had only so many dollars for grad school auditions. She had to choose bx an audition at Curtis and one at another school. I was not big on spending the money on Curtis but I let her make the call. She did the Curtis audition and did not get a call-back (in other words, she was out in the first round). She did submit a video audition to the other school…and got accepted. Lol.
For reference Juilliard only pre-screens for:
Cello
- Collaborative Piano
- Double Bass
- Flute
- Horn
- Jazz Studies
- Opera Studies
- Orchestral Conducting
- Percussion
- Piano
- Tenor Trombone
- Trumpet
- Viola
- Violin
Juilliard also has multiple rounds of auditions, at least for some instruments. For jazz saxophone, for instance, out of all of the applications, audition for all saxes (tenor, alto, baritone) were done in one day in two rooms. 20 minute auditions, with a break for lunch, so I’m guessing 30 saxophones in total. Of these, about 4 or 5 were on the call-back list to return that evening. They did all the jazz call-backs for the day in front of the same panel; I think it was saxophones, guitars and one other instrument. They accepted one saxophone from the call-backs.
For small programs like jazz (45 total, undergrad and grad), my understanding is that they size their audition pool relative to the number of openings for that instrument and it can be different from year to year.
I would second the caution from @bridgenail in post #9. Don’t base acceptance rates (or even simply passing pre-screens) too much on what you hear on the CC music forum. The numbers here are likely not overly indicative of the general population and I would imagine there’s a higher percentage of successful auditions compared to the overall population. That said, there are very knowledgeable posters here who can likely provide some actual numbers, just use the actual numbers (if available) not anecdotal numbers from CC music kids.
@ClarinetDad16- A small correction, if I may? If we are talking about UNDERGRAD admissions, Juilliard prescreens for:
Cello
Composition
Double Bass
Flute
Horn
Jazz Studies
Percussion
Piano
Tenor Trombone
Trumpet
Viola
Violin
Voice
Also @beaglemom, take some of what you hear with a grain of salt because during audition season a lot of “head games” are being played. The parents who have been around a while will agree that we’ve heard it all at one time of another! I remember one year when a young man, a string player, and his mother were busy telling everyone else who was auditioning after him that he had “been accepted on the spot during his audition and had been invited to lunch with the prof, etc”. Of course, it was all a crock and the kid hadn’t been accepted at all (it was a top-tier school) and the faculty all takes lunch break together at the same time anyway, but the effect on quite a few of the other kids was devastating because they had paid attention to his words. The moral here is not to believe anything, no matter what you may hear or read on Facebook- because nothing matters until you have missive from the school in your hands addressed to YOU.
I concur with MM: there are a lot of head games going on in the hallway during auditions, many of them played by parents, but also by students themselves. I’ve witnessed incidents like what she cites, and they are upsetting–the best you can do is to try to pay no attention to them. That said, there sometimes is a connection outside of auditions that gets a student into a program. These programs are not strict meritocracies (and neither is life.) If you are above a certain level of competence, you will generally get an audition. If your audition is above a certain level, you stand a real chance for admission, but there are many mitigating factors. It’s not a system in which the “best” auditions automatically win spots. In part, this is because what is best is always subjective. And like the rest of life, there are sometimes other hidden, often unknowable reasons for admissions decisions. The most important thing is to believe in yourself, but also to be open to honest, constructive evaluative criticism.
Oh those head games are something. Remember the audition I mentioned earlier in this thread (for the school my son ended up going to). While he was waiting to go in since he was the last audition before lunch, a dad whose son was auditioning started to talk to him and was bragging about all the awards and accomplishments his son had. It was all very intimidating and I imagine if I had been there I might have been shaken by it. But my son, the one who is now a musician, just pretended to listen and then went in and did this thing. I do think it helps if you can as a parents to not hang out and give your child space. Because I do think they pick up on our anxiety
Also remember if your child is going to continue in music then auditions are going to be part of their life. So it is best if they learn to not internalize and get anxious about every audition and just go with he flow.