<p>Don, don’t let your D get too upset about having a male teacher as opposed to a female;
she, you and Mrs9992 have every right, however, to be concerned with HOW this whole thing was presented as a fait accompli. Some men, at some schools, prefer to teach male students, and will request them during auditions if the school doesn’t already slide them in their direction, but there are some similarities in baritones working with mezzos and tenors with lyrics. You can check out bios of well-known singers and find that that many women had male teachers at some time in their studies; for instance, Frederica von Stade, credits her first (and the one she had for the longest time) teacher with her success and HE was a man (now, there had to be a better way for me to have phrased that!?).
Check out your PM’s too, Don.</p>
<p>re. the whole issue of acceptances to schools and teachers- I guess my D was really lucky in the way things worked out. Even though the teacher she originally wanted was no longer at her first choice school, she was selected by another teacher and they get along famously!May I respectfully suggest that a lot of this can be solved be beginning the school visits earlier in the game. Because we started them in the fall of her junior year, things were a lot less rushed and we weren’t in anyone’s way or shoved into huge tour groups, etc. Not once did a school object to dealing with a junior, and in the case of one school, they actually conducted her interview then, as opposed to cramming it into audition day! D was able to talk to students, learn things from them and to meet more teachers (and yes, have lessons) than she could have had she waited a year. And, best of all, we weren’t dashing around in April like my puppy chasing his tail, trying to get a “feel” for a school or a particular teacher. It may not work for everyone, but it made all the difference in the world for us.</p>
<p>DD’s first real teacher was male, a tenor. One of the preeminent ones at her school is male. DD’s current female teacher has males students. That can actually be a good thing. Your DD will not be able to imitate the teacher but will work with a different perspective. DD learned so much from her male teacher. He took her from raw talent to being able to audition into excellent programs in less than 2 years. . Don’t let that be the main issue. I stand by my other comments, though, regarding knowing who you are going to be with or knowing how assignemnts are made and odds of that school’s process. .</p>
<p>I agree with Singsmom07 again. I think there are a lot more important criteria to use in selecting a voice teacher than gender. </p>
<p>On the subject of bio’s, one of the things I wish music schools would do is ask their faculty to write bio’s focusing more on student outcomes rather than just faculty performance history. Student success (masters programs, young artists’ programs, student performance highlights) is more telling about the quality of the faculty than past faculty career accomplishments. Both are important – faculty performance history and student success. But I guess we were more interested in knowing about the success of the students. I noticed that Indiana University’s voice faculty bios seemed to focus more on student success (at least a couple of years ago this seemed to be true) and this is what initially attracted us to that school in addition to Jacob’s overall reputation. I also thought that student success orientation might provide some insight into the music school’s overall focus (or lack of focus) on student success. Just a thought for whatever it’s worth. I don’t know if my theory holds water. I guess this is just one clue among many in deciding whether a school is right for a particular student.</p>
<p>Just FYI…I’ve taken voice lessons for much of my life (mezzo soprano). ALL of my teachers have been men. </p>
<p>Re: student outcomes…that’s in “interesting” idea, but keep in mind that STUDENT outcomes are just that…STUDENT outcomes. Especially with sopranos where there are hundreds or more for each audition for a professional job, there are literally tons of wonderfully trained women who had wonderful voice teachers who simply aren’t going to get hired. I think it’s very important to know the teaching history of a teacher…where they have taught in the past…and for how long…and what their own performance history is/was.</p>
<p>I agree, Thumper – it’s just like anything else, i.e. judging schools by the number of AP exams that students take – it might say more about the student pool than the faculty. We’re all looking for ways of telling the future – how good will a match with this school or teacher be for my child. The only tools we have are data, perceptions, experience, a sprinkling of real facts, and our gut feel. All help to form an image of what the future might hold should a certain decision be made. And after that . . . twenty-twenty hindsight (and sometimes not even that).</p>
<p>Teacher selection varies by school, by year, by student, by chance. I think it’s perfectly legit to email the first teacher and say, “Hey! I got my assignment and was disappointed that it wasn’t you. What happened? Was this a school glitch, or did you change your mind about me, or run out of studio room? Mr. So and So looks like a great teacher from his bio, although I haven’t met him. Do you know if there was a particular reason why I was assigned here?”</p>
<p>It’s always possible that the other teacher had seniority, and really liked your D, and requested her, and since the female teacher was new, she did not feel comfortable in fighting it.</p>
<p>There is never harm in asking “what happened?” (Just don’t sound like Fred Willard when you ask). Schools are run by human beings and indeed there are many times when feedback from students improves things. With a school the size of Eastman it may be a glitch on a spreadsheet, easily fixed, or it may be that too many sopranos wanted to study with this teacher and that’s that. You find out by asking, and there’s a way to go about it that doesn’t ruffle any feathers.</p>
<p>However I do think that care does need to be taken that students don’t come across as “auditioning” the faculty. The stage to do that was in the application process, and also possibly when deciding between one or two different offers. But if you have put in your deposit with a school, it is a commitment to the institution as a whole, and not just a particular personality. I’m not sure how we would react if, say, an accepted violinist asked us to set up lessons with Ida Kavafian, Weigang Li, and Laurie Smukler, and then s/he would let us know which one they wanted to study with. We make final studio assignments based on a variety of artistic and pedagogical considerations, and part of the deal in accepting an offer of admission from a school is an acknowledgement that at some level the institution has your best interests at heart when making a teacher assignment.</p>
<p>I link to it because of a conversation between stringkeymom and musicprnt on [another CC thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/730881-recommendations-needed-hs-violinist-2.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/730881-recommendations-needed-hs-violinist-2.html</a>) that brings up the expectations faculty have at conservatories these days. I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while back with a friend of mine who sings in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and his experiences working with James Levine. In essence, you do not rehearse with him, but rather you PERFORM for him, and he then polishes what you have already spent a tremendous amount of time preparing. In looking for the right teacher, it helps to have a clear understanding of your own artistic temperament, learning style, and ultimate professional goals. Hopefully the OP’s daughter will be able to sort out this last, crucial bit of the puzzle to her satisfaction.</p>
<p>N8ma - just for clarification for me. Wouldn’t a teacher with that attitude be a terrible choice for an undergrad? I have heard that can be part of the problem with some of the more famous teachers at some schools and conservatories - they no longer want to teach undergrads who need to focus on elementary technique but want to focus on graduate students who need more polish.</p>
<p>My problem with this situation is that from the OP’s post it does appear that there was some tacit agreemen between the studio prof and the Op’s D. If that was the case then I would be pretty po’d about the situation. </p>
<p>College is a huge investment and financial burden to most. Aside from buying a house or a new car what else costs what a college education costs ? If you went to a dealer and test drove a car and then signed a contract for the car and when you showed up he handed you the keys to a different car you would be upset wouldn’t you ? Would you rationalize that perhaps this car will be a better car or a better fit in the long run ? If you were buying a house you would expect to know that the roof or the heating plant has major issues before you were handed the keys.</p>
<p>To those that say a lesson or a meeting with the teacher shouldn’t be the end all of making a decision I can guarantee that you wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive or a house without several walk throughs and an engineers report. I agree that a sample lesson is no guarantee of success but I can tell you that I would never let either of my kids accept placement into a studio where they had not at least met the teacher and spent at least some time with him/her.</p>
<p>The OP and her daughter put their trust into a tacit agreement made between the teacher and the student and while there is a good chance that the student might do very well where she is assigned this entire situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth.</p>
<p>Part of what may have happened here is that it was the first time both the teacher and the student had been through studio assignments at this school. Unless the question was asked outright - “do you have room in your studio for me and may I rely on getting a slot” then there is nothing to rely upon. My daughter took a sample lesson with a teacher whom she really liked. She had also observed this teacher with another student. The teacher asked her to let her know when she was auditioning so she could be on the panel. It was great to see a familiar smiling face on the panel. When she was admitted, D emailed the teacher and she got a wonderful email from her indicating how well she did and how happy she was that she was admitted. Then came the question - is there a slot in your studio for me? The answer was that she could request her and she would love to have her, but that there were no guarantees. My D decided not to go there for other reasons. If she had not asked that final question, she could have very well believed that she had a tacit agreement with the teacher. She may have well been disappointed.</p>
<p>Cartera, I agree that if the specific questions were not asked there might have been a misunderstanding. What I am reading in this case was that based on what the OP’s D was told there was a tacit agreement and if that is the case I would be really upset.</p>
<p>sagiter-
That was my take on this, that there seemed to be some sort of tacit agreement on the student having that teacher (and it could very well be a misunderstanding on both parties parts, could be the teacher thought they would have the ultimate decision and ended up not having it, any number of things). I think it is important to follow through if just to diffuse any hard feelings, it isn’t a great way to start out with a program feeling like they at the get go somehow were done a bad turn by the program.</p>
<p>I think there is another point, and it has to do with expectations and I think this plays a role in the problems when miscommunication happens. In our everyday lives, we generally expect to ‘get what we pay for’ as sagiter said when we go to a car dealership and want a purple cadillac, that is what we expect to get and if we don’t we will walk away and be angry at the deception (not to mention real cases of bait and switch).</p>
<p>With schools it is a bit different because when it comes to education the assumption is the parents or the student don’t necessarily know what is best for them in terms of how to get the education they need, including if a particular teacher is the right one. When you go to a school, you are paying the program and the teacher to educate the student which implicitly is that they know better, and that can cause major conflict with ‘the client is always right’ of the ‘ordinary world’.</p>
<p>I also suspect at times that people at schools can get an attitude like “we know best” and put that mantle on things that have more to do with the interest of the school rather then being about the student (for example, a promising incoming UG gets ‘bumped’ from a teacher because the slot is needed for a grad student, or in once case I heard of, a student was moved from one teacher to another so the former teacher could teach a well known prodigy who decided to study at the school with that teacher (this was not recent,btw and I obviously can’t confirm it). I will add that I suspect that most times the school probably is thinking of the students best interests, that the real problem is simply not communicating and from what I have heard most schools understand there are perception issues and welcome people questioning decisions. </p>
<p>I don’t think that schools need to be treated with kid gloves and be afraid to question their decisions because someone will get offended if you ask a question; while I know there are people like that in any organizations, the egomaniac teacher, the self important administrator, that isn’t the rule IME with many different types of organizations. I think perhaps music schools should take note of what goes on on boards like this or in the complaints they do receive, and realize where the misperceptions lie and try to do a better job communicating what happens in the programs (saying that a student may or may not get the teacher they wish is not the same thing as explaining the process in how a student is assigned to a teacher in detail). I think if this information were given up front, it would help dispel misconceptions (and I am sure it varies from school to school). Though I will add unless music schools are way different then the colleges I went to for undergrad and grad school (academic) for, there is usually a lot of room for improvement in communicating basic things like this. To a certain extent people attending college are paying for the privilege of going there, and in the sense,to quote Sym’s clothing stores motto “an educated consumer is a our best customer” they should be attempting to educate the kids applying to the school as to what goes on in terms of once they are admitted, so there are no hurt feelings or feeling like somehow they have had a fast one pulled on them.</p>
<p>Tagging onto Musicprnt’s thoughts, and not speaking specifically to the OP’s situation, but to music students in general, there is a certain supply and demand in effect.</p>
<p>We may <em>know</em> that our student would be best served at this school, or by this teacher, and would be willing to pay the cost – but what we know and/or want is not the only factor here. If Generally speaking, the higher the talent, and the lower the selectivity of the chosen school, the more power you will have over decisions concerning your student.</p>
<p>On the other hand, at the more selective schools (please note that I didn’t say <em>better</em> - not intending to imply that one way or the other), you will probably find the schools less flexible, simply because they don’t need to be. If having your way is important, you might want to avoid those schools.</p>
<p>That is not to say that selective schools are dictatorial, or that non-selective schools are completely maleable. But, to continue the car analogy, if you show up at the Bugatti Veyron
dealership (is there one?) hoping to kick the tires, no one is going to take you seriously.</p>
<p>As far as Eastman goes, they make it clear that studio assignments are not made until June. If you just leave it at that, that is what will happen. So for those who are accepted to Eastman in the future, here is my suggestion. When my son was accepted in cello, there was no studio assignment. Son was very interested in studying with a specific teacher. He had other options available and needed all the cards on the table before he was willing to commit. So he contacted the teacher shortly after getting his acceptance to ask what his status was. As it happened, when the teacher called back, son was out so he spoke to me instead. I was very tactful, but essentially I stated that I was not willing to send in a deposit until I knew the studio assignment. Teacher said he needed to talk to some people and he would get back to us within 48 hours. He called the next evening and spoke to my son to state that son would be assigned to his studio. </p>
<p>Obviously, it is too late for that strategy to work for the OP and I am not going to say that doing this will guarantee you the place that you want, but I do think that it is good to know who you will study with before you sign on the dotted line. If they refuse to assign before June, so be it, but at least you will know that as well.</p>