<p>This is the ongoing story of my Senior year. </p>
<p>Some background info-Currently in 9 ensembles at school/in community, a primary role in a musical, 3 academic/non music involved activities/clubs, advanced courses, independant classes, lessons, and much more.</p>
<p>I went into my college search not sure where to audition. There was a sense of randomness associated with every college I decided to audition at and those which I did not. I now know quite a bit about every college that I have auditioned at. But I went about the whole process wrong by thinking I had to learn about the program by auditioning at it. Ultimately, I did learn quite a bit about the programs this way, but I have come to realize I could have eliminated having to go to some auditions by way of research. I now quite often lurk school's music websites, and I have emailed at least two professors on staff at each college. However, I did this in the reverse order of things, and should have auditioned first.</p>
<p>End result: I attended 7 auditions ( am being pressured to do 8). Accepted to all so far (6), but at what cost? My 4.0 that i have worked so hard to keep the last three years is in jeapordy. Had I not been so nieve to think that I had to audition to learn about the program, I could have saved myself a bit of trouble. Not to mention that I have been getting an average of four hours of sleep per night the last month or so, trying to keep up with my two advanced English courses.</p>
<p>Word of advice: Don't do so many auditions, even if you are as indecisive or obsessive as I am about college. High schools don't always care to recognize that a music major's college journey doesn't end with a single acceptance letter with a generic auto-signed signature from the President, or a tour in the campus center. I am now taking lessons with professors to determine where I want to go (somewhat according to who I study with).</p>
<p>All this aside, Senior year is about preparation. Just don't over prep yourself. Have some fun</p>
<p>I think it sounds like you have a WORK overload more so than a MUSIC overload!</p>
<p>Way to go for being a trooper!</p>
<p>I cut way back on my academic side because I have a 3.5 GPA and that’s really good to get me into all the music schools/programs I applied to. I have 6 auditions, and I wish I could have done more. It was stressful, but I enjoyed the process because I enjoy music. If I had all that schoolwork that had to be taken care of, it would have been the school work I would have neglected, because that falls lower on my totem pole.</p>
<p>Senior year is FUN. And not only is it about preperation, it is about experience. And I had some great music experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. :-)</p>
<p>I really did enjoy the process, but with an advanced level academic rigor, it was not quite as enjoyable. Though, I have to agree, I have had some wonderful experiences, minus all of the work and such. This makes me consider the conservatory lifestyle a little more.</p>
<p>During my son’s senior year at Juilliard, he got a C in French. He didn’t die. He said he wished he would have learned that a C didn’t kill anyone back when he was in high school.</p>
<p>His perfectionist qualities are what makes him a great musician – if they don’t kill him first.</p>
<p>Musicman, you sound so much like my son last year. He was strained to the max and even sprouted quite a few gray hairs. You are clearly very energetic and super competent and I suspect you will be able to pull your average back up without any trouble, now that audition season is behind you. I think you will feel it was all very much worth it when you start your studies in the fall! Any music school or studio will be lucky to have someone with your motivation and work ethic–you are bound to be a powerful force in music.</p>
<p>And please don’t beat yourself up too much–I think you might have been wise to make sure you took the auditions and encountered the faculty and conservatories in person. Music studies depend greatly on the chemistry of exchange between teacher and student and in ensembles and this you can truly only assess on the ground.</p>
<p>Very best wishes to you! We’ll all be interested to hear your final decision about the fall.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the encouragement. It is nice to have right about now.</p>
<p>I have a question pertaining to this forum, but I don’t want to start another thread to ask it.</p>
<p>Which route makes the most sense? Full ride at a lesser music school, but a great LAS (in comparison) or a pretty good deal at a college with a better program</p>
<p>Only you can answer that. Here are some questions to guide your answer:
Will the “pretty good deal” put me in debt? Or can my parents pay the difference between the cost and the aid? Large debt (and some say small debt) is not good coming out of an undergrad music major.
How important is a strong liberal arts program to me? To some students having a strong liberal arts program is very important: they need the stimulation of great ideas and great minds.
How important is the strongest music program possible? Some students find that a good music program is sufficient if they can make up the difference between good and excellent in other ways: summer programs, opportunities in the community outside the school etc…
What do you see yourself doing after your bachelor’s degree? If it involves music, then you may want to lean towards the better music program. If it does not involve music, then the stronger liberal arts offerings may be more important.</p>
<p>The OP is very fortunate, and I’ll bet very good, too. Still, while the losses he/she experienced for the sake of the auditions now seem questionable, things could easily have gone differently. This is my general take on the question.
If your priority is to get into a strong music program, doing a fairly large (but manageable) number of auditions can be the right move, even if it does hurt your GPA a bit. First of all, for the purposes of such programs, your pre-existent GPA will already be more than strong enough. Any small drop precipitated by auditions will not ruffle any feathers. Second, if you want to attend a competitive program but will depend upon financial aid, a certain amount of luck is required; in other words, it doesn’t hurt to hedge your bets.
I went the route the OP advocates in high school, which is to say that I saved money and protected my GPA by only taking three live auditions. The result was that, despite applying to a total of eight schools (two recorded auditions, three liberal arts colleges), and being admitted to a total of four (three music, one liberal arts), I really had to choose between two places on financial grounds, and those two were at the bottom of my list. (It should be said that I ended up happy, after a couple of rocky years, at my initially disappointing school, and while I would love to see certain things about that school change, I would not trade my years there for anything else.)
In my senior year of college, I took a very different tack, applying and auditioning liberally. I borrowed 5K in order to do this; it was expensive and difficult, no question, and my grades slipped a little. But I still graduated summa cum laude, and the payoff from doing all those auditions was a full scholarship to one of my top-choice schools.
I found that applying to many competitive schools, and just one, my alma mater, where I was sure of admission, was for my purposes the right thing. I know that this is not typical CC advice. But there’s /so/ much luck involved. I knew that I was qualified for good schools; I also knew that I could have a bad day anywhere, and that any given faculty panel might not like me, or might hear six 19-year-old Curtis alumni on the same day, or might have had a particularly lousy lunch. I also knew that admission alone would not help me much, as I have very little money and my parents are not positioned to pay tuition either. Due to all these factors, letting a couple of Bs infiltrate my transcript and spending weekends on planes for a couple of months seemed like a very reasonable sacrifice.
A few caveats. If you’re applying for a super-selective double-degree (JHU-Peabody, Columbia-Juilliard, Harvard or Tufts-NEC), the GPA is perhaps more important as a demonstration that you can handle intense simultaneous demands in music and in the classroom. Auditioning widely doesn’t mean applying blindly. Taking a lot of auditions is less feasible the less overlap between requirements there is. And the approach I’ve outlined, a large number of highly competitive auditions, is only worthwhile if you know you have a strong shot to begin with; if you’re at all unsure, a wider range of schools is important.</p>