<p>Okay so this is a different twist on the ?how many college apps are too many?? question. I thought I might not be the only music parent thinking ahead to next year?s process for current Juniors, and wondering about this. Would love to hear from you veterans how many auditions your kids did, and is there a perfect balance? Assuming all are in-person auditions, and putting issues of travel time and money aside for the moment, is there a point beyond which our young musicians start to see diminishing returns in terms of fatigue, wear and tear, staleness?</p>
<p>So far, my D has identified at least three schools where she hopes to audition. And I see signs of at least two more that are on her radar. Assuming the schools/programs are well chosen and represent varying levels of competitiveness, is five too many? Is four too few? (She is also going to be applying to at least a couple of schools as a non-performance major, so we are really sort of developing two lists.)</p>
<p>Thoughts, opinions, experiences from the trenches?</p>
<p>We scheduled six auditions and S completed five of them. He cancelled the last audition (a safety) after he had an acceptance from a school he would have been happy to attend. At that point we were all pretty tired, and glad the auditions were over. </p>
<p>We only had one weekend with back to back Saturday/Sunday auditions. </p>
<p>I would recommend scheduling a safety or a school your D does not have her heart set on for the first audition.</p>
<p>If Oberlin is on your list, and it is certainly a top option for double-degree-interested applicants, consider Oberlin Early Review, which is in early December; it can help narrow things down if she is admitted. Some schools admit students based on CD (USC; UCSB; UCLA) or CD/DVD (McGill) if you get tired of flying around in mid-winter, and there are also regional auditions. If any of these is a top choice, it would probably be better to go in person. Juilliard requires in-person auditions. A list of 10-11 schools total (if that includes some non-audition schools) is doable -- there is a lot of repetition in the application requirements.</p>
<p>After having gone through it, I cannot imagine doing more than five or six live auditions. We did exactly what mamenyu suggested - started with about 10 schools, of which one was a wild reach and two which were about as safe as you can get in the performance world. Daughter got good news from Oberlin in December and immediately withdrew applications from the two safeties and two others on the list. She auditioned live at five of the remaining six and on tape at the other.</p>
<p>Because S had a safety he perfectly willing to attend and he was accepted there before he auditioned anywhere else, he only did two more. Five was the maximum we had planned; he was not invited to one and withdrew from another. Personally, I agree with BassDad--five or six is about the most I could have handled.</p>
<p>That number of auditions sounds about right as a tolerable maximum to me; in the end, we narrowed it down to only 3 live ones; all required flights and overnight stays. More would have meant missing too much school -- the timing didn't allow for doing them in a single trip. It also depends on where you live. From California, one early favorite seemed to far and too cold and too expensive for a 20 minute audition. When I said 10-11, I meant for someone also applying to non-audition schools.</p>
<p>I think my son did 4 on-campus auditions, of which 3 were on one day--USC, UCLA, and UCI. He did one regional audition and one unique one in our living room. He also sent DVD's to about 4 or 5 schools. We used basically the same DVD for each school. It's so hard to give a number for how many auditions to do. Each instrument, school and year is different. So is the quality of the applicant pool from year to year. As a general rule, the number of applicants seems to be increasing each year at most schools, including music programs. I know Oberlin had a 10 percent increase this year for the Conservatory.</p>
<p>"Bookending" the 5-6 auditions with a safety as suggested by Librarian is a good idea. All six of my D's schools required in person auditions along with prescreening cd's. She was accepted at the first safety in October, accepted at 2nd and 3rd choices with scholarship offers and by the time she was declined at her "super-reach" the pressure was off and the balance of two auditions were canceled. I would like to say we planned it that way---but I didnt know about the CC board and it was really just dumb luck.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback everyone, nice to know we're at least not too far off in our preliminary thinking. Fortunately, most of the schools D is interested in (including her top choices) are fairly easy driving distance from us here in the Northeast, with perhaps one or two outliers. Just as an exercise, I plotted out THIS YEAR's audition schedules for all the schools on her list, and it was a daunting exercise: certainly would have been possible (at least on the calendar, not on the pocketbook LOL) to have had auditions every weekend from mid-January to early March!</p>
<p>Funny though, that Oberlin didn't do what I have seen other schools do, which is to close auditions to certain instruments (obviously those for which they had already filled the open spots), and only extend the deadline for those instruments for which they were still in need....</p>
<p>1400...wow! Hurts to be born during this mini baby boom (next year too...our poor juniors).</p>
<p>My D has completed 4 on-campus auditions- we've just returned home from the 4th. She has a 5th one on the schedule but decided to cancel. She's beat. She has also received acceptances at two schools that are tied for 2nd place. Today's audition was for her first choice school so we'll be playing the waiting game for the next 2-3 weeks.</p>
<p>I don't think we could have done more than 4 or 5 on-campus auditions. Not just the stress, but the time away from senior year studies.</p>
<p>Last year D did 6 auditions, 1 regional (her safety) and 5 on campus. I would have allowed her to apply to 8, but she liked her safety so we were able to limit to 6. Eight would have been tough. One weekend was especially busy with an audition on Saturday and another on Monday. We know some students who applied to many more schools, but they often sent in tapes/CDs or arranged auditions extra early and outside the traditional audition season.</p>
<p>I'd suggest getting applications in as early as possible, because you will be more likely to get your first choice of audition dates and can spread them out better.</p>
<p>DD had a similar schedule: 6 auditions scheduled (all on-campus), safeties on each end, dropped the last audition, and only 2 out of driving distance. She had 2 auditions last semester, which seemed very early to her, but turned out to be a real blessing. She only had to reschedule 1 audition due to weather, and was glad to finished in February. To do 5-6 auditions in Jan-March would be brutal.</p>
<p>Allmusic said:
"Funny though, that Oberlin didn't do what I have seen other schools do, which is to close auditions to certain instruments (obviously those for which they had already filled the open spots), and only extend the deadline for those instruments for which they were still in need...."</p>
<p>I don't know if you are referring to Michigan specifically, but they constantly update their website with what instruments are closed and what are still open. But Michigan uses a rolling admissions policy. Oberlin doesn't. They just have the Early Review. </p>
<p>I only know about the Oberlin jazz program, but they are waiting until all auditions are done (today actually) before choosing the strongest candidates. I don't think they took very many, if any, Early Review applicants. Most were deferred. Anyway, they didn't extend the audition dates, just the application deadline. For what specific reason I don't know. Maybe they just wanted to brag that they had a 10 percent increase in applications.</p>
<p>DS did seven auditions...but he did one during the summer prior to sr year (it was a lucky circumstance), and one was extremely local. He (we) traveled for five others. Luckily the two in Maryland were the same weekend (very lucky except for the 32 inches of snow that weekend), two were in Boston (only a 2 hour drive) and one was in Pittsburgh. I agree with Bassdad...5 maybe 6 depending on the logistics is about all a student can easily handle. DS really had a lot of juggling to do...missed about 20 days of school between a bunch of festivals, auditions, and a band trip.</p>
<p>D did a total of 7, but two were regional schools that came to her arts high school. 5 were live, on-campus and she did them in four weekends. By the 5th, I don't think she could have done another one. It made for a hectic February, but looking back I'm glad we didn't stretch it out. I think four auditions would have been better, but since she had a specific reason for applying to each school, she did five. </p>
<p>I agree that, if Oberlin is on the list, doing that one in December might be a good idea. NYU has an "audition open-house" in November where you don't even have to apply in order to audition, just register for the open-house. Hartt also has a December audition date. Also, if both Oberlin and CIM are on the list, there will be one weekend where both have scheduled auditions, letting you do one "Ohio trip." According to the CIM admissions person, they schedule it this way every year. Oberlin will hold auditions on Saturday (with an optional Friday afternoon orientation) and CIM will have their auditions on both Sunday (all instruments) and Monday (violins only). D plays violin, so we scheduled her Oberlin audition for that Saturday and her CIM audition for Monday, giving her a day off between the two. It meant missing more school, but it was good to have the rest day. I was also told the CIM Sunday slots tend to fill up quickly, some years well before the December 1 application deadline.</p>
<p>We ended up flying two weekends and driving two; primarily due to flight schedules rather than distance.</p>
<p>I should add...DS did the early audition at Hartt (first weekend of December), and the priority audition at Duquesne (the Friday before Thanksgiving). He had both of those acceptances by December 15...plus the acceptance from the summer audition. So really...Jan and Feb he only had four auditions....2 in Boston (two different weekends) and two in Maryland (same weekend). It wasn't so awful.</p>
<p>My dd also did 6 auditions for undergrad. It seems to me that as you develop your list you need to know what your realistic chances are at the schools, how many openings and to have a good idea of what would be a safety type school for your child.
You also need to clarify what your child wants from a music major. To teach, conduct, perform? At what level? What path will get your child there?
I don't think it's smart to have 1 conservatory, 3 LAC/school of music colleges and 2 state u. as the list. Rather, pick the type and level the child wants and has a chance at, and have that be the main focus. Pick 4 or 5 that have a bit of a range in difficulty but are the appropriate type. Then you could add on 2 safety schools.<br>
You might want to make a quick spreadsheet of audition dates and also of required materials. A school asking for a completely different set of music might throw it all off.
As I recall my DD did northwestern and NY in Feb., NYC first week March, PA and MD the following weekend. This past week was the NYC auditions.</p>