<p>My senior D is in love with Vanderbilt and the Blair School of Music new bassoon professor. She visited in the fall and had a great lesson...nice guy! She did not apply early due to financial restrictions. We are hoping for financial aid, and/or merit help. Thereis no way she can attend without serious $ offer.
We go for her audition in about a month, and I am wondering if anyone has any info on what to expect as far as whether there will be an interview portion or just straight music. Does anyone have info on the level of bassoon players in the studio?
Is it really possible to double major as a performance and something at their Peabody School?
Is it possible to change from performance to musical arts down the road if she desires?
I will put her stats below and would love some feedback on her chances...April seem so far away!
Music:<br>
Bassoon for 8 yrs.
Allstate every year since 6th grade
2 Major city youth orchestras for 3 yrs .. added a 3rd for senior yr
Drum major for marching band for 2 yrs
involved in city groups since 7th grade
gives lessons and has had paying "gigs"
Governor's Honors summer program for our state
Academics:
GPA: 4.0
Class rank: 9/405
SAT: 740 verbal 600 math
ACT: 30
Involved in all the usual National Honor Societies and several school clubs. Great recs from both academic and music teachers. Will have 5 APs ... school only allows 6.
ps ... Other schools applied to are: UGA, Emory, Furman.</p>
<p>I’ll be able to tell you more after D’s audition on the 26th for certain, but she was told she would have her audition, sight singing, Music Theory Placement test and an interview all in the same day when we visited this past summer. She’s a bassist/music Ed major. She is applying for the 5 year B.Mus. in Musical Arts/Teacher Education which is the dual with Peabody. Is this what you are referring to for dual major?</p>
<p>Given the stats you posted, and IF there are available slots for bassoons, I’d say her chances for admission are really very good. Sounds like a great kid! Merit money might be another story, though. </p>
<p>I had two kids apply to Vanderbilt and the Blair School. Neither are bassoonists. They both got in. One had stats similar to your daughter’s. I can’t remember what his scholarships were – they were good but not enough to warrant attendance in our opinions, since so many other schools’ scholarships were better. The other kid had super-amazing, really-couldn’t-be-better stats. He got a free-ride in the form of grant money. We called the FA office to see what might happen to that grant money as time went on – could it be relied on for 4 full years if he continued to perform as he had in the past? There were no guarantees, but in all likelihood, future grant money would decrease, they said, as his older brother moved on to grad school and/or if my income increased. That’s fair enough, and we DO understand and appreciate that logic. But that son opted for a free-ride merit scholarship at another school, which was guaranteed for the full 4 years, instead of the free-ride grant money at Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt has full-tuition scholarships and 1/2-tuition scholarships, as you probably know, and they ARE guaranteed (given a certain level of sustained performance), but there are very few of them and they require lengthy applications. (My son DID apply for the ones that he was qualified for. He wasn’t awarded any of them.) We were shocked and pleased to learn of his free-ride grant award. There was no evidence of such a beast in any of our prior research. But, like I said, other schools offered him free-ride merit money in the form of scholarships, which could be depended upon for the full four years.</p>
<p>I can’t answer any bassoon-specific questions. Other than a little chatting afterwards, there was no interview portion for my kids. Just music. </p>
<p>Regarding a change from a performance major to musical arts: Yes, I think it is always possible to change one’s major mid-stream, and in our experience, plenty of kids do. I guess the only exception would be if she were to get a music scholarship that was linked to being a performance major. But from what I remember about Vanderbilt, they’re pretty liberal about keeping students’ scholarships intact even if they change their majors.</p>
<p>We, too, were told it was possible to double major in performance and something else at Blair. The double major that alexmariejp is talking about (above) is for Musical Arts and Peabody, not Performance and Peabody. Knowing what we know now about a BM in Performance (at a different school), I would say it would be very difficult to do. The time constraints for the performance degree alone, and the limited number of music course offerings, can be fairly prohibitive. All music students are on basically the same ‘track,’ so required music courses at ‘smaller’ music schools are only offered at limited times that match that track. A student can’t leave that track, ‘or else.’ So all other courses for any other major in any other ‘college’ (Peabody) must be offered at times that work around that track. Since Peabody is a whole other college within the university, it may or may not be set up to work around the course offerings for Blair’s performance degree. That was the problem my son ran into at his (other) university. He intended to double major (history or foreign language) but couldn’t fit all the required courses into a day. It was impossible. MAYBE Blair and Peabody are different, since they already have the established 5-Year Plan Musical Arts/Master of Education degree.</p>
<p>My son does know a horn player at his school that is supposedly triple-majoring in performance, something over in the engineering school (!!), and something like Chemistry or Math. I find his story really, REALLY hard to believe! I have always thought that my son has either misunderstood his friend, or his friend is not quite telling the truth, or his friend is on the 6-8 year plan!! I simply cannot imagine how he was able to work his required music courses around his required engineering courses! Something HAS to be amiss! 
But if my son has the correct story, then ‘yes, it is possible.’</p>
<p>Anyway, best of luck! I don’t know how helpful my response can be, since none of mine have attended Vanderbilt. But I do know how anxious one can get at this time of year – oh, the endless waiting! – and thought that I’d give some of the general insight that I’ve gleaned through my own kids’ experiences.</p>
<p>Wishing you the best! ;)</p>
<p>One thing we did notice when we were at Vandy this summer was that Blair is at the outside corner of the University and it is a haul to get from there to anywhere else on campus. The tour of the campus didn’t even include Blair because it is so far from the other schools on campus. I am sure that would tie into the ability to double major too. I know my daughter was concerned about that. Another thing my daughter just mentioned is she rememeber being told by the dean of Blair that it would be possible to dual major as a performance major but NOT as a Music Ed major. His reasoning was that music ed was already essentially a dual major…</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply. I definitely feel like I have a little more info… how is it that everything isn’t so clear form the beginning. It is comforting to know there are others out there in the same boat…or who have made it through to the other side!</p>
<p>We have found Blair to be the least forthcoming with timely information of all the schools daughter is applying to. I am sure it has to do with the sheer number of applications they get. Most other schools have gotten us much more information much earlier than Blair has.</p>
<p>^We thought the same thing when my kids were applying – the least forthcoming. Not just Blair, but Vandy in general. Very little info came down the pike.</p>
<p>Daughter just got the two day schedule from Vandy today for other 25th,26th. Other than the audition, the music theory test is the only other requirement. There are other things like a dinner with the Dean on Friday evening, classes you can attend Friday and meetings a with current Blair students but that seems to be all.</p>
<p>Hoping to get her dates soon so we can plan the trip. Dinner with the dean and ability to attend classes sound like good opportunities.</p>
<p>Well, we are back from Vanderbilt. Here is what I can tell you from our experience:</p>
<p>First off, East Coasters need to remember that Vanderbilt is in the Central time zone. So everything is a little off for you. That was great for her 10 am test (really at 11 for us). Not so great for attending the really long concert the night before (we left at intermission - it was 9:15 for them, 10:15 for us and we were exhausted after the long drive in bad weather).</p>
<p>The dinner at the University Club is okay. Nothing spectacular. Vegans beware. There is salad and mixed cooked veggies, but the two main dishes were pasta - one vegetarian, one with chicken. Dessert was ice cream and cobbler. For a celiac like me, it was a tough dinner, but I am used to it after all these years. </p>
<p>Afterwards we were invited to a concert. It was very good, but as I said above, very long. Since the auditions for strings started at 7am, that is something to keep in mind. We didn’t attend classes Friday because the weather was so bad we had an additional 3 hours added to our 13 hour drive, so I can’t tell you how they were.</p>
<p>Each student was assigned a practice room for one hour before his/her audition. A current Blair student comes to take you from the practice room to the audition. Daughter found this to be the most formal audition she has attended. Big room, professors at other end of room at a long table, no introductions. Each audition was scheduled for 12 minutes. Her biggest sadness was the piece that they required her to learn was the piece that they had her play the shortest portion of… and not even the hard part of the piece.</p>
<p>The professors asked her to stick around and they then worked with her for about 30 minutes each. She was exhausted when she was done.</p>
<p>There were no refreshments for the kids auditioning or the parents on the audition day, so bring your own. We didn’t have much with us because the last three auditions we did all had coffee, water and food available. There was probably time to leave and get food if you play an instrument that is small and portable and doesn’t go out of tune when you take it in and out of a warm building to cold outdoors, but for a bass, that just didn’t work. </p>
<p>I did attend the panel with the parents of current Blair Students and the Music Ed meeting. They were both useful. At the music Ed meeting we were told that they take 52-53 Blair students each year and only 10 of them are music ed. They offer slots to about 20 students for music ed. This was the first audition day (other than the day for ED1). There were 26 string students auditioning. There were at least 36 band/ piano/vocal kids also auditioning that day - and vocals were already prescreened. There are two more audition days like this, so you have an idea of the numbers you are up against. We were told that the next two audition were for bigger numbers.</p>
<p>The daughter said the theory test was easy. She was happy there was an additional page on it for “advanced students.” She had only one question on that she wasn’t sure of. They do not test for aural skills that day and there was no interview component.</p>
<p>Also, the degree my daughter is applying to is the MA5, which is a Bachelors of Music and the Masters in Ed from Peabody. It is 4 years at Blair, then one month later you start 12 full months at Peabody. It is one of the two 5 year programs at Blair, the other is a 3+2 with Owen school of business for an MBA.</p>