<p>hey i am a junior in high school and i was wondering what the audition process waslike for hopefulobies......and do grades really matter for the conservatory?</p>
<p>As I understand things, the audition counts for about 80% of their decision. Because you get on average one elective course per semester through the College, they do care about grades to a certain extent. They want students who will be able to keep up with the rest of the class in those elective courses. They also want students who will have something to say with their playing or singing, not just flashy technique. I believe one of those electives must be a freshman writing class if your SAT verbal is less than 580, otherwise it is unrestricted like the rest.</p>
<p>The process is pretty well laid out on the Oberlin web site. Right now, you should be very interested in the required audition repertoire for your voice or instrument. This information will be very important for your teacher (and I am assuming you have a private teacher because conservatory admission is a real uphill battle without one) to help you choose and prepare your audition material.</p>
<p>Once you have decided on pieces for your audition, the next question is where that audition will take place. If you live within 600 miles of Oberlin or 200 miles of one of their regional audition sites (see the website for the list) then you will be expected to audition at one of those places. Otherwise, you also have the option of submitting a recording of yourself. In general, if you can audition at Oberlin, that is the best thing to do. It lets you see the school, allows the teachers to interact with you during the audition and everyone comes away with a lot more information than they would have gotten from a recording. Note that singers (maybe some instruments too - check the web site) have to submit a pre-screening recording if they want a live audition at Oberlin. </p>
<p>The regional auditions generally consist of someone who is not a faculty member videotaping one audition after another. You may get to ask a few questions, but they are on a pretty tight schedule and may not have a lot of time to answer them.</p>
<p>Live auditions at Oberlin take place on specified weekends. The first weekend in December is the early review weekend. If you get all your paperwork in by Nov 1, you can audition then and possibly have a decision right around this time of year. They can also elect to defer the decision until the regular deadline (April 1). The other weekends are in February and March. A typical audition weekend schedule may be found at [Audition</a> Weekend Information - Oberlin College](<a href=“http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/audition-weekend-information.dot]Audition”>http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/audition-weekend-information.dot)</p>
<p>You may also want to think about who will be writing your letters of recommendation. Start preparing a “brag sheet” on which you list your personal accomplishments, musical and otherwise, so that they have these fresh in mind when writing the letter. If you are going to use teachers at your high school, ours were very pleased to get the request at the end of junior year (so that they had the whole summer to work on them) rather than a couple of weeks before the deadline in senior year.</p>
<p>Oberlin and several other music schools use the Unified Application for Music and Performing Arts schools. You may want to go to that web site and register under a made-up name so that you can see what type of things they ask for. In addition to the purely factual, there are a couple of short-answer questions that ask for future plans, why you are applying to Oberlin and so forth. They are not looking for full-length essays here, but you may want to think about your answers over the summer nonetheless.</p>
<p>It is impossible to say in advance what your personal odds are. Overall, I believe the Conservatory has been accepting about a third of their applicants and about 40% of those admitted choose to attend. However, those numbers can vary a LOT from instrument to instrument and from year to year even within the same instrument. A lot depends on how many of a particular voice or instrument are needed and the level of the competition that particular year in your own field. I can say that sopranos and flute players always seem to have it rough because there are so many good ones always auditioning.</p>
<p>i have heard that alot. I am a soprano (lyric for now) and alot of people have told me tha the vocal dept has is the roughest because they have so so many people auditioning. But i though i would have a better chance because a few of there alumni (Denyce Graves, Angele Powell walker etc.) have graduated from my school.Also in the last three years, they have selected about ten to attend there school. I go to an arts school and i take about ten classes a day we go from 8-6 and sometimes even later! so does the fact that i take about four or two more claases than the average high school student factor in as well?</p>
<p>It certainly helps to study with teachers who have a track record of getting their students into Conservatory-level programs. From their successful admissions experience they may well have some insight into what works and what does not in auditions at Oberlin. </p>
<p>I do not know how or whether the added academic load will factor into their decision. It would be a good question to ask the Conservatory Admissions staff (not College Admissions). Is the extra time put in so that you can get both the standard high school classes plus the performing arts content that an arts school curriculum provides, or are you actually getting more non-arts related academic classes than would be normal for high school?</p>
<p>You should check in with your school’s guidance department. They may also be able to answer some of your questions. Because they are an arts school, they should have counselors who actually understand the process that performing arts majors go through. The counselors in regular high schools rarely have a clue because they get two or three students who go that direction in their entire career. In that situation, you can only hope the counselor will handle the required paperwork and get out of the way otherwise.</p>
<p>thanks! i am studying with the same vocal techer that trained Ms.Graves! he is really good and he says I have a career voice and I can go very far. I know I go to an arts school but my counselors arereally slow when it comes to what they really look for.My teachers just says they look for talented people but I mean there is talent everywhere you turn and alot of talented people apply there. but I spend alot of time practicing (get home around 9) and out of ten classes, 6 of them are my arts and they consist of music thoery, opera workshop, vocal tech, composition, choir and piano lab. What is the process for oberlin conservatory??</p>
<p>I am not sure which process you mean. The application process is well outlined on the Oberlin web site. See [Application</a> Checklist - Oberlin College](<a href=“http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/apply/checklist.dot]Application”>http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/apply/checklist.dot) for a list of what they need and when they need it.</p>
<p>The audition requirements are at [Voice</a> - Oberlin College](<a href=“http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/auditions/voice.dot]Voice”>http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/auditions/voice.dot)</p>
<p>The curriculum for singers can be found at <a href=“http://catalog.oberlin.edu/mime/download.pdf?catoid=20&ftype=2&foid=570[/url]”>http://catalog.oberlin.edu/mime/download.pdf?catoid=20&ftype=2&foid=570</a></p>
<p>Or were you asking about some other process?</p>
<p>i mean like what is there to expect when you go for your audtion?
What happened when your D went for her audition?</p>
<p>She auditioned on the Early Review weekend and it was a lot like the page [Audition</a> Weekend Information - Oberlin College](<a href=“http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/audition-weekend-information.dot]Audition”>http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/admissions/audition-weekend-information.dot) said it would be.</p>
<p>We drove out there right after school on the Friday before auditions. We drove because she did not want to play an important audition on a borrowed bass. We waited until after school because she had already visited Oberlin and had sample lessons, and could not afford to miss another day that semester. We arrived around 10:30, too late for the Friday night activities, so just checked into the hotel in Elyria. She registered at 8:30 the next morning and we went to the pre-audition meeting. I then went to the financial aid meeting and the panel discussion while she practiced a bit. We met for lunch (the little pink cafe building in the parking lot behind the conservatory, as I recall) and then she went back to change clothes and warm up some more for her audition. The audition was held in the office of one of the two classical bass teachers, with both of them present. She played for about 20 minutes and they talked for about 10. She came out, changed clothes and we got in the car and drove home. Somewhere in the morning, she had taken a written theory test, but they do that entirely online now and not during the audition weekend.</p>
<p>A little over two weeks later, she got her acceptance and some preliminary financial aid numbers. She had several other auditions still to go and did not mail in her acceptance until late March.</p>
<p>The voice auditions may be a bit different. You may want to start a thread on the music majors forum to ask about specifics. There is even one person (POTO Mom) whose daughter just received an early acceptance from Oberlin for this year. Perhaps if you were to PM her, she could give you detailed specifics.</p>
<p>yea ill have to do that but were your D’s grade relly good or just fair?</p>
<p>Her SAT’s were slightly lower than yours are predicted to be. The high school she attended is a very competitive large suburban public school here in New Jersey. While her GPA was probably about 3.7, that just barely got her into the top quarter of her class. Because she had a lot of As in chorus, gym and orchestra, I would guess that Oberlin likely recalculated her core subject GPA at more like 3.4 to 3.5. She was thinking of a dual major in either Math or Physics for her first couple of years at Oberlin, but ultimately settled on only the performance degree.</p>
<p>o lord…so your saying that they would probably look at only the acdemic side of my grades…because at my school tha all factor in together its apartof the corriculum</p>
<p>I am not 100% sure how Oberlin Conservatory does this. I highly suggest that you speak with someone in the Conservatory Admissions Office (not the College Admissions Office, which is separate). They are very nice people and have certainly answered questions like this before.</p>
<p>Different colleges have different ways of calculating your effective GPA from your transcript. Most schools will only consider academic classes like English, Math, Sciences, Modern Languages and Social Studies. Those schools will not consider things like Music, Chorus, Orchestra, Band, Gym, Art, Home Economics, Shop, and so forth when recalculating your GPA. Some schools weight honors classes in varying amounts, some weight AP/IB classes in varying amounts. It is not unusual for the GPA that a college calculates to be 0.2 to 0.5 points lower than the one that your high school reports. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they apply the same calculation to everyone else, so their GPAs are going to be lowered too.</p>
<p>The other good news is that there are a lot of excellent music schools out there that will accept you based solely on your audition and whether or not they have a teacher with whom you can communicate. By all means, audition for Oberlin. They may be happy to accept you based on your voice and on your test scores. On the other hand, if they do not take you, you will have alternatives.</p>
<p>thanks Bassdad!</p>
<p>i was reading this and i just gotta say, hopefulobie you sound ridiculous. in an amazing, awesome kind of way. I mean good lord o__o you are the reason I decided I wouldn’t attempt auditioning for the conservatory and just aimed for the college instead hahaha</p>
<p>LOL o wow I dont know if I should take that as a compliment or an insult. But I just want to attend a school where i can just focus on my music…</p>
<p>it’s definitely a compliment haha. and even tho i’m not going to the conservatory i want to go to the college just to be around the talent and the pianos :d</p>
<p>yea i can understand that. its a really great school and there is a heck of alot of talent there espiecially on the vocal side which is why im tryi too get all of my information now!</p>
<p>Bassdad, what was the written test like for your D? What specifically did it consist of?</p>
<p>I am not sure they even do the written test on audition weekends anymore, I think they switched over the year my daughter auditioned because she wound up doing both a written test on audition day and a series of tests that she downloaded from an Oberlin web site over the summer.</p>
<p>The one she did on paper there was similar to the first one she took online and it covered very basic music theory - key signatures for major/minor keys, fill in the missing notes to complete a specified triad, what note value is needed to complete this measure, write out a specified scale. Possibly identify various inversions of chords (although I don’t really remember all that well). They said that it was only for placement in the correct theory class, and did not count at all toward admission.</p>
<p>They have a special section or two of Theory 1 that meets one extra day per week to help those who are well behind the rest of the class in basic theory. By the end of the first semester, the people in those sections are caught up and can take Theory 2 with everyone else. If you ace the first test, you can take more advanced tests that may exempt you from one or two of the Theory classes entirely.</p>
<p>This information is about five years old and I know that they have changed things around a bit, so it would be much better to get details from someone who has done this in the last year or two.</p>
<p>Thank you so much, Bassdad! This was really helpful. </p>
<p>How does your D like Oberlin?</p>