Hello,
DD and I were talking about trial lessons and when we should be trying to arrange them. For the schools nearby (aka East Coast), we plan to arrange them prior to Dec 1 deadline for application. For places that are further away and would require flying, we were planning on scheduling them when and if she gets invited for live auditions. They are Rice (Shepherd), USC (Thorton) and UMich.
She brought up what seemed like a valid point that she needs to indicate her teacher choices on the application and w/o trial lessons, she’d be making uninformed choices.
What are your thoughts? Did you or are you planning on trial lessons prior to application submission?
Thanks.
For my D, didn’t make a difference.
My recommendation would be, if at all possible (financially and logistically) to do them before applying. I know sometimes it’s just not possible for a myriad of reasons, but what I understand now that I didn’t completely get before this whole process began is how important the relationship can be on the TEACHER side of things. We always talk about the kids finding out who they want to study with, but the same thing is being thought through on the other side of the equation. Sample lessons are a pre-pre-screen of sorts for the teachers and can make a difference on acceptance or whether you’re even offered an audition. As @stradmom points out, does it always make a difference? No. Can it? I suspect sometime it might. It probably varies greatly by teacher, instrument, etc, etc. but after having gone through this my feeling now is that you should try for every advantage you get.
In addition, doing sample lessons before auditions can allow a student to weed out a few schools ahead of time. Audition season is stressful enough without spending time preparing for an audition with a teacher that, had you known, you wouldn’t want to study with anyway even if you had gotten accepted. It can help narrow your audition rep. That said, if you daughter is looking a school with MANY professors on her instrument then you probably won’t rule out an entire school based on one lesson with one teacher.
A few things. If your child doesn’t meet the academic profile of the schools, it will be a long shot. And if they require two SAT subject tests and your child hasn’t met the requirement, they won’t even get an audition.
Also, you need to check with the professor if they will even give a lesson on audition week. Many will not.
@DesignDad would you recommend all kids to get a lesson?
What @ClarinetDad16 says is true, but just make sure you’re looking at the academic profile for the music school and not the entire university. Using Michigan as an example, the school of music requires only a 24 ACT and a 3.0 GPA, which would be a fair bit below UM overall admission stats. Even schools like Rice and Northwestern make the same allowances. Admission departments at both Shepherd and Bienen told D she only needed a 26 on her ACT, which is lower than you’d expect from those two institutions.
Edit: regarding “all kids” I would say it’s not AS important if you’ve worked with the teacher in, for example, a summer program. Then they know you already, but even then if it’s been more than a year it’s always good to let them see how much you’ve progressed.
@EstherDad, your daughter is a senior, right? Take a good look at the list of schools and your travel budget. Also, check with her school about their planned absence policy. Keep in mind that it’s not unheard of to want to revisit a school after admissions decisions in order to make a decision.
We did a mix though all of our pre-application visits were in the spring of junior year. If we had done a lot of pre-application travel in the fall, then pre-screens and applications (those essays took way more time/energy than expected), then travel for auditions… I think my son would have been burnt out by audition season, not to mention stressed out at school from all the missed days.
For Thornton, my son had a lesson literally an hour before his audition, both with the same faculty. Turned out to be an advantage, I think. He essentially got an extra-long audition. At another school, he visited and had a lesson after he’d gotten their acceptance and scholarship offer.
I don’t know of any conservatory or music school that requires SAT subject tests.
@ScreenName48105, @ClarinetDad16 was talking about Rice (Shepherd) in particular which require two SAT subject tests or ACT.
I have to agree with @DesignDad - sample lessons (and summer programs, for those who are not rising seniors already) have really helped my son narrow and prioritize his list and to get a better idea of what type of teacher and school he wants. At this time last year he really had no clue what his preferences were. He plays an instrument for which there is typically only one teacher at any given school, so if that person is not a good fit it isn’t worth the time to apply and audition. In a few cases he was able to attend a studio class during his visit, and those were really helpful, too, in terms of seeing how the teacher interacted with studio members. All the schools we have visited have been very different, and the number of auditions you can do in one audition season are limited, so having those visits really helped.
On the other hand, I totally get how it can be costly and inconvenient, if not impossible, to do these lessons and then turn around and travel again to audition a few months later. We did a bunch over the summer and during spring break of junior year. Since it sounds like your DD is a senior, I would probably do what you describe - set up lessons at the closer ones you can get to easily, and save the rest. As it is we are having trouble scheduling even one visit this fall due to marching band commitments, and it’s a school within a 2 hr drive of our home, so I get it.
Weigh the positives and potential negatives of a lesson for your child pre audition
I think a trial lesson is good if you have time and the resources to get there. Ideally it is best to do them before applying. Some professors don’t charge while others do. We have done both. The most recent one, we did have to pay the professor. But I figured it would save the cost of the application fee as well as the time and limited weekend audition slots my son has available if he did not care for the professor. There are only so many weekends my son has open without jeopardizing his current ensembles. We don’t have time to do all schools that way, but out of 5, he has had a lesson at 2, and a meeting with a professor at a 3rd. Time and distance don’t really permit any more visits at this point.
Trial lessons are always a good thing, for the reasons people state. In some ways, it would be easier doing it before the audition period, as you won’t know if the teacher would be available then, not all will be, it is a pretty hectic time. Personally I recommend not doing it too far in advance, one of the things about a sample lesson (or a summer program, etc) is hopefully the teacher will remember you at audition time and will put down “yep, willing to teach the student” and if it is too far removed they may not remember the student. Plus you won’t waste time putting a teacher down you don’t want to study with.
The downside is the time of travelling to the schools to do the sample lessons, hooking up with the teacher (not always easy) and finding time to do it. I have seen kids with a sample lesson have a teacher cancel it 10 minutes before it was supposed to happen (and they charged 350 bucks for the lesson), so it could be you go all that way and then have it not happen…
I think it may be a lot more critical if they only have one teacher on the instrument (let’s say a woodwind), then if they have more than one, because obviously you have the option if it doesn’t work out to get another teacher.
Keep in mind that kids have done the blind teacher thing and done fine, hopefully you would have gotten recommendations from others, read what other people say, to have an idea of a teacher, which isn’t perfect but has worked for a lot of kids. I would heartily say it is better to do the sample lesson, but it isn’t life killing if you don’t, if you otherwise have tried to do due dilegence on the teacher. Put it this way, even with sample lessons kids can find out the teacher isn’t right for them once they start the ‘real work’, there is always that chance, so while you do a lot as a student/parent to find the right fit, sometimes there isn’t one or may take some work to find that later on
With the academic side of admissions, keep in mind that the academic profile for music students in a university is likely to be different than that for the general population, they make allowances, they don’t expect the same thing from music students they would for academic admits (it could be different from what I have heard for students doing dual degree programs). It was interesting reading Rice’s website, they say that the SAT subject tests (which I guess are the modern equivalent of the old SATII) is that you should take subject areas related to what you plan to study…wonder what that encompasses with music performance? I could see foreign language for a vocal major, but wonder how they see the other areas fitting a music major? They also say that good test scores are important on the music school admissions site, but that they aren’t the be all and end all, which kind of goes along with the notion about how they handle music students.
Every school is different with their requirements, which is why the first stop should be their website, same thing for audition requirements and such. Conservatories for the most part don’t require the SAT (Curtis does, bizarre if you ask me, since from what I can tell and have been told they really don’t use it) or other standardized tests, schools within universities will vary as to how much leeway they give music students, so it pays to check with the school.
One caveat for sample lessons taken before the audition. As musicprnt stated that hopefully the teacher will remember the student and think, “Yes, I want to teach this student.”. Son during his senior year had the opportunity to watch audition videos with the studio teacher who explained his reasons for accepting or declining certain students. His number one reason for declining was when the student did not try to implement the suggestions the teacher made during the sample lesson during the audition. It didn’t have to be perfect but if the student wasn’t willing to try a different technique suggested by the teacher, he felt they wouldn’t work well together over the next 4 years.
Just wanted to add: the timing of the lessons didn’t matter for D, but HAVING them was very important. Her final decision was based in large part on her interactions with the teachers at her top choice schools. For both grad and undergrad, she violated the College Confidential Prime Directive in turning down “more prestigious” schools for those with teachers she wanted to work with.
Yes, but taking the ACT is an option. I was responding to the comment, “And if they require two SAT subject tests and your child hasn’t met the requirement, they won’t even get an audition.” My point, all along, has been that this idea that your music student applicant has to compete with the general applicant pool for admission to the university is simply not true. My son re-took the ACT just because he wanted to. Did no prep, just plunked down the fee and took it. Score went up by 2 points. It cost him 4 hours. He took it in October. Low stress. It would be worth doing if there’s a school that requires ACT or SAT subject tests and taking the subject tests are causing stress.
Based on what I have heard back particularly from Rice admissions and info found on BU and Peabody(JHU) sites. My D and I decided not to worry about it. She’s signed up for ACT again since she doesn’t have the scores from her test 3 weeks ago. She may choose not to take it if the score is at least in high 20’s. Time to stay focused on music.
My D did not do sample lessons ahead of her applications, and virtually nowhere she applied required a studio preference on the application (she is a voice major). She did not want to fall in love with a particular faculty member and then not be admitted! At some places, a sample lesson was part of the on campus interview or we could schedule one at the time of the audition by extending the campus visit a day. She took sample lessons at her three top schools AFTER acceptances, to help decide where to attend, and this was enormously useful. Good luck!
My thoughts probably run counter to much of what you see on this site. We arranged sample lessons for my vocal performance son during pre-application campus visits. We did this largely because that seemed to be the prevailing wisdom on CC. In retrospect, frankly I don’t think sample lessons were particularly helpful. Consider that you’ll only be interacting with ONE member of a large faculty pool. The experience likely wouldn’t or shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.
IMHO The three most important factors in acceptance to a school of music appear to be: #1- Audition #2- Audition #3- Audition. In addition to determining which students get in, the audition is where the faculty starts putting “dibs” on which students they want for their individual studios.
Having said all that, do sample lessons hurt? Of course not. If that helps your child get a better feel for the school and it’s convenient both financially and logistically, go right ahead. But if it’s a stretch, please don’t beat yourself up. You have not hurt your child’s acceptance chances.
I think that sample lessons might help when you are talking a program with a limited number of teachers, or one, where if the chemistry with the teacher isn’t there, it may not be worth applying to that program…or if there is only one teacher, it could potentially help distinguishing yourself from the rest of the pack.
Do you absolutely need to do it before applying? No, like many things with music admissions there is no one golden way, a sample lesson might give a kid an edge in getting accepted to a particular teacher, because they have seen and may remember them, but it isn’t a deal breaker, any more than doing or not doing summer programs is a deal breaker. Likewise, there are students who never do a sample lesson, get admitted to a studio and are happy with the teacher.
Sample lessons are a valuable tool, that can help situations like where the student finds they hate the teacher (or vice versa) once admitted or not wasting time applying to a program where there is only 1 teacher of interest,but they also don’t guarantee success either, you could have a great sample lesson then figure out the person is not a good teacher…