@hesmall sorry neither my son nor I recall how the sightreading portion was done at USC. I do recall his thinking it was not too bad. He was admitted to USC but never really felt comfortable there, even though his big sister attends. He is a VP major at FSU.
@Vistajay- thanks so much for your reply! Congrats to your son; I hear that FSU has an outstanding vocal program!
@akapiratequeen and others- many of my daughters’ friends and classmates EDd and have either heard from their top choice school or will be hearing this week. Their waiting period is over where our kids’ journey won’t end until mid March! I actually find it a bit cruel to put 17/18 yr olds through this grueling, exhausting, drawn-out application process.
And for us parents, not hearing until January if our kid is invited to audition onsite is financially stressful! Booking last minute flights is ridiculously expensive!! This being said, so far my D has been invited to audition at 2 of the 9 schools she has applied. Out of the remaining seven, two said she should be hearing from them by end of December, while the others said not until January! Deep breaths for sure!!
@hesmall where is your D applying? And yes, we are waiting on prescreens as well. Here’s hoping THEY come through this month…
@akapiratequeen- my D passed the prescreens (classical voice) at Vanderbilt and NYU. Now have to wait to hear from 7 others:) Fingers crossed that Santa comes early for our kids!
Question (for anyone)- if a kid passes the prescreen and is given an audition date, does that mean she has been academically accepted to the university?
TIA for your responses!
According to those I know who did Early Action at Berklee last year, most had decision letters before Christmas and I believe the notices included any scholarship offers (I hear you have to dig a little in the packet to find that scholarship info-so just giving you a heads-up!) And I think they were also told January 31st. My daughter did EA at Berklee on Dec. 8th and thinks they phrased it “you will get notices BY January 31st.”
Welcome to our new posters-the more the merrier and always grateful for new perspectives, insight and questions along the journey.
@Leao114 I would definitely try to motivate your son to add some safety schools to his list. Deadlines are approaching (some may be before he hears from Berklee) so do this soon. Assure him that you think it’s great to aim high and you have faith in his chances, but that it is just for that extra peace of mind and security. I’m not sure if this is true, but I’ve heard that sometimes you can negotiate with a top-choice college better if you have strong offers on the table from other schools-so perhaps you can use that as a sneaky way to get him on board. Having said that, I have been told that Berklee simply does not negotiate their offer. So, if accepted, whatever his letter says will stand in terms of money (or lack of) money offered no matter how much you beg. Same with places like NYU who have an endless waiting list. But some reach schools might be more open for adjustments to help him choose their school. I have mentioned this before but my friend had an awful experience last year. His son, who is top of class, top SAT scores and award-winner theatre kid, applied only to the top Musical Theatre schools last year (7 total) confident he would get in to most and have some decent scholarship offers. He was wait-listed on all the schools and had no offers to accept on May 1st. They were devastated. He ended up at a great school, but for Acting, not Theatre. He is very happy, overall, and relieved it all worked out in the end. But talk about stress!
In regard to sight reading, I have an interesting perspective that just came to light. We know a young man who applied to Berklee last year. He is a mega-talented, award-winning piano player who played in a private high school jazz band that my daughter was vocalist for. We expected him to easily get into Berklee and get a nice scholarship. We were shocked to learn he did not get into Berklee. My husband was talking to his former band director last night, saying how surprised he was, and the band director said he wasn’t that shocked. He said was a really bad sight reader and thinks that’s why he didn’t get in. Said the weaknesses probably came through in the audition and they probably thought that would really hurt him. He said his mom hinted that he asked Berklee for advice after the rejection and they told him to go to a local college, get some Liberal Arts credits, improve sight reading and come back to audition next year. And I believe this is what he is doing. So maybe it does matter in a big way, at least for some schools.
My S is waiting for NYU Steinhart (Jazz Studies/Music Ed) and Eastman. He’s set with his other four auditions for late Jan. through mid Feb. Not sure re: admissions, great question!
The admissions question is a really good one! When we visited Michigan Ann Arbor, they explicitly said if you were invited to audition you would be screened academically before being invited. But that’s the only school my kid applied to I’ve heard say that out loud.
Waiting waiting waiting here! Both for prescreen results and for EA audition results coming on the 15th! AHHH! Just got an e-mail from our flagship saying prescreen results would be released by Dec 31. So we are expecting to hear from at least 3 this month and hopefully the rest early January. Saint Olaf said they release audition invites about Jan 15. I’m glad we have a bunch of distractions this month. 3 scheduled (1 EA last month), waiting on 7!? Yikes - haven’t done that math before - hurry up admissions people! If he gets that EA admission with decent merit, I think I can relax much more going forward. I’m glad he got that one out of the way.
Kid has a couple essays due Saturday so I guess he should get cracking on that!
@hesmall - great schools. Best of luck to your D.
@MusakParent- thanks for the quick reply! I wish every school would be as forthcoming as Michigan! Congrats to your S for passing those prescreens!!
Would these others schools really have a prospective student incur all those expenses (flight, hotel, etc) and endure the stressful audition process only to academically reject the kid after the fact? I’m hoping not but I guess time will tell:)
Has anyone ever heard of a kid getting merit from NYU? D loves it there, but so does everyone else, it seems! ? Would feel great to get in, but if sticker price is out of reach, should we even bother? (next year)
@hesmall , welcome and best wishes to your D. My D is also a singer, and I would say that approximately half of the time, an invitation to audition included an academic admit. Sometimes this information is a little squirrelly and hard to get, as you won’t get a formal admissions offer until after the audition. Most colleges will screen your child academically, at least, to be sure they meet the minimum guidelines. At one program, she received notification of her academic admission at her interview, on campus, the day before the audition. Some colleges use more holistic admissions decisions, so they like to wait until after the audition results are in (they may admit a seriously talented musician with less good academics, for instance). For programs that are notoriously competitive academically even for performance majors (like Rice and Northwestern, for example), you may want to post names of schools with that question here; my D did not apply to these programs.
@mom2clarinetobsessedkid , I can’t speak to the music programs but my D got a nice merit package from NYU Gallatin; base of $25k/year plus work/study and travel grants. That’s the only reason we let S apply.
@mom2clarinetobsessedkid I HAVE heard of big awards at NYU (in MT, at least). But they seem to be a rare beast!
@hesmall I don’t think you can equate passing prescreens to making the cut for academic admissions. I have two artist who passed prescreens at different schools and ended up waitlisted. Some schools don’t even look at your academic application unless you have a good live audition. I was frustrated to hear this at one audition, in which their application was particularly long and tedious. I remember thinking, OMG so much work went into that and then it’s possible that it will never be seen at all, just trashed! My DD was cut at this audition and her application was probably trashed! So yes some schools will have a student incur the expense and stress of the audition process without even looking at your academic application. You never really know.
(This was not either of the schools you mentioned above.)
Oh, yes, and as @diglass says, NEVER assume academic admission has been granted unless you receive this specific information in writing! (Passing a prescreen is NOT tacit evidence of this…it just means you can have a live audition.)
Hi all! Happy to stumble across this thread. My son is a jazz guitarist and should be hearing from his ED school today or tomorrow. If that doesn’t work out, he has an audition at Michigan on 2/1 and is waiting to hear back on his prescreen submissions to USC, UCLA, and NYU. He is also likely to submit applications to other schools whose deadlines have not passed yet like McGill and U of Illinois. So nerve wracking!
@AmyIzzy do you know if students hear from Berklee via email, regular mail, or both?
I can attest that Michigan audition invites have been academically screened to attend the school. During my D audition at Michigan, this was clearly stated during the audition day welcoming address.
I think I came across some posts on here saying someone got positive feedback after an audition at Northwestern but then were rejected academically after the fact? That also seems so backwards to me. Especially for schools that are picky about academics. Northwestern was very forward with the fact that they expect academics to be on par with the rest of the student body when we visited. It’s a waste of music faculty time and resources not to screen academically. I could imagine faculty could be frustrated if they liked a student in an audition only to have academic admissions nix that applicant.
Northwestern’s music portal did ask for an ACT/SAT score I think?
I don’t recall whether Northwestern’s music portal asked the applicant to separately report the SAT/ACT score. But, I do know that even though the prescreening material was due before the Common App materials, they were very clear that your prescreening would not be reviewed until after the Common App was received.