Does anyone know if it’s even possible to do “sample lessons” during the summer or are most instructors gone? BTW - I want to go to school at Club Med!!! (we toured a ballet school for our son, Harid Conservatory, in Boca Raton and it was like that. I nearly cried when he said he didn’t like it 
It depends. Some profs won’t be available. Some profs will give you private lessons outside the university. Many will give you private lessons if you are open to various profs. I believe even more of them would be open to a sample lesson if you are flexible on the timing.
In my experience the profs are not there in the summer but I’m sure it’s an individual thing
OK - of course my dd knows Snarky Puppy - so I need to get “with it”. To quote her: Snarky puppy is amazing
He took like modern hip hop music that all the kids my age like and mixed it with jazz
it’s like a jazz fusion group, kinda funk
But he’s amazing, the new Earth Wind and Fire basically
Super spicy."
She may not know that Miami is a hip city - but she knows her Snarky Puppy.
Well if you want to sell her on Miami then tell her that Michael League and Snarky Puppy host their one and only annual music festival in Miami in Feb every year. Last year two ensembles from Frost even got to play at it. I know because I was down here with my D (snarky super fan) and we met the Dean of Frost who was hanging out in the crowd watching. It’s called the Ground Up festival and it’s designed as a showcase for all the really cool bands and artists that League is developing on his label. First year Esperanza Spaulding was the artist at large and gave some amazing masterclasses.
So we’re in Baltimore to see Peabody tomorrow. Will keep you all posted! This will be the third school he’s toured. He also spent 5 weeks at Berklee and two full days in meetings and lessons at Ithaca. Later this month: music open house at Rutgers. In late June he’ll head to Eastman for a jazz workshop.
How many schools have you seen? Do kids apply to anywhere without visiting? How many schools will your child apply to?
My D had been to 5 of the 8 schools before applying, so yes did apply to some sight unseen
@NYsaxmom do you think that influenced your results at all? Just curious! I think my kid will be applying to some further flung programs site unseen. I have a hard time wanting to travel when we have to get through a pre-screen just to travel there to audition anyway. Not to mention it’s just hard to schedule for the next stretch of time but we will see!
We have visited about 10 schools so far. Not all of them will end up being application worthy.
I went to a seminar about applying to colleges for performing arts and that consultant recommended having a range of 8-11 programs in mind for auditioned programs and possibly a couple non-audition safeties or a worst case scenario plan. And often as time goes on some of the auditioned programs will peel off for one reason or another. That is purely heresay but it feels like a good guideline.
@MusakParent notice I said "had been to’ not visited…a deliberate choice of words on my part… of the 5, one is close and she takes lessons from the prof there currently (so was a safety), one in our state where she had played in their honor band, another one her brother had graduated from and another brother had visited one of the others. So truly, full disclosure, only one was a real visit. Having said that, because of the visit she did apply, because of the visit the prof told her to just submit a video for her college audition (so we didn’t have another audition trip during that crazy time) and he still offered full tuition. So I think that was worth the trip. And another school we visited (which is a highly renowned school that I was sure she would like) she crossed off the list, so again worth the visit. We actually would’ve visited more but my Ds schedule didn’t match with the professors, so that’s the only reason we didn’t. At those she didn’t visit, we requested a lesson during the audition trip. One of them said yes and that was also worth it as he told her what he would be asking her to do the next day in the audition (which was less then the “in theory” requirements).
I’ve had 4 kids apply to music school and we did a different amount of visits for each child. I can honestly say any money we did spend, WAY more than came back to us in scholarships. Now I’m sure it will vary with the "instrument’ (and here I include voice), the major and the school, but for us it was always a win
This is great feedback. Peabody is the only one where my S is visiting just for a tour, not classes or lessons. He’s on the fence about whether he’s interested and it made a fun overnight trip for the two of us so we went for it. Of the others, he’s either doing summer programs, meetings/lessons, or he’s connected with teaching staff in some way.
Actually we may do quick visits at another couple of places if we’re not sure…maybe syracuse en route to Eastman, for instance. And we may end up not seeing a couple of places until auditions.
Unrelated question: does anyone know great places in Washington state or Oregon? Or Colorado? S is suddenly interested in these areas!
@DrummerDad18 I was at NEC for ensemble recitals and there were 2 amazing female drummers (1 also played vibes) which was really great to see. Lots of experimentation too - one ensemble wrote and performed their own compositions inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros, another was Monk/Mingus and another was a rhythm & blues group that arranged all their tunes.
@drummergirl awesome! Things are changing, just slowly. Interestingly, during our visit to Frost this week all of the teachers and staff we met with talked about how it’s a priority for them to make progress on this, unprompted. My D really appreciated hearing that they are aware and focused on it. I guess when they meet with a female jazz instrumentalist it’s the elephant in the room.
My son is a junior at a performing arts high school. He actually is a late bloomer relatively. He started seriously doing music in 9th grade. He plays keyboard, guitar, and sings. But what really makes him special is that he is a singer and songwriter. He also produces his own music. Last year he did the songwriting camp at Frost at Univ of Miami. This summer he is doing songwriting at NYU. We also registered for 5 week at Berklee but based on some blogs on this site it does not sound like it is worth our time or money. I want him to see Berklee but it is too many kids for the time and money. We don’t have time to do one of the shorter camps because of other commitments. I am wondering if there are other camps we should consider that are good for singer songwriters. We are hoping these camps will help us arrow our college decisions. We are looking for college with contemporary songwriting and business of music.
USC Guitar Seminar – kids work with the faculty in the popular music and jazz programs. Have three performances, live on campus. My son loved it. Lots of singer/songwriters and guitarists. Small program – about 15 kids. My kid decided Thornton was his top choice after a summer there.
Jacole, there are many posts on this forum praising the Berklee summer program. In fact, I just read one on one of the threads specifically about that program.
@jacole if Berklee is on your son’s college list I would consider the Berklee 5 week program the summer before your son is a rising senior. The 5 week program is incredibly expensive unless your kid gets a decent scholarship which is hard to do. The upside of doing the 5 week prior to senior year is it will give your kid a real life look and feel for attending college there with the same faculty that teach regular admitted students. Additionally kids can audition at the end of the 5 week for scholarship towards admission. It is the exact same audition that you would do for regular Berklee admission. If Berklee is on his list at all for college I would spend the money to do that one versus the program at NYU because of the rare opportunity to audition for scholarship at the end and re-audition in the fall for either more money or money if he didn’t get anything in the summer. You might still be able to get some scholarship money for this summer as well if he can submit something asap.
A couple other things to consider for college, most programs, Frost included, do not offer much if any scholarship money for popular music and/or songwriting. Berklee is one of the few that do so if your son is interested in Berklee for college I would highly recommend him doing a summer program there. Unless scholarship isn’t an issue for you at all then NYU and others are also a great option.
Thanks for responses. Gives me more to think about. He definitely wants to do the NYU program. It as small program like USC - only 20 students. Seeing New York for the first time I think is important for a musician. It will give him the opportunity to look at several other schools. But I will think more about Berklee. Not quite ready to send my son to California since I am on the east coast.
@jacole are you thinking Berklee is in California or are you referencing somewhere else when you say you aren’t ready to send your son to California? I’m confused.
@akapiratequeen My son applied to 9 programs. He had been to three because we live near them (UNT where he took private lessons, SMU where he had attended some worships, and UT because we have family in Austin and friends on faculty). His first visit to four of them was for his audition and that was fine. For the last one he sent in a recorded audition because we couldn’t make the schedule work to go in person.
He interacted with three of them pretty heavily with Skype lessons and such. He narrowed it down to two that we went to visit - one was the recorded audition at a campus he had never visited, and the other we had to go in and out for his audition so we went back so he could do a more in depth visit.
I don’t think he felt at a disadvantage at all by doing it that way and it saved us a ton of money!
This year D auditioned for musical theatre, and a lot of those auditions are done at Unified auditions, not on campus. She has it narrowed down to two based on curriculum, interaction with faculty, and emailing with current students. We visited one of her final two for the very first time last week, and we’ll visit the other for the very first time on Monday. Then she’ll have a week to make her final decision. Again, she doesn’t feel at a disadvantage, and this scenario is very common in musical theatre because of Unifieds.
Both my kids are super happy with their circumstances. If you want to visit campus beforehand, that’s great. I just don’t want anyone to feel they have to do that in order to land in a good place. You do have opportunity to get to know the schools during and after auditions.
I know that Berklee is in Boston. When I said that I am not really ready for my son to go to California I was referring to USC. I believe that is USC.