@bridgenail , I’m with you, but I am changing Feb to March:
“You get into 2-3 great schools that are affordable for you, and as a result you cancel 2 auditions that you were not that excited about to begin with!”
As my grandmother said, “From your mouth to God’s ear!”
I can see this happening with S already. We’re down from 9 schools to five, and only 2-3 of these will be a fit both financially and culturally. It’s nerve wracking but, as you say, it only takes one.
How is everyone doing out there? I have been in touch with @AmyIzzy and @DrummerDad18 and am stunned that my usual psychic prediction of prescreen notification is taking a blow from Frost. :-(( I would have bet Vegas money those emails would have come yesterday. But that being said, they are WAY behind on everything this year. I can’t believe how late they informed EA kids which I think was last Sunday. Last year EA kids heard the week after Thanksgiving. In any case, my prediction now is emails will come out on Monday. Good luck everyone and deep breaths!
My D is actually headed to the U to visit one of her vocal jazz buddies who is at Frost. They start back a week before New School kids so she is going down to hang out and jam with some of the Frost kids and soak up some much needed sunshine by their beautiful pool and maybe hit their beach. I’m jealous. I sure love that place. But I do know that D is where she is meant to be in NYC and is thriving. She had a pretty decent semester grade wise but more importantly has made some great connections with professional musicians in the city. She has put a band together with the musicians at NS and they are off the hook amazing!! They all finished recording some new tunes in the studio together for her Downbeat magazine student music award submissions. A super long shot as a college freshman but I’m glad she is hustling and putting herself out there. That’s what will make or break her.
Hang in there parents! In 2 short weeks everyone will have their prescreen news and can get all of the travel booked. And I second @bridgenail comments and others. Looking back at D’s list there were really only 4 real contenders for her for college despite applying to 8. And of those 4, 3 ended up being financially feasible. For those of you headed to Miami with your kids for auditions, build in extra time around that to arrive, walk around that beautiful campus the day before and be well rested for audition day. That was by far the longest audition day that D had out of all of them. The jazz jam at the very end was exhausting for most of the kids (and parents). If your kid is a sax player do know that the sax prof was there at that jam video taping each kid! OYE! I felt so badly for those kids…trying to be on their game at the end of an exhausting day. Finish the day off sipping sangrias on the swings at The Rat. You’ll need it!
Happy New Year!
Great advice @SpartanDrew! My kid dropped Frost from his list when whittling them down…he ended up with 7 - unfortunately for him, his top choice is the last one…(sigh). But he’s loading them up mainly in January so maybe by March he will still be excited? Hope so.
Good luck! Happy new year to all and just think our kids are heading off to college in 2019!
Great sage advise. Thanks for sharing insights from recent experience and encouragements. Most appreciated! 
Personally I feel thankful my D chose the conservatory only path. That alone took 6-7 libarts schools which were previously on her list. Remembering from 1st kid in college, around this time of her application year was real challenging with all the December 31st deadlines looming in and Common App bugs etc. At least we now have none of that!
Is it true Frost informed all EA students last Sunday? I saw a few that were off-campus auditions, but my S applied EAa while requesting on-campus audition and still has not received an email from Frost.
Hi everyone! Vocalists specific question and ideally if anyone is a popular vocalist or know someone last year. Does anyone have advice on how to deal with accompaniment the day of offsite auditions? My D is hiring a guitarist to accompany her for UCLA, FROST and USC but we don’t know how much they should practice together ahead of time and where they should practice. Should we leave it up to the accompanist to suggest a location?
@musbiz1 My D did get an email/audition last Sunday and she applied EA. I know of one other EA and weirdly I know of a RD that also heard, it’s my D’s drummer in her band and he definitely applied RD Dec 1. It all seems very disorganized and I don’t think anyone should read into anything right now.
We got an email from Frost yesterday… saying that “they’ve received the application and it’s complete”. A month after the app was sent in RD! We were expecting pre-screen results to come in. I don’t know what’s going on, but they seem pretty overwhelmed. Same thing with NYU Jazz. No acknowledgement yet that they even received the supplemental email. Son’s definitely become much less interested because of their lack of attention to proper communication.
We’ve had a similar experience with NYU Jazz, @dsinha. We received a message on 11/27 via Acceptd that “We have received your materials and will be reviewing them over the next several weeks.” The website said we would hear in 2-4 weeks. Since then, nothing.
@dsinha and @akapiratequeen – same situation with NYU jazz for my son. @akapiratequeen – confused by your reference to Acceptd for NYU. We just sent an email to the NYUjazz email listed on the website. Did we miss something?
@musbiz1 We are also EA waiting on Frost. We did get notice of Frost EA deferral (which I expected). So I assume that rolls to audition. But no final word on scheduling! AH! That’s a huge trip for us. Anyway - I have not been online much over the holidays but I did catch your post so I just wanted to say that we’re in the same boat waiting on Frost.
Frost was much faster with scheduling and notification last year if you check out the pre-screen posts from last year! I wonder what changed?
@lkbux64 Exactly I got worried too. We just sent the supplemental stuff to Timo in an email, along with a form. The the Jazz folks didn’t seem well integrated with the rest of the Steinhardt systems.
@lkbux64 and @dsinha my S submitted the audition via Acceptd. This was for Steinhardt music ed., not jazz, although the audition itself was a jazz audition. He also submitted a supplementary music ed. essay. They confirmed receipt but there hasn’t been any other communication. The deadline for music ed. was Dec. 15 but on Acceptd they give a deadline of Jan. 1, so not sure what is happening there. At this point I am wondering if they wait until after the holidays to review.
For some of you EA’s still waiting to hear from Frost, I remember a friend who’s D never got an email with her audition time and passed prescreen. But then later she got some weird email giving info about the audition day or something. So basically she passed the prescreen but never got the email saying she was invited to audition. I wouldn’t worry EA or not if you haven’t gotten anything yet. They are clearly discombobulated this year. If once everyone hears about auditions, and this thread will be blowing up when they do, your kid still hasn’t gotten an email then I’d send an email to Karen Kerr and ask. But don’t sweat it until then. I know…easy for me to say!! Hang in there! You’re in the home stretch of Part Deux of the crazy process!!!
To help you pass the time here is some great light hearted reading. I swear it’s a must read for all parents of music kids. My favorite is post #10;
“The Endgame. After auditions are over, the month of March stretches on forever. You will swear that entire years have passed in less time than March of senior year. Instead of a weekly trip to a dynamic, new city where your son or daughter meets fascinating people exactly their age who share their most deeply-held interests, they are now stuck at home with the same boring crew in a place they can’t wait to leave with too much missed schoolwork to make up. With the initial excitement of auditions long past and all of the pressure suddenly off, the high point of the day is now the arrival of the mail. The low point occurs 15 seconds later when they realize that another day has passed without the arrival of THE LETTER. Slowly, one by one, the rejections, waitlistings and prized acceptances finally start to dribble in. Inevitably, the most important one shows up last.”
My sister-in-law is a professor at UT Austin…not music however. Last week she was with our side of the family shushing down the ski hills in CO and hanging in the hot tub with a glass of wine. Now she’s in San Francisco with her side of the family eating, drinking with a ton of relatives…with not a thought of work I’m guessing.
So…are professors reviewing pre-screens during winter break? Nooooo. However the results are probably all done and sitting on some administrator’s desk covered in holiday cookie crumbs just waiting for that person to get back and start communicating auditions.
Just wait until spring break when professors are drinking margaritas on the beaches of Mexico as you wait for acceptances…
Re Frost - we applied EA and got email last Sunday about an audition 1/18. The Sangria at The U sounds perfect. Anyone have any clue when BU will notify kids of the result of the pre screen?
As to auditions - I have been trying to whittle the list without much success. We love the campus of a few but the programs of others, the students seem great at several but others are schools not to be missed, several are academically elite while one has a great program but the overall school leaves a lot to be desired. Sigh!
Thanks @MusakParent and others for your replies. Wish nobody else was in this situation but relieved to understand not alone.
I think if possible it’s good to make sure the kids know that disorganization of admissions at a school means nothing about the quality of the experience there once attending. I would even go out on a limb further and say that in our relatively long experience at this point, there is sometimes an inverse correlation between an excellent experience in a music school or department and administrative organization
BU told us that pre-screen results would be sent the week school starts back