Oh boy; my son just added an 8th live audition. U Redlands kept contacting him and we tried to go for a trial lesson, but something always happened so he didn’t go. He was going to just take it off his list, but he was contacted again by the music admissions head, and they were able to accommodate a later audition date since all weekends from Jan. 26th through Feb. are booked, so his last audition is now Mar. 1st. Yikes.
I have this feeling that none of the schools will be affordable…
I’m up for a tropical island. I was looking at your audition schedule @AmyIzzy - oh dear! You have a long list. The good news is that you will be an expert by the end of it and can help guide others next year. And yes, the financial end of it is yet the next stress that we will all be facing - looking at those numbers. I’ve been doing that for our other daughter (the aviator) and it isn’t pretty 
@HereWeGoAgain2018 - hopefully we will have 4 in college/conservatory next year. (our son will be at SAB next year again). Eldest daughtert is at University of SC, son at SAB in NYC, aviator will likely land at UND (North Dakota or WMU-Punta Gorda), and our musician - who knows? I think hubby and I will be eating ramen noodles every night and living in a tent.
Good luck to everyone heading off to auditions this weekend. We are not doing our first road trip until the last week of January, so I am looking forward to hearing about other people’s experiences.
Our first one starts next Wednesday and then we leave the next week for the second… it is no stop traveling until the end of Feb. I’ll keep you all posted. New Orleans is first and we have relatives there… so no hotel… We were invited to see the Symphony there where they are playing Mahler…very excited about that… then a tour and audition …plus invited to sit in with the wind ensemble. I am tired already
BayAreamom if the class is not required for graduation, it may be very possible to drop it. A B I fine but if the class caused anxiety then it seems like a good idea, especially in the context of audition stress
Hello all - well, my very stubborn daughter is losing sleep right now. She only applied to 5 colleges - all top notch places - and now she is worried that they won’t be financially feasible. I’m trying not to say “I told you so” - but it’s taking all my might. I told her ad nauseum to put some safeties on the list - but she was stubborn about it and didn’t.
We have a fairly high financial need but she’s only auditioning at NEC, Berklee, the New School and SFCM. I’ve tried to talk her into adding some safeties like UC Northridge, Oberlin, etc. but no dice.
Does anyone have any experience with the four she is auditioning at? E.g. what’s the most merit and financial aid you have heard of them giving? I want to set my daughter’s expectations (and mine).
Thanks all.
@bayareamom I would let her drop it. It won’t change anything significantly in her GPA and if she doesn’t need the credits, she can certainly do without the stress. We made this decision with our older D as well as S19 with no problems from admissions or elsewhere. Unless the class is AP Theory I wouldn’t give it another thought. (Very much doubt admissions even has to be notified to be honest.)
@tripletmama - I hear that the New School is VERY generous with merit aid. We are in NY and the music school that my three sons go to has sent a lot of musicians there with a good amount of money. I don’t have personal experience there yet, but my oldest son has applied this year so we will see. . . .
@Bay Area Mom 2016 -My daughter had a similar situation. She is taking a Syracuse University English class offered through her high school and missed a deadline on an assignment during an audition week (she had to miss 4 days of school that week due to travel) so her final grade had a negative impact on her overall Q1 average (although didn’t really impact her overall average that much.) The high school counselors at her school frown on dropping classes senior year because they think it sends a red flag to colleges and they think a lower grade in a class might be easier to overlook or explain, especially if it’s not the norm. We went back and forth and decided to keep her in the class because the teacher explained he could change the Q1 grade if her efforts and portfolio were strong in Q2 (which appears to be the case) and the counselors scared us a little that dropping might be a big deal or something that would take effort to explain. Having said that, my gut feeling tells me most colleges focus on the current transcript they have and will be more concerned about the audition, recommendations, etc. So I honestly don’t think you have to worry too much if she drops the class. Clearly, your daughter is a top-notch student academically and is a strong candidate in terms of talent since she passed some of the toughest prescreens. So take a deep breath and try not to worry too much. And I am repeating that last sentence to myself often, so I know how you feel!
Best of luck to everyone auditioning this weekend!
Some of these travel schedules are making my head spin just reading about them! Fortunately, my son is happy staying in the mid-Atlantic (or VA) (it also helps that he has no business applying to the far away top schools, and an instrument that can’t fly). His first audition is about 40 minutes away at UMD. We joked that we could technically make him strap on his bass buggy and take the Metro there.
He initially scheduled this one first because he wasn’t very interested in the school, but he enjoyed his lesson and I think it moved up his list. I really hope he’s sufficiently prepared, but he has had limited time to practice this week because of nightly ensemble rehearsals and homework. His bass also recently developed a “woof” as he calls it, so that’s good that he will sound “buzzy” on a couple of notes with his first audition next weekend. I can’t really get him a new instrument by then but it’s fun to have something new to worry about!
@eh1234 best of luck to your S!
@tripletmama I’ll start with that line for you. “Take a deep breath and try not to worry too much.” If we say it enough, we will believe it, right? Lol. I will tell you that the anxiety and stress is definitely more manageable for my daughter and I knowing she has some safety schools on her list and already has offers from schools we could actually afford. But I do think your daughter has a great chance of bumping up her scholarship for Berklee (the fact she got $20K for her first shot is already impressive!) Hopefully some of the other schools can bring the price tag to a place you can afford/justify. Worse case scenario is she takes liberal arts classes at a local college for year one, continues to focus on improving her playing during that time, and can transfer to those schools where you could pay for 3 years instead of 4. Many people tell me “it doesn’t matter where they start out as long as they graduate from their school of choice.” If she does a local college, she could add some safety schools to her list during that time. Good luck!
@tripletmama I heard one case at NEC where the piano student was a prior student of a teacher who worked with the admin/finance etc to make the aid work. Don’t know if this was one off or a regular occurrence but it really helped this family. Once admitted it would be a great idea to have a very open dialogue with the teacher and see what he/she can do to help make the case for your D.
@eh1234 - greetings from a fellow bass parent! Sorry to hear about last minute instrument issues and I can certainly appreciate the stress. Getting a new instrument for this would really be a push anyways. Such small changes in instrument is normal with the seasonal shifting. I bet a luthier could do a quick setup for a minimal cost to get it to a better state. Do you have anyone you normally go to where you live?
All the best of luck with the auditions this weekend and onwards.
@eh1234 - just visualizing your son on the Metro with his bass makes me smile.
2 years ago our daughter had a coveted audition at Colburn in LA for their Academy. She insisted that she bring her bass. Her instructor lent her his “coffin case” (as I call it). It was a royal pain. (although Southwest is the way to go as they only charge $150). She will be renting or borrowing for her two upcoming East Coast auditions. Never again.
Good luck to your son! It’s great that we have a few basses on here (HereWeGoAgain - any others?).
No audition-only school can be considered a safety, even if you feel over-matched for the level. Inexplicable things happen in the audition process. The schools you list are expensive and not famous for what people on this board call “generosity” with aid. (I have an issue with the word “generous” because institutions, other than philanthropic nonprofits, are not “generous”–and why should they be? A discount that goes to you is a discount that doesn’t go to someone else. It’s basically a zero-sum game.) Some people do get great aid at NEC and Berklee, but most don’t. Your daughter could be one of the lucky ones. New School gives large scholarships but their tuition is high. Reminds me of stores that have great sales most of the time, but the original sticker price (which is almost never the actual price) is exorbitant. Even so–coming from a family with triplets, and if you daughter has a great audition and is just what the panel feels they need, she might be fine. Although it still won’t be cheap.
All that said, there’s something to the idea of aiming for your dreams and being willing to take a gap year after if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped. When my musician-daughter was doing her undergrad auditions her teacher strongly advised her against safety (or what I would call “compromise”) schools, where she was over-qualified. I remember feeling very uncomfortable with this strategy. At my insistence my daughter auditioned for one compromise school, by sending a recording because she had an audition conflict. She was accepted there, unsurprisingly, but her teacher was right in that it would have been soul-killing to go to that school. My daughter auditioned only for elite programs and it was a nail-biter down to April 1. She has had friends who took the same strategy and did not get into any of the schools they applied to, which is a terrible blow to the confidence of an adolescent. These were young musicians who were completely qualified for the programs where they auditioned, but, as you know, these programs are so small and so competitive that it’s completely possible to be a great musician and come up goose eggs. Even elite musicians get rejections, so you can imagine how the lottery of life could translate into all-rejections in some cases-- just as it can for an academically talented student who only applies to some Ivies, Stanford, and MIT. In the case of her friends with these unfortunate results, they took gap years and ended up in great programs the following year. I have four kids in different fields and I’ve never seen someone take a gap year and regret it.
As for the financial side of things, it is possible (but by no means guaranteed) to appeal both merit and financial aid awards (in many cases, in small music programs these awards are fluid in that merit and financial aid are not completely separated.) Remember, after initial awards are sent there is a period of reshuffling funds as students slowly make their final decisions. If your daughter has a sincere interest in attending a school that is not feasible with the current financial award, consider making an appeal. In the case of an undergraduate student whose award is depending on parental finances, it’s fine, and even preferable, for the parent to make the appeal since only you have access to tax records, budgets, spreadsheets, loan records, etc. It helps tremendously if you have a larger award at a school that is considered (by others) to be comparable or more competitive. Here is an anecdotal example: when my youngest was (to our surprise) admitted to an Ivy that gave her a large financial based award (because that year we had 3 kids in college), we were able to show the award to the much-less-academically-competitive university that she wanted attend (because of its specific arts program.) It took a lot of effort on our part, but in the end they matched the award, tripling her merit aid with a 4-year guaranteed arts scholarship. (She had to keep a minimum GPA, which was no problem.) If she had accepted the admission offer at the Ivy, her need-based award would have decreased as her sisters graduated. The point is that in that case the financial aid office was run by the larger university who had an interest in yield. She also had larger awards from other arts schools, but in that particular case, it was the Ivy–because it was an Ivy–that made the difference. It took until April 30 (not to mention many emails and a lot of paperwork) to get this good news. We were sweating bullets, but it worked out. For my #3 daughter’s conservatory award, we were able to get her first-choice school to match the award of her second-choice school. Each year we made an appeal for more funds (esp when D4 entered school.) Each year they gave a small increase, which meant less to borrow and less to repay.
When dealing with FA officers, the key is to be polite and to realize that dozens of other parents are also pressuring them, with varying degrees of politeness and rudeness. Be a squeaky wheel-- but a kind, polite one.
Good luck to all the families with auditions this weekend, particularly to those in the Midwest with the impending snow storm (which is already behind schedule).
These past few pages have been very interesting reads on many topics touched on elsewhere. Thanks for the reminders.
Thanks for the support @tripletmama and @HereWeGoAgain2018. I definitely have days where I wished he played just about anything else. I could swear that the bass started acting up after we had the end-pin replaced in December, but son claims it already had an issue (then why didn’t he mention it to the shop? Ack!)
If he gets in somewhere, I am hoping to upgrade his instrument with $$ from his 529 account, but of course there are no safeties and he may not get in anywhere.
Very insightful post @glassharmonica. My late bloomer son is aiming for what are probably “soul killing” compromise schools for many of your kids so yes, everyone with super accomplished kids please avoid those, thanks, haha.
Best of luck to everyone with auditions! I can’t believe this time has actually come, we’ve all been supporting our kids for years for this very moment and it feels surreal! My D only has 3 auditions and I’m overwhelmed! Hats off to all you amazing parents out there. I can’t wait to hear how everything goes
Anyone auditioning at Juilliard?
My son did his Oberlin audition today Regional in SF - Jazz Studies (Guitar) - lasted about 30 minutes. They went through all the same pieces as the pre-screen, and then had a ‘chat’ instead of an interview. Didn’t discuss chord voicings. Did basic arpeggios and used Autumn Leaves for sight reading. Just FYI – good luck to everyone.