Here is some currently live UNT cello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjV1M2Fe9Ts
So my son got an email from the string area coordinator at Fullerton letting my son know he enjoyed hearing him play, that he’ll hear the results of the audition by end of February, and that he has some comp tickets for him to see several quartet performances by a famous string quartet. This all seems nice, but my son has auditions scheduled on both days. Hope the guy won’t take offense at my son turning down the tickets…
@GoForth! That was awesome! My son came out while he was playing the Pezzo Capriccioso, which my son played as a solo with his orchestra in 2016. He said the guy was really good!
We saw the cello soloist at the strings showcase we attended but he was part of a cello quartet playing Flight of the Bumblebee. We also saw the bass player at the showcase and S met and chatted with the mezzo who sang near the end. Really good. Enjoyed watching the second half after we saw the link. Thanks for sharing @GoForth
Insights on CU Boulder’s audition day and apparently generous Music scholarship process and a question.
Part I (Audition Day)
D attended the first of three CU Boulder’s Audition Days. It was a well-run process, similar to Frost’s as far as the parents’ schedule went, with a general welcome meeting (students and parents), then a Dean’s presentation to parents while the students went to other sessions. There were instrument faculty presentations to students and discipline (Music Ed. for example) presentations to students both in the morning. Then auditions were mostly in the afternoon with optional information sessions on various topics in the afternoon that could be fit in around the student’s audition/interview slot (a current student panel, a Music facilities tour, a campus tour, presentation from a Music advisor on class scheduling, etc.). The biggest differences from Frost’s audition day: there was no theory or aural skills testing, just an optional information session about what to expect in CU’s required theory classes. CU also seemed to be a little more “on” in terms of selling the school throughout the day, and they seemed to have a legitimate student-focus to sell, with things like a musician wellness department promoting techniques to avoid injuries. (Not that we didn’t come away with a very positive impression of Frost; CU just seemed to be trying a little harder, which makes sense given that it is lower on the totem pole than Frost.) CU is expanding the Music building in a construction project that will be completed August 2020, but even with the construction, the campus and Music facilities were great. It’s a small thing, but CU’s practice rooms were the first ones I’ve been around where I didn’t feel like I was also supposed to be inspecting the building’s boiler while I was there; even Frost’s dedicated three-story building of practice rooms seemed cramped with narrow hallways. There was no jazz jam session like Frost’s, but there were two optional “master classes” late in the afternoon, after all the instrument faculty were done auditioning students, one for flute and one for voice. I don’t know why those two in particular, or if it is always those two or adjusted to fit how the auditioners’ instruments skew on a given audition day. In the voice master class with 40 or so parents and auditioners in the main performance hall (~400 seats) and most of the voice faulty on the front row, an auditioner would volunteer to come out of the audience and sing a song of their choice on stage, then a faculty member would say “I’ll take this one” and come up on stage a give the auditioner a 10 minute technique driven mini-lesson in front of everyone. It was very interesting and nice way to quickly see the personalities and styles of most of the faculty in action.
Part II (Music Scholarships at the University of Colorado Boulder)
In the morning parents’ presentation from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Music Dean, a primary topic was scholarship from the College of Music (for College of Music majors only). The Dean said that 50-60% of the entering class gets a music scholarship, with range being from nearly full tuition to pretty small, and the average being about half tuition. He pointed out that the half tuition average means that every full tuition scholarship requires others in the 50-60% getting scholarships to be at the small end – still that is a nice pile of money for a public school to distribute for Music, and it is not very heavily touted on the school’s website. He described the scholarship decision process like this: After the three audition days, the faculty over each instrument group (Voice, Strings, Woodwinds, etc.) submit a list of their group’s auditioners in order of performance talent (I did not get the impression that whether the student was a performance major or something else, like Music Ed., mattered in this process), with the instrument faculty group’s recommendations for scholarship tiers for the list (like full tuition scholarship above this line, half tuition above this line, third tuition above this line, etc.). The Dean then takes all the lists and adjusts them to make what he described as the faculty’s optimistic cutoffs fit the budget. He did not go into detail about decisions like allocating dollars between Voice all harder to fill instruments. He said that, because a half tuition scholarship for an OOS applicant is much more expensive for the school’s budget than for an in-state applicant, he has to make adjustments if any list is too OOS heavy – not exactly phrased as an automatic OOS penalty. My take away was that the faculty list making is residency-blind, but the Dean’s massaging of the lists is not. One understandable (from a Music budget stand point), but personally unfortunate thing: if a student gets one of the Admission Office’s automatic consideration academic scholarships, the Music scholarship is reduced by that amount, but university scholarships that were not automatic (CU has a supplemental scholarship app) do not reduce Music scholarships.
Part III (Question)
This is a question about music scholarship leverage generally, but I’ll use CU’s timing as an example, and I’d appreciate this knowledgeable group’s advice.
CU tells applicants if they are admitted to the College of Music in late February (I think by regular US mail). Then CU informs accepted Music applicants whether they received a Music scholarship in late March (I think again by regular US mail). D liked CU, but she will be getting various news on scholarships or admission at other schools throughout February and March and hasn’t yet made her decision. CU’s priority dorm assignment deadline is March 25 (CU has enough dorm spots set aside in the dorm across the street from the Music building for all Music freshman in a dorm that is otherwise Business major themed, but D wants to use her dorm placement to expand her group beyond Music. There are several cool themed dorm experiences at CU with small academic classes on-theme in the dorm, but only a few that are open to Music students; most are department specific).
So assume that 1) CU is D’s first choice after most of the news is in by mid-March, 2) D has been admitted to the university and music school at CU but has not yet heard about music scholarships, 3) attending CU is economically feasible without a music scholarship, but we would prefer to not leave money on the table, and 4) D wants priority dorm selection (or in the generic version of this question, there is some driver to accelerate committing like orientation priority, etc., even though schools have to leave admission and scholarship offers on the table until May 1).
Question: How much do you think having already committed to attend the school (and thereby letting them know that you don’t need any more recruiting) affects the dollar amount of a subsequent music scholarship notice?
I don’t have an answer but think it is unfair to pressure students with “priority dorm assigments” before they can compare scholarship offers. Maybe it’s common, but it seems to be a way to improve yield by getting students to accept early to get the dorms they want. Many families are making decisions at least in part, on finances.
People on here do use offers from one school to talk to another, but that is not something I have personally experienced. What we did experience was music professors telling us they would talk to the university about getting more money, to try to make their school a first choice.
It seems common that public universities “suggest” dorm commitment before scholarships are offered. I know at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, this is certainly the case, and it seems like it might be the case at University of Wisconsin Madison. With UMTC, the dorm reservation seems to be entirely separate from the scholarship decisions - I don’t think the housing department is at all connected to the various scholarship decision entities at the School of Music, the College of Liberal Arts, or the College of Science and Engineering. However, a dorm reservation requires either $50 or $100 deposit. At UMTC, I recommend making that reservation as quickly as possible. Two years ago, my daughter made the reservation even though she ended up going to Rice. I think of it as almost (yet another) application fee.
So, I would recommend that you look hard at the CU dorm selection process, maybe take all the steps short of paying the money. Look at what department handles it (Housing vs. Admissions?) and how much the fee is. If the fee is ok for your budget, I would pay it regardless of the probability that your D attends, as long as that probability is not less than 25%. At these large public universities, dorm selection can play a big role in happiness and productivity for the freshman year. If there aren’t really bad dorm choices, then I wouldn’t sweat it.
At UMTC, there is a dorm directly across from the music building. The next closest dorm is across the Mississippi River (15 min walk). The dorm that gets filled up with the late commitments is all the way in St Paul, which is too far to walk. That is a high penalty for not getting that dorm preference done. At UW, there is a preferred dorm, and there are a few dorms my S would not want, but there are a bunch that are all equivalent, so I wouldn’t be as concerned to get that dorm preference in.
The problem at CU is that a student can’t access the dorm sign-up/login-in at CU until two days after their intent to attend/acceptance of admission offer from the university is submitted. I think that was the case for my S at USC also (but not at UNC). So even though the CU College of Music has nothing to do with dorm assignments, we would have to potentially lose leverage in that conversation to unlock other unrelated but time-sensitive parts of the process. I completely understand the CU Housing Department not wanting to clog the dorm selection process with a bunch of kids who haven’t decided where they want to go. It sets up some poor poker playing for us.
There is another thread related to this with a “Housing Question.” I would be curious what happens if anyone decides to talk to the school about this!
@MusicHopeful - Can she do the dorm selection under her academic admission? Based on her ACADEMIC acceptances, my D signed up for housing at IU and UMTC (her in-state back-up - I forgot that we did that one as well bc in MN you could literally die in the winter with the wrong dorm choice). Do you need to do a deposit? I think that we just went on-line and said “yea…sure…we’ll attend (maybe)…but no deposit yet silly”…and got a dorm assignment. The commitment was a “soft” commitment (meaning no commitment really).
The music school acceptance was completely separate. You are typically required to sign a “letter of intent thingamabob” for that. So the fact that she accepts academically…shouldn’t impact the music school acceptance…as it is separate. The music school had no knowledge or concern about my D’s academic acceptance to my knowledge.
Of course I could be wrong…but I would call and just be straight-forward about why you want to do an academic acceptance (for the right dorm choice) BUT that you want to be clear that it would in no way imply a music acceptance since you will be reviewing financial offers. Then you’ll know for sure.
Edit: the above assumes a separate academic acceptance…which may not be the case at CU…but just in case.
@compmom and @bridgenail Good advice on contacting the school. We emailed her designated university-level admissions counselor to say (A) D is a strong “maybe” but waiting on news from CU Music and others in March before being a “definitely”, (B) she would be a “stronger maybe” with her preferred dorm chances increased, and © she’d like to accept the academic admission offer and proceed with logistical things like the dorm application, but she only wants do so if we are all on the same page as to her acceptance being conditional on several bits of March news.
However she responds, I’ll feel better. I realized right after that email was sent that my angst was caused by discomfort about either not optimizing D’s situation or gaming the system inappropriately, and not being sure where that line was. If CU lets her quasi-commit, fine. If not and their logistics policies aren’t a great fit with the Music scholarship timing, fine. We’ll have done what we can do. Helping a teenager navigate different processes and communications at seven different institutions for six months is exhausting.
Question———
The school my son is going to have to a live audition is asking “financial questions” in advance. The school says “non-discrimination policy” (race, gender, ability to pay or not, etc) in the website. But all applicants who were invited to audition need to choose from, (A) applying for scholarship AND all forms of Federal financial aid, including grants and loans, (B) applying for scholarship and Federal grants ONLY (no loans), © I know that I will not qualify for any need-based scholarship and I only want to be considered for merit scholarship, (D) I do not intend to apply for any institutional aid, merit or need-based.
It sounds like “financial pre-screening” to me even though the school has all FAFSA / CSS Profile from all applicants. They may just want to simplify financial offer decisions when they accept students (I really hope so). My son will need to choose (A) or (B). But I don’t want to risk any of his chances to get accepted or to be offered with huge loan which makes impossible to send my son. At this point, I am not sure if the school is his first choice or not. But it is certainly the most selective school in his very short list. Has anyone been asked this kind of questions by a school before auditions? How did / would you handle? Is this common?
@JeJeJe I think 2 of D’s 7 schools asked those questions pre-decision or pre-merit news (not pre-audition). They both pretty clearly implied that they couldn’t think through music merit awards until they knew whether they would also have to think about need-based aid. I think some of the others just wait long enough on music merit awards that the admissions/financial aid office has already done that math. Neither of my D’s two overt schools gave the impression that it was an admissions factor. I’ve heard second hand of schools/programs where admissions do seem to be need-aware, but we haven’t gotten that vibe from any school directly.
At the risk of sounding trite, I think you just have to give the answer that suits your situation best and hope their process has some integrity/suits you. If a completely truthful answer would screen him out, odds are the acceptance/financial letter resulting from a stretched answer and their process won’t fit your situation well.
Who would pick (D)? The school could always let someone in and not give merit aid if someone picked ©. © just means someone has money AND self-esteem. Choosing (D) is like saying “I don’t like money” and/or “I’m not good at multiple choice questions.”
For anyone who is waiting, S heard from Maryland today (both academic and music), He got in which reaaly surprised us. We thought he would get in musically. but his grades and scores (while not bad) were Way below the average at the school. Apparently they have some flexibility for music kids.
He REALLY loved Ithaca. Fortunately, he said the audition went well. This week we head to Eastman. Then I have three weeks off until the long drive to McGill. Then it will be all over except the waiting. Finally, light at the end of the tunnel.
That’s fantastic @PAPDAD! Congratulations to S and family! How exciting.
We’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel here as well. Two more, fairly local auditions. And then the waiting.
Congrats @PAPDAD!
My son was also accepted by Maryland today (academically and B.M.). In his case, we were pretty sure his grades/scores were fine, but weren’t so sure about the music part. Such a big relief!
It’s probably his 3rd or 4th favorite at the moment, but the OOS tuition for a school that is 25 miles away is bothersome!
Wow, great news @eh1234!! Many congratulations to S and family!
Congratulations!! It’s going to be so nice to see all
the acceptances roll
in for everyone here who has worked so hard to get to this point!