@eh1234 next week? That’s awesome. Based on past year’s acceptances, it looks like Ithaca may come soon but the others could be end of March. Already feeling the strain!
@akapiratequeen Yes, since my dear son ditched 3/7 of his auditions, we are just waiting on merit from one school (out 2/28 last year); Another school promised results by March 1, and I am hoping Ithaca comes through soon (and releases merit decisions with their music decisions).
The sooner we have it figured, the sooner we know whether we can afford to go spend the equivalent of a new compact car on a new instrument! cries
@sbjdorlo—I actually thought the Conservatory overall was welcoming, and loved the involvement of students and faculty as well as the Dean—lovely people. I believe that the cello prof was really top-notch but a little old-school, perhaps. He seemed from videos to be a wonderful cellist himself, but the way he interacts with students may not have been what my daughter responds to. I was disappointed that she did not enjoy the interaction, but grateful she had interest elsewhere.
Question for all of you. Now that my son is narrowing down his preferred schools (even though he’s not done with auditions and hasn’t been admitted to some of them), we want to do some digging into the top 5. Here are some questions I’m thinking about. I assume all of this information is available on each school’s website? And what kinds of questions are you/your student asking?
- Are music lessons free?
- Required music courses
- Required GEs left (since my son's a transfer, he'll have a lot fewer)
- Required performances, ensembles, and senior recital requirements
- GPA required to keep scholarships
- Do they reaudition for music scholarship each year?
Anything else we should be thinking about?
Ask about concert / recital attendance requirements. Not as a performer but as a spectator. It can be a huge time commitment. Also, if there are requirements for all 4 years, do they waive that for transfers if they didn’t have those requirements in their previous school?
As a transfer, you should get very specific written answers about how credit will be given for each of your sons classes. It is not uncommon for some music classes to not be given transfer credit.
Practice rooms – are they available 24/7 how far from the dorms? Are lockers for instruments provided?
My son has basically zero music classes, so that won’t be an issue. He’s taken one class (a sort of intro to music theory) but he is very weak in music theory and expects to start at the beginning of music theory. He will spend three more years in college because of this lack of any music courses.
D had 2 auditions in NYC this weekend
NYU Steinhardt - vocal performance and musical theater all audition at same time to same faculty. Some chaos in the beginning but we were early so it did not stress D. 2 people in room for audition. She sang her German piece all the way through. Her English piece she sang to high note in middle and they stopped her. Made her take some instruction and sing around that area for a few times. Then sight reading which D says she is weak at doing. Question on why she is looking at NYU. 10 minutes or less total audition.
SUNY Purchase - probably 20 vocal performers auditioned our day and there are 2 days left so estimating 60 total auditions for maybe 7-14 slots. 4 people in room for audition. D sang German, French and Italian. On German piece accompanist was slow on tempo but D sang faster and made the accompanist find her. On French piece accompanist misplayed some notes. D said she was getting flustered but just ignored the accompanist and sang best she could. On Italian piece the faculty ask D to find the tempo with the accompanist and that song she did well. Sight reading after that. Asked why she is considering SUNY Purchase. They could see on her application all the schools she is considering. When she came out she felt it was her worst audition yet and was discouraged. At lunch the head of department held a Q&A about the school which was great. Very candid about culture and opportunities. Freshmen get performance opportunities starting 2nd semester. 2 Operas a year and very small student body so everyone has a chance to be on stage in either chorus or leads. After Q&A D ran into professor who she took a lesson from this summer. Prof told her she did very well and hope she decides to come to Purchase. This made D feel great. Not an official offer but good end to the day.
@thisismynameOH Thanks for the great report! Sounds like D did really well. How many more auditions does she have?
On the subject of “how many applicants/how many will they admit,” I was wondering how the schools handle yield management. If you see 60 vocalists auditioning and they want 14 (let’s say) in the end, would they admit 20? 30? I thought about this a lot at Eastman, where the halls were literally clogged with jazz saxophone players yet the studio can’t be bigger than 10. These were mostly great players and, presumably, would have a broad range of offers. OTOH, Eastman is a great school and a fairly high number might choose to go there. And on the third hand, money comes into play. So how how many would they admit?
@akapiratequeen she is finally done. 4 live auditions and 1 video (we couldn’t get to FSU).
The head of department at SUNY did say they make offers that people don’t accept so I would assume 20 or so invites go out. The current senior class has 7 vocalists. He specifically said if you are a soprano your odds go down because everyone is a soprano. Yesterday morning there were 10 auditions and only 1 was a boy so…
SUNY also specifically said female faculty teaches female voices and male faculty teaches male voices with exception of one professor. Head of department felt that teaching by showing needs similar voices.
Congrats on being done @thisismynameOH and D! We ended up doing six, though at times it felt like 600. Any idea when you’ll hear?
@akapiratequeen that question about the size and shape of the “funnel” from pre screen to attendance is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
Two of the schools that my D has applied at are known to have very small studios And large numbers of applicants.
And in both cases the number of people invited to audition live seemed relatively small when you think about yields.
If a school wants 4 kids on a given instrument. And 13 kids audition live, I have to assume they offer spot to roughly half of the kids who make it to that round. Which means the big cut happens at pre screen.
Obviously we don’t know all the numbers so we are guessing. But I find the “math” part of this fascinating because their is risk on their end if they get it wrong either way.
@DrummerDad18 I also find this fascinating. I’m not sure about the common wisdom that each school admits 2x the number of students it wants to attend. Wouldn’t they have historic data on what percentage of admits end up attending, and wouldn’t that drive their metrics? Same with the prescreens — or do they let each year’s talent pool drive the numbers?
I think each school approaches it in their own way. S was told at BU they get 80 prescreens, they bring in 20 for audition and accept maybe 8. Michigan sees how many ensembles they will have the next year and figures out how many they will accept that way (and probably does the math based on prior years). Temple was different in that they don’t have a set number, they take whomever they think is a good fit for their program. (Remember this is for percussion…probably a little different but it’s still a numbers game)
@akapiratequeen we have been told since she is a soprano expect to hear from all school by end of March. Even though Indiana has rolling acceptances we were told that sopranos just have to wait. Too many damn sopranos!!
I hear you! Too many damn saxophones, too!
Our D had her final audition yesterday and now we wait. She is also a soprano and doesn’t expect to hear anything until the end of March.
After three auditions we are done, but still feel very new to this. One of the schools asked for a resume, so my daughter brought one to that audition. Other people had five copies. She just had the one copy they asked for. At other schools we noticed that some singers had resumes with a color head shot, though we weren’t asked to bring a resume. They didn’t seem to care that our D had no resume, but I am curious, do most people bring resumes to auditions?
@HRoFan - don’t worry. That’s more of an MT thing…that has probably leaked over to VP. We did unifieds (MT auditions) and my D did not have “that photo” (8 x 11 glam photo) and a binder filled with resumes, CDs etc. She was dressed wrong too so we had to do a shopping dash. I never noticed the photos for VP auditions…and honestly I don’t think it would make any difference. We could not get the MT “uniform” on short notice nor had a photo etc and she still got offers. Don’t worry about it for VP…as long as she was organized with what they requested and sang well that’s all that matters.
Agree with @bridgenail ! We had one school request a headshot (for a sax player) and a couple had him upload a resume with the application. He brought copies to his auditions but no one asked for them.
Thanks @bridgenail and @akapiratequeen. That makes sense. Our D has never been in a musical and doesn’t really have any friends who are into MT, so she wouldn’t have heard much about the MT process. Clearly lots of people audition for both, so it makes sense they would bring some of the best practices from the MT world into VP. I do get the impression that the faculty care most about how the kids sing and how they present themselves. She did what could. Now, we wait.