Yes! The fall is going to be WEIRD…we’ll be empty nesters, and my calendar will just have me on it. It’s been a hot mess since September!!
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For undergrads or grad students or both?! This is very interesting.
My kid at a sample lesson had a teacher say directly to her if you need more money to come here not to be shy about asking.
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It’s not very different from the undergrad process honestly. For US it’s different because we are traveling a lot more, but otherwise It’s very similar. The other big difference for me is that my kid is 1000 times more professional now, and mature, so allll of the music stuff, school communication, etc is 100% her. When it was undergrad I was more involved in that and she was a lot more unsure of the music part of it (just less experienced obviously).
We’ll see how different it is in terms of the offers and so on. 
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Welcome and good luck to your son! All this is its own rite of passage. Enjoy the time with your son!
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Hi there! I think you’re the third jazz guitar parent here, including me and @Shellg. I’m so glad your son is back at it and knows exactly what he wants. I hope the audition is going/went great. I received one text early this morning from my kid at UNT and then another just an hour ago; all going great. I look forward to hearing what happens for your son.
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This will be fantastic for your daughter and for you! I can’t wait to hear how everything goes for her. Is she starting to hear from any of her many applications?
ETA: I just saw your post!
Thank you to all of you for being here and helping me through our Texas chaos–first due to my H’s health and deciding S could travel alone, and then handling the snowstorm of the century. I got a text from my kid a few hours ago that sounds like he’s having a great time, and I am so happy he went there on his own to be able to explore and meet other musicians.
I almost feel like he should go to visit Denver and Memphis on his own, too, because he’d probably meet and hang out with some students. I hesitate though, because I’ll be sending my kid off somewhere (and paying the bill), and I’d like to see it first. I feel comfortable with UNT, because I can get so much information from those of you here. I wish there were a way we could both go to Denver, but he could be alone. LOL. Sounds weird, but it would be ideal. 
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D’s Curtis audition was also moved up! Safe travels to you!
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I’m glad things are going well for him on his solo trip at UNT!
I think you can balance your desire to get your own feel for his options and going with him to his auditions with his opportunity to explore and form his own impressions just by not staying too close when you make your visits and listening rather than talking when there’s time to chat about the events of the day.
I think when my son was in the middle of this process I would go explore or chat with various university staff there running things, or park myself somewhere in a music building and observe the goings on myself while my son zoomed around from thing to thing and interacted with professors and students. He knew where to find me when he wanted and I could text him if there was something important. It’s never a problem getting my kid to share his opinion, so I could let him talk and hear his impressions when there was time for that.
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You totally can! On travels with my daughter, we’d often seperate even for hours at a time. Personally, when we’re footing the bill and I consider the final decisions with financials involved to be a group decision, I want hands on access to explore the options to have a sense of what might be worth a little more, etc.
So it’s more than ok to want to go. But it’s also ok to let him go find a jam session and you do the FA info session and the tour talk to faculty or go wander around and chat. We absolutely were not glued to each other at all. When my kid is ready to warm up, she was just done with me for at least a couple hours. She wants no help from the likes of me!
We used transit in Denver so we could have met back at our hotel.
It was cute, at one audition we were at, they had assigned a lounge as the auditioner stress free zone. Snacks, music, no parents or faculty allowed, etc. My kid went and checked it out. 
It occured to us some parents are maybe a lot more wound up and “helpful” than I am. 
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In case it helps, here’s last year’s journey:
It was deja vu when we were woken at 3:30 am with the news that S’s flight home was canceled. False alarm! It was his old flight from Alaska. It seems like he’s still enjoying his trip. I’m not stalking him, but Uber sends me a text every time he goes somewhere. 
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Oh man, I would have PANICKED! Glad he is having a great time in Texas. We are pretty cool here. lol
We are heading to Jacobs this weekend for our LAST audition! YAY! S reached out to the prof at Butler and asked him for feedback. It was well received and the points he made my S agreed with. I am proud of him for reaching out and asking. I would’ve just moved on and been ‘oh well’. He is so much more mature than I was at this age.
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Question for the group as some of you probably are WAY more experienced than this first time college mom. If your son gets in his first choice, it’s always been his first choice, and you plan to go regardless…do you wait on music merit money? Do you just accept? Important to note: He received academic money so the total cost is already reasonable. He was promised music scholarship verbally. And, of course, we want him to get the most possible. Thanks for any feedback! He want as far to cancel his last two auditions bc he is THAT certain.
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I’d wait for the music scholarship information. Maybe have your son let them know he’s waiting on music scholarship info before making his final decision and that they’re his first choice.
Congratulations to him on the acceptance!
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Congratulations! I’m a first time college parent, so take this with a grain of salt, but I would agree with @Parentof2014grad to wait. If the cost is reasonable without any music money, it’s probably a go, but it’s still not in writing. I would want the written offer. (If it’s Texas, the academic money is already in writing, right? But, music is not.) ETA: I would want it not out of distrust, but out of a desire to see it all written down on the table so I could understand it.
I’d also ask myself and my son: If one of the others gave money that brought the COA down lower, would he want to go there? Would you want to steer him to the lesser COA? If not, then he knows!
Also wanted to say he has three awesome acceptances already, so it’s really nice he could cancel those last two. It’s not only a joy to know where he wants to go, but also must be a relief to be done auditioning. I think my kid has one more virtual, and then we have two schools to visit with no auditions. It feels endless!
I totally agree on waiting. If your student is in communications with a prof, I think it’s great to say that’s his first choice but his family needs to see how the financials break down.
With my last kid, if we would have stopped at the first affordable offer we would be paying at least 10K more a year than we are paying. Honestly, if your musician hasn’t seen the last 2 campuses well or explored the music programs and it isn’t too onerous, I’d encourage him to follow through on those auditions. Auditioning in front of different people is such a great skill anyway and you just don’t know what might get thrown at you that might even make appropriate opening for a counter offer even if this school remains as #1.
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Really good points! Thank you! We had that discussion and NO. One if his other offers us comparable and we are waiting on one he “liked.” Loved the campus and program but didn’t feel a fit with the professor he’d work with at all.
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