<p>Thanks. My S is pretty hard-headed about this and thinks the schools really don’t care how fancy the scores are printed. He assumes that everyone writes on the computer nowadays and prints out of Finale or Sebelius. He printed them all on plain white 8 1/2 x 11 paper, three hole punched in a binder with dividers. It looks OK but not fabulous. All of his recordings are MIDI files on CD, although he may end up live recording one piece that he has to play for NYU. I guess we will find out at our first interview tomorrow at Temple whether that is sufficient. I don’t think Temple is very demanding about formats and such, but we may have to step it up for NYU next weekend.</p>
<p>My S spent a lot of time on the presentation aspects of his portfolio, more at the insisitence of his composition teacher than if it had been left up to my son. However, he agreed it was worth it when the end result looked neat and professional.
I also relayed to him a lot of advice and wisdom from other people on this forum who have been through this process.
So far my son has had two interviews and although I don’t think he would say he enjoyed them, he felt they went well. I think it helped his confidence to hear that the composition faculty liked his work. He did like talking about the composers he admires.
Like kmccrindle mentioned earlier in this post doing “mock interviews” is helpful. My S is quiet and introverted and I suggested that although he must be himself at the interview he must also try and seem engaged and interested at the interview. So he did think of specific questions to ask the panel and so I think he was as prepared as he could have been. When I related maxunit22’s post about his interview expectations of being thrown into a torture/interrogation zone my S said with a wry smile that is exactly how he had felt before the interviews!</p>
<p>My S had his composition interview at Temple yesterday. He thought it went very well. He was interviewed by the department chair, Dr. Maurice Wright, and liked him a lot. He was very friendly and put my S at ease right away. I was glad that I had made him visit Dr. Wright’s website and listen to some of his music beforehand. He asid Dr. Wright did not play any of his recording, but did leaf through the notebook with his scores and asked him a few questions about them, e.g. explain your title, why so many instruments in this piece, etc. The rest of the interview was questions like “who are your favorite 20th century composers”, “what instruments do you play and what do you compose on,” etc. Pretty informal. I had told him to bring his Moleskine pocket composition notebook with him and that was a good call - Dr. Wright had just interviewed another student who had brought handwritten scores, and he asked my S if he only composed on computer or knew how to write in longhand, so he pulled out his notebook and showed him the music that became one of his portfolio pieces. Dr. Wright was pleased and said “oh, I have one of those.”</p>
<p>He got no feedback at all on the presentation of his scores (he printed them on single sided regular copy paper and put them in a small white three-ring binder with labeled dividers and cover pages for each, nothing very elaborate.)</p>
<p>Temple also gives a 90-minute written theory and composition test, I assume just for placement. My S said it was not very difficult for him, but it did ask him to identify a few pieces of well known music (e.g. Beethoven’s 5th, Bolero). The composition test asked to identify the instruments in various ensembles, key signatures, and the like. </p>
<p>S asked Dr. Wright how soon he would get word on acceptance, and he just said “soon.”</p>
<p>We have Berklee next on Wednesday in NYC (may be Thursday depending on the weather) which is just a guitar audition, then another composition interview at NYU on Sunday, which I expect to be a little tougher than the Temple one was. But it was great to get this first one out of the way and I think from the sound of it my S did very well.</p>
<p>This is coming from a graduate school point of view, but when I interviewed at Peabody it was very informal and lasted about 10 to 15 minutes. Basic questions like “what are your favorite composers”, “what led you to composing”, “where are you from/what’s your musical background”.</p>