<p>Hi, I am wondering about how many violinists get live opportunities at top conservatories like CIM, NEC, MSM...etc. I heard they hear about 40 a day and there are usually 3-4 days of auditions for violins. Does that mean there are approximately 160 violinists auditioning? And around 20 get in?</p>
<p>I think your numbers are high. IF they listen to auditions for 8 hours and each one lasts for 15 minutes, that is only 32 a day. (I don’t know if they listen to that many in a day.) Regardless of how many that they hear, the number admitted will vary from school to school and from year to year. A full teaching load is about 20 students. If a teacher’s studio is divided perfectly evenly, they will have 4 from each year and 4 grad students. Thus, in a perfect situation, each teacher may be able to accept 4 students into the studio. However, they don’t all have full loads. Some teach at multiple schools. Some have departmental or other teaching duties. Students transfer creating more openings. Some years all accepted students attend meaning there is less room for the next year. Sometimes schools will let you know how many openings there are that year for a given instrument if you ask.</p>
<p>so say if each school takes 15 students…and i am applying to 4 conservatories, that means i have to one of the 60 that were chosen?</p>
<p>This is a very difficult process to analyze mathematically. It is not nearly as simple as saying 60 applicants will get into these four schools, so I have to be among the top 60 applicants. </p>
<p>Different schools have different needs in terms of number of students on a particular instrument. Those needs change from year to year, sometimes by a fair amount. Depending on the yield the school expects, they may well offer admission to two, three or even more applicants for every one that ultimately enrolls. Their guess about yield may be off by a lot, resulting in the school needing to offer admission to more or fewer applicants in the following years. Student typically apply to several schools and the stronger applicants tend to receive more acceptances than the marginal ones. The level of competition for a spot with a given teacher in a given department at a given school can vary from year to year, depending on many factors. Criteria for admission varies from one school to the next, and from one audition judge to the next.</p>
<p>If the top 4 schools did only accept 60 students (which is certainly not the case), there would be many duplicates among those 60, so the number of different humans amongst the 60 might be only 25 or 30 (e.g. If a student might be accepted at Juilliard, Curtis, CIM, and NEC).</p>
<p>Because one student can only go to one school, if the schools have 15 spots, then they will normally accept more than 15 students (although if their yield is very high, as Juilliard’s is, then they may accept only a couple more than 15). Some schools with yields around 20% probably accept at least 3 times the number of students that they have spots for and then potentially offer more acceptances after they have some rejections in.</p>
<p>Bassdad nailed it, it is very hard to tell what the exact numbers are, because it varies from what I can tell. In terms of prescreening, the rough rule of thumb number I have heard, including from admissions people, is that it is about 50% get live auditions, but that might not apply equally to all schools.For example, if a school knows it only has 7 slots on X instrument, and they get 100 applications, they may be more rigorous and only see 35 to fill that spot, whereas if it was 15 or 20 they might in fact hear 40 or 50 auditions.</p>
<p>And Bassdad is correct in that schools do send acceptances to more people then they have slots for, school know what the enrollment rate is and they use that to determine how many to accept. So if they have X slots, and they know that generally they get 50% who enroll after being offered acceptance (not a real world number, obviously, but easy mathematically) they will accept 2x. If the number falls short of slots, they will turn to the wait list, if they accept too many, well, kind of like some families, aways room for 1 more;). The acceptance/enrollment rates are published, I have read that for example Juilliard and Curtis have a higher rate then let’s say NEC of enrollment/acceptance (and I suspect with Curtis it is near 100%, given that it is tuition free). </p>
<p>One way to know relative chances is simply to call or e-mail the school and ask what the projected # of admissions in the year you are planning to apply is for your instrument, the information isn’t top secret. One thing to be aware of is that those #'s may be grad and undergraduate combined, so if they say they are going to admit 6 flutes, it may be 3 grad and 3 UG, or 5 grad and 1 UG, and that ratio is not predetermined, so the pool of applicants can include both grad and undergrad for the same slots.</p>
<p>While Curtis is tuition-free, living in Philly is expensive and students admitted to Curtis usually get several very generous scholarship offers elsewhere which sometimes cover more than tuition (e.g. Colburn gives free tuition, plus a free apartment, plus a living allowance). Thus Curtis’s COA is often higher at Curtis for those admitted than it is elsewhere, and Curtis’s yield, while very high, is not quite as high as one might have thought.</p>
<p>That’s dead-on violindad - tuition-free is not everything. It’s noted that it is roughly $20,000 per year to live in Philly.</p>
<p>i’ve been wondering about this all along…guess we’ll just find out later.</p>
<p>^Maybe we should try to do a round-up thread where students post responses to the question of x school is auditioning x students for x spots this year, to putt together a very rough guesstimate for future students.
For example, on the Popular Music at Thornton referenced on another thread, someone posted that last year’s admit was approx 7 % but expected to go to 5%.
UMich’s Music Theatre program admits 20 students from 600 applicants each year (recent article about this in the daily) for a 3% admit.
Clive Davis Recording program at NYU admits (based on past years) approx 30 out of 300 for 10%. Those are just a few that come to mind that I’ve heard.</p>
<p>Our daughter just had her CCM audition (she had previously auditioned at Oberlin and CIM), and we were told at the parents’ meeting that they had over 800 DVD screening applicants, from which they chose 100 vocalists for live auditions. They indicated they do not have a firm quota for voice students in general, nor for numbers of sopranos etc., but are planning on admitting roughly 10-15 freshmen.</p>
<p>800 DVD? Wow that’s a LOT. I heard for there are usually only around 150 applicants for violinists. That’s very interesting.</p>
<p>the opera program at CCM is really top notch, i’m auditioning in san fran at their regional audition next monday as a jazz guitarist. i’m on the flip side of the coin, when i talked to them i think something like 14 guitarists auditioned all together last year? it’s my last live audition and i’ve been practicing my songs for months now so i can, literally, play them with my eyes closed…i actually did that earlier today because i wanted to just feel it and see how it turned out. anyways good luck</p>
<p>Sorry - you were seeking info specific to violinists…my daughter’s a vocalist.</p>
<p>thelovelybones: Most schools do get many, many vocal applicants (particularly female), but the majority of those vocal applicants have been studying for fewer than four years. On the other hand, most violin applicants have been studying in excess of 8 years and many for 12 or 14 years. On this board, I have never heard of a violinist that started studying during their junior year and wants to be a performance major, but that is common among vocalists. So while, the number of vocalists is overwhelming, the quality of the majority of them is not. </p>
<p>Having said that, there are still many excellent sopranos out there and they do face very stiff competition for admission. Numbers do not tell the whole story. </p>
<p>The hundred who made it past the prescreen at CCM are all in the ball park. I suspect that of the 150 violin applicants at CCM, considerably more than 1/8 make it past the prescreen. </p>
<p>Ultimately, don’t worry about percentages of students accepted. If you are good, then it doesn’t matter how small the percentages are: you will be accepted (maybe not everywhere because there is an element of chance, especially with voice, but with violin, results are less random). If you are not good, then high percentages are not going to get you accepted.</p>
<p>I know this is not the intention. But I would like to clarify most vocal performance students have been taking private lessons for many years. In fact, if you started junoir year is would be unlikely for you to be accepted at a top notch conservatory. Sorry, but I have to stick up for vocalists, yes there is ‘chance’ when it comes to vocal development. But, technique is from lots of time and money spent practicing and with a vocal coach.</p>
<p>On the other note. It is very hard to compare instrumental auditons because there is just different factors in both. In addition, the reason they take more vocalists is because in an opera production you are going to need more than a handfull.</p>
<p>especially with double casts + chorus</p>
<p>I would agree that very very few vocalists that start lessons in their junior year are likely to be admitted to a top notch conservatory. However, there are many of that ilk who apply to music schools, whereas it is either unknown or incredibly rare for a violinist that has started taking lessons in junior year to apply to a top notch conservatory. </p>
<p>Almost all of the good high school violinists that I know started lessons by the time they were 7 years old. I do not know any vocalists that started taking lessons at 7 (although I am sure there are some; the vocal teachers that I know will not accept students at that age, telling parents that the time and money are better invested in another instrument at that age). The relatively late age that most vocalists start serious study of their instrument is not a reflection of their characters or abilities–it is the nature of the instrument which is not ready for serious study at the age of 3 or 4. </p>
<p>Mezzogirl: I think you missed my point. I was not in any way stating, implying, or insinuating that the calibre of vocalists accepted was any lower than the calibre of the violinists or other instrumentalists. What I was directly stating was that the calibre of applicants is probably lower–many people believe that they can sing well when they cannot, but relatively few people believe that they can play violin or piano well when they cannot. </p>
<p>Many vocal applicants are unaware of the state of development necessary to gain acceptance–they cannot hear how bad their German and French are, how unnatural their vocal production is, how underdeveloped their technique is etc… Too many vocal applicants mistakenly believe that because they can hack through the same repertoire as someone that was accepted at Juilliard, they are “in the ballpark” for acceptance at Juilliard. They fail to realize that it is not so much what you sing (although that is important), as how well you sing it. The same thing happens amongs instrumentalists, but I don’t think it is as prevalent.</p>
<p>As I mentioned before, numbers do not tell the whole story. Just because a school or instrument has a lower percentage of acceptances does not mean that the school or instrument is more competitive. One needs to know something about the calibre of the original applicants.</p>
<p>MezzoGirl wrote:
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<p>While some schools may accept more tenors than cellos, or more vocalists than violinists, some do not. An orchestra requires a ton of violinists and many schools have multiple orchestras requiring over a hundred violinists. I’m not sure where you got the idea that “they take more vocalists.”</p>
<p>MezzoGirl wrote:
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<p>My comments about chance were with respect to the results of auditions, not with respect to vocal development; i.e. whether or not one is accepted involves some chance. I think that it is fairly widely accepted that the results of instrumental auditions tend to be somewhat more predictable than the results of vocal auditions. While weird things can happen with results for any instrument and we all know the stories of the people accepted at Juilliard/Curtis/Colburn but rejected at much less competitive schools, these stories seem to be especially common among vocalists. Please note, MezzoGirl, that my observation of this phenomenon does not imply any criticism or denigration of vocalists. It is just tougher to assess vocal potential than instrumental potential because so much of vocal potential depends on the physical changes that will occur in the instrument which is very much in a developmental phase at the age of 17 or 18.</p>
<p>MezzoGirl wrote:
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<p>Yes, my point exactly. I think you missed it in my original post–one cannot compare 800 vocal applicants with 150 violinist applicants–they are very different beasts. I hope that I have made that clearer for you here.</p>