Coronavirus and Music Schools: What's happening?

College Majors Music Major
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I don’t know what’s happening in everyone’s home town, but here in CA there was just a very sobering news article predicting that the next couple of years in education is going to be a real struggle. More distance learning, less classroom time, fewer large events, and just a very radically different way of educating the kids. With two in college next year and two in high school, I can’t help but wonder what this all means. I’m trying so desperately hard to stay positive and upbeat for my 4 kids, but secretly I’m thinking “Holy cow…how will we get through this?” I mean we as a family AND we as a nation. There will be so much that slips through the cracks, and learning deficits galore. The college process for my younger two will be so drastically different, and will my singer even get a chance to perform the next few years as she is 3000 miles away? There’s just so much uncertainty right now.

From what I’ve been reading, a late start to the year in college is not as much of a worry as another wave of the virus halfway into the school year. For my 3 who will be here in CA, there’s not much to worry about if we go back to social distancing and have another couple of months like we have just had. But to think of a sick kid across the country and trying to quickly and safely bring her home is another story altogether. I’m normally pretty level headed, but this is definitely keeping me up at night.

I definitely hope for antibody testing before she leaves. It would provide some sense of how to handle things just in case.

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I worry too… about the health of the older and wiser faculty at these schools, about our still vulnerable kids. I wish they could cloister together somehow after a quarantine period. It would be limiting but at least they could interact with their teachers and each other.
I don’t know how viable this would be, just an idea.

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West Chester University extended Spring Break and went to distance with everyone else. Postponed graduation.

Also worried about NE Conservatory as I have a First Year planning to start. Virtual kind of stinks. Curtis moved their Summerfest to Virtual.

Boston College announced not coming back until Jan 2021 (virtual for fall). Thinking most other Boston schools will follow suit, but no official word.

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@ClassCompMom , would you mind telling me where you saw the BC announcement? I just looked for it now on their site, but didn’t see anything about it. My son’s at Berklee, so I’m wondering if, as you say, they may follow suit, and when they might decide. He’s thinking that if they’re online for fall, he’s going to sit the semester out and wait until the campus reopens. I understand the awful position the schools are in, but studying at Berklee has been his dream for a long time, and (especially for music majors) a lot of what he wants from the school just can’t come through online (although they’re doing their best).

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The problem is, even if things ease up, say, in July, noone know if and when there will be a second or even third wave. In 1918 those were worse.

We do have better knowledge, med, equipment and technology now than in 1918 so who knows, maybe it will be containable.

I imagine it is actually easier for schools to remain online than to return to normal, then send everyone home again and go online, complete with refunds and a lot of complex arrangements to make.

I don’t see how any school can be sure about returning to normal, even for the winter semester, until there are treatments or vaccines.

Maybe there are ways to maintain social distancing and other safety measures, but I can’t see it.

Music is harder to do virtually along with other arts. Sciences need labs. I could see how humanities could more easily continue online without as much of an effect.

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@AsMother I do not think BC has made a firm decision, merely floated the possibility (and received much press as a result). My niece will matriculate there in the fall, and if there was an announcement, we would have heard her wailing and gnashing of teeth by now!

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@songbirdmama thank you for the clarification. I couldn’t imagine that any of the schools could, or would, make that decision THIS early on, but on the other hand…well, I wouldn’t want to be in their positions under any circumstances! Unfortunately, I do think that BC’s “floating” position seems as if it might be the only sensible one in the coming months, and everyone must be scrambling to toe the line between making those kinds of decisions either too early or too late.
@compmom , agreed on all of the above!
I hope everyone is doing well, regardless of everything…

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My D is a current Jr. We are troubled with things like how are we going to visit/audition for schools? Virtual tours are at least an option but to make a decision from a virtual tour seems impossible. Also will merit aid disappear? A very stressful time for everyone but I don’t even know how to begin.

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@coloraturagirl

@jim33h
Same. My daughter is a Jr. ALL SAT testing canceled until September. It’s going to be an interesting ride for sure. She was set to take in Marxh and then at least once or twice more. Her PSAT were good but September is cutting it too close for.comfort.

As of right now, we are doing all planned competitions via online submission, so I suppose if we had to do college auditions that way, we’ve had plenty of practice.

I just watched some of the Hal Leonard HS videos and I have to tell you, if making a video, pay special attention to the space and sound. It makes such a huge difference.

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@jim33h my daughter is also a junior. We are taking it one step at a time.

First, we are considering where she wants to apply, and we are widening our search.

We had planned to visit several colleges over my daughter’s spring break to get an idea of campus vibe, spaces, and surrounding areas. We had also arranged sample lessons at each. While that tour got canceled, it’s those things we want to try to capture however we can.

So in reverse order, here is our revised plan.
Sample lessons: my daughter will be arranging to do these online.
Surrounding areas: Google maps, street view.
College spaces: virtual tours. We have found that these don’t always show what we want to see, but they are better than nothing.
Campus vibe: whatever student Q&A sessions we can find online (live or prerecorded).

I anticipate that none of these will be completely satisfactory. But, we think we can get enough information online to make a not-so-narrow list of potential schools to apply to.

Second, prescreens. Presumably these will work the same as they always have. We don’t expect changes here.

Third, live auditions. Will these happen? I don’t think anyone can say. The bright side is, if they DO take place, I have a ton more time off banked to take care of them. If they DON’T take place… well, perhaps we’re back to the prescreen method again. At any rate, there’s nothing I can do about that now.

Finally, acceptances. I agree with you that it seems like merit aid may become more difficult to obtain. This is another reason we will widen our search.

Hopefully by acceptance time, things will have opened up and we can focus on our birds in the hand, so to speak. We can visit schools and meet instructors in person, perhaps arranging additional sample lessons.

Trying to stay focused on the bright side… on our tour we were only going to be able to catch one live performance due to the timing, but now maybe we get more opportunities. We’ll see.

If we’re still not opened up by next spring, I’m worried that we’ll all have much more serious things on our minds than our foregone live tours of music schools. But I’m optimistic that we’ll have made some progress by then either on a vaccine or a treatment, or both.

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@Pl1277 Our school administers the ACT to all juniors, and I had my daughter sign up for the March 14 SAT just to get it out of the way. She didn’t prep for either of these tests. So now we have two standardized test scores to send - but they are not the best scores. Honestly I don’t know whether that is any better than nothing.

A lot of schools seem to be going test optional, at least for this admissions cycle. If all the summer and fall sittings are canceled, will they have any choice but to go test optional for the next cycle too?

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Music schools (and all universities) must follow guidance of state, county, city, etc so it may depend on where a school locates. If the area is (getting) shut down due to second wave in June - July, schools wouldn’t be able to open a campuses in August. But at least they try to do “some” in-person training in fall by delaying to start fall semester or starting online classes first. They will likely limit students’ activities in campus / off-campus with social distancing (probably slightly less than 6 feet by that time with face mask most of the time), restrictions on travels during long weekends / breaks, plus frequently monitored temperature and possibly on-campus testing. Large ensembles may be a problem for social distancing but smallish ensembles should be fine. It is a huge challenge to “test and track” for schools once they find positive cases in campus but they are working on the plan now and getting more prepared. They also have to offer on-line or deferral options to some students and faculty. If it is up to students / families, my son would be very happy to get back to school whenever school opens. I expect he won’t travel back home for Thanksgiving week (and spring break) if school has a travel restriction.

I am very sure that there will be live auditions (with optional video / zoom auditions) and merit / talent scholarships. It’s nature of music schools to offer merit scholarships to talented young musicians. It may be more competitive to get a large scholarship. Good thing for current junior students or even gap year students, they can observe and asses how music schools will do in next several months to continue providing quality of music education before even submitting applications or live auditions. Some schools may struggle, some do well with adjustments.

I am optimistic that many music schools (unless university decides to go online) will provide in-person classes / ensembles in fall semester. At the same time, I won’t be surprised to see health fee increase / additional fee in the next academic year billing.

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@stringbird she was scheduled for the March 14 SAT as well, but it was canceled in our area. I’m going to look into the ACT , to be honest, I don’t know of any kids who took that and we met with guidance for in depth college counseling and it was never even suggested.

Im.urging her to get a head start on looking at college essays. We planned for a busy summer where those would have to be squeezed in, but seems we have nothing but time now!

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Another mom-of-a-junior here who is juggling our well-laid plans and trying to come up with Plans B-J in regards to applications, auditions, lessons, travel…

Have any of you tried to get online/Zoom lessons yet? DS is about to send out some feeler emails this week. I’m hoping that some profs might be more willing to meet online over the summer than they would have previously for an in-person summer lesson. I figure, since DSs entire summer has been canceled… theirs probably were too? lol

We’ve also found that online “virtual tours” generally suck. Most schools have few photos, you can’t always enlarge the photos to see any detail, there will be videos embedded with people talking about random-ish things vs. talking about the building we are TRYING to look at! It’s apparent that the virtual tours were originally just a side-gimmick for marketing… not a true “tour.” It’s frustrating because that might be all we are able to get until audition time! :confused:

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@fivethirtyfive, my D has had many online lessons with her private teacher as well as several prospective college instructors. So far, the teachers have proposed the conferencing format. Most of them have been done via Zoom, one via FaceTime. One teacher was very specific / picky regarding the technical setup (PC with external stereo USB microphone, hardwired network connection instead of wi-fi, etc.). The others didn’t seem to care, so my D used her phone or my iPad. Since your D will be “auditioning” in a way (not having already been accepted into a school or studio), I recommend the highest-quality setup she can feasibly put together. I agree that she will probably have an easier time getting online lessons vs. what previously would have been done in person. Just be prepared to pay the instructors. If your D alludes to payment in her e-mails, I think she will be even more likely to get positive responses very quickly.

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Here in my state, March 13th was the day the world changed. Seemed like everything got canceled that day… except this ACT administration. I still sent her in. I still didn’t want to admit the gravity of the situation.

There’s a whole forum on here about the differences between the ACT and SAT tests. I asked my daughter, who is a decent tester but not a quick tester - she says she preferred the SAT because she felt less time pressure. But by the numbers, her ACT results were better.

Ooh, this is something we haven’t even started looking at. Before, my daughter wasn’t going to be able to work on these until August. You’re right, though, now it’s “nothing but time”. I’ll add this to my mental list of “bright sides” for when I’m feeling down about things.

My thought as well. My daughter will send out her first feeler email today. She will ask whether the professor is amenable to an online sample lesson and if so, leave the timing strictly up to the professor, as we have no idea what they have going on right now with end of school year. I’m also asking her to inquire about how we can pay for the sample lesson. We’ll report back.

I’m sure this will be seen as rude by some, but we have ducked out of in-person tours early if we didn’t feel like we were getting anything out of them. So I actually like the virtual tours because we can skip past what we don’t care about and ahead to what we want to see. The problem being, as you say, whether they HAVE what we want to see. We have been looking at music schools or conservatories attached to a college or university, and some of the virtual tours have just about zero information about the music program and facilities.

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My Daughter is interested in in depth looks at the music department. I was afraid that would be left out or touched on very lightly in a virtual tour.

Also my D was going to Interlochen now its cancelled and going online for 3 weeks not sure if it will be beneficial or worth it!

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My thought as well. My daughter will send out her first feeler email today. She will ask whether the professor is amenable to an online sample lesson and if so, leave the timing strictly up to the professor, as we have no idea what they have going on right now with end of school year. I’m also asking her to inquire about how we can pay for the sample lesson. We’ll report back.

I’m sure this will be seen as rude by some, but we have ducked out of in-person tours early if we didn’t feel like we were getting anything out of them. So I actually like the virtual tours because we can skip past what we don’t care about and ahead to what we want to see. The problem being, as you say, whether they HAVE what we want to see. We have been looking at music schools or conservatories attached to a college or university, and some of the virtual tours have just about zero information about the music program and facilities.

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Oh, yes. We have also ducked out of in-person tours and went off wandering on our own. Those have been some of our best information-gathering sessions!! But now that we can’t BE on campus, the virtual tours are all we’ve got. And, yes, most of them show NOTHING about the music schools (let’s see those practice rooms! Let’s see those pianos!) and are just superfluous. That was fine in the pre-COVID world, but now we have allll the time in the world, we want to SEE things! lol Frustrating.

Please do report back if your daughter has any luck with online sample lessons! My kid is sending out emails tomorrow to three profs, iirc. Fingers crossed!

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Some UCs (including UCLA) announced today about their new on-campus housing policy for next fall (academic year). They now don’t guarantee on-campus housing for incoming freshmen (including who already paid a housing deposit) or returning students due to possibly less numbers of students in dorms for social distance.

Anyone heard from your school? We haven’t heard about housing yet. My son’s school “requires” all freshmen and sophomore to live on-campus housing (triple room or double room). We hope that we won’t be in the position to look for an off-campus apartment in the very last minutes after school decide to open a campus. But we still prefer in-person / on-campus semester.

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Harvard is opening in the fall (someone asked about Boston) but is not yet certain about in person versus online. There is a difference between “remote” and “online” classes and if Harvard goes online again, the classes will not be remote versions of lectures usually offered in person, but will offer some of the enhancements possible with audio visuals and so on, that can make the virtual experience better.