<p>Hi. Can anyone demystify this process a little for us please? I have auditioned hundreds of times for other things and I got a music scholarship offered from several schools back in the 80s with no audition. So I was a little out of my league when my son and I started this process for him.
I now understand a little, e.g. prescreen, audition, application. But not the "behind the scenes" stuff. Such as, how are the selections made based on one audition? Who makes the decision, those that hear or is there a committee or or or....? Also, some of the places he applied to also accepted, even asked for, links to his music sites like reverbnation and soundclick. Will they listen to them? (Keep in mind this question is probably unique to guitar/commercial/popular music though a couple of places were jazz focused) At one, he entered pieces for a composition scholarship -- will those pieces be part of any acceptance decision? If not, we thought how crazy it would be if he was tagged as a possible scholarship 'cause they loved his compositions, yet he wasn't accepted.
So can anyone pull back the curtain a little for us? Thanks.</p>
<p>The admissions process varies according to focus, school, instrument. If you call the individual admissions departments they will clarify their process for you. I am not aware of any schools that formally offer scholarships BEFORE a student is accepted.</p>
<p>I can’t speak of the specific programs your S is trying to enter, but I suspect it isn’t all that much different from what I know. Basically, if you get past the pre screen, you go into the audition process, which is as you said the main reason you get into performance programs (i.t it is pretty much everything).</p>
<p>Once the kid auditions, the panel members give their ratings and also indicate whether they would be willing to teach the student or not (some schools don’t do this, like Indiana, you get admitted then find a teacher, other programs may do that, too). </p>
<p>From what I know, they usually have a cut off score below which people won’t make it (and again, this is a generalized outline, some programs may be different, also will be different if there is only 1 teacher).</p>
<p>In the schools where the teacher indicates whether they will teach a student, they try to match that against the preferences they usually have prospective students fill out with their application, and they try to match them based on student’s order of preference (again, may vary by school). If teacher’s indicate they are willing to teach the student but don’t match up the student’s preferences, the prevailing method seems to be to contact the student and have them make a decision on which of those teachers they would go with. </p>
<p>Financially based aid is decided by the material the family submits, merit aid decisions from what I know come out of the student’s rating on the admissions audition (I have heard at some schools they use the rating on the audition form, others actually talk to the members of the panel what they think, I suspect the audition form rating is prob more common, given the numbers they audition). </p>
<p>I have never heard of someone getting a scholarship offer before they are accepted into the program, based on the programs I know I would find that a bit illogical, since all that is funneled through the admissions office in the schools I know of.</p>
<p>Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I was kind of joking about the scholarship. We were just remarking that it would be funny if the compositions were deemed scholarship worthy but the student bombed the audition and wasn’t accepted, which lead to our discussion of did everything hinge on one audition or were there multiple factors: that is, did the admissions people consult with the audition people Plus the comp scholarship people Plus the people who may have listened to the other music on the links provided. I didn’t honestly THINK you could get a scholarship before acceptance.</p>