I have to relate a really disappointing experience with Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music. S, a jazz trumpet applicant, put together and recorded the required pre-screening songs; and spent several hours trying to upload them, without success. The next day–which was a school day (and work day for us)–we attempted to help by trying to upload them from home. After a few hours of no success, we e-mailed the school; and received a reply from an Associate Dean at the music school indicating that we should compress the files. We did that; and the upload appeared to be a success (screen stating “upload complete”). Then, we heard nothing for 7 weeks. We assumed they decided his pre-screen recordings didn’t justify a live audition. After 7 weeks, S got an e-mail from the same Associate Dean, indicating that, because he’d never uploaded pre-screen recordings, NWern would not offer him a live audition. We e-mailed this Dean with the details of what happened, including a copy of the e-mail chain; and never got a reply. If NWern had told us earlier that the prescreens didn’t upload (contrary to what their website said), we could’ve uploaded them again.
Very disappointing and un-classy action by NWern.
Ugh, that’s awful. So, in your shoes, if a Bienen audition was important, I would start making calls. I would start with the admissions office (for Bienen). I would not email, I would call. I would also have the pre-screen uploaded somewhere easily accessible, like youtube, so that you can tell them that they are immediately available. Jazz departments are generally small and they can help you if you find the right person. Just don’t rely on emails and don’t rely on the associate dean who has already proven not to be very helpful.
Also, for future reference, problems uploading is something your child is going to face again; there are endless competitions, auditions, applications, etc. And you have to get used to doing the follow-up and never assuming that everything got uploaded correctly just because they didn’t notify you otherwise. My son learned the lesson the hard way for a competition with a huge entry fee.
Thanks–this helps.
I think Northwestern’s approach has kind of soured him on the school. May be for the best, as it’s sounding like Juilliard 2.0 there, which could be pretty stifling for a creative type.
@Montane - I gather that you’re relatively new at all of this, but I am going to caution you: while I certainly understand that you and your son were upset about the way things went with the upload process, ultimately, the responsibility for making sure that everything arrives at the school rests with the applicant and the parent(s). You’ll discover that the music world is very small and your son’s major of jazz trumpet makes it even tinier and one needs to be careful about the words used to speak about a school or a teacher in a public forum. I’m not picking on you- I’d say this to any “newbie” in this position to help out- because faculty moves around and Admissions Officers of talk to each other (and some of them read this board) and you don’t want to do anything that might impact your student’s chances negatively in any way.
It’s just better to talk about things at home, with your friends or by private message until your son is safely tucked into his dorm in the fall!
Well, obviously his call but I wouldn’t let an administrative snafu be the deciding factor. I’ve heard great things about Etienne Charles at Michigan State (who happens to be a Juilliard grad, I believe.) And, of course, there’s Sean Jones at Berklee, who I’m seeing everywhere lately.
Thanks. Good points.
Good news–Northwestern is going to look at the application & provide alternatives for submitting audition recording. If I could amend my vented comment above, I would.
@montane: That’s great news. Did you end up calling Bienen admissions?
Glad it worked out. People understand about your post … its a frustrating, tense time. It’s just best not to do it again. Live and learn.
Glad it seems to be working out, one of the things I can tell you, both from experiences with admissions processes for a wide variety of things, plus as someone with several decades of IT experience testing computer systems, and that is never assume that because something says “it is complete”, it may not be. For important things with time deadlines, like college applications, summer programs, etc, it is always wise to follow through to make sure in fact they have it. It might be waiting a while, then checking that on the student account it shows a status of ‘fully submitted’ if they offer it, those initial ‘success’ messages often come from a front end processor and the upload could get dumped downstream, so that final confirmation can be important. E-mail is okay, but if not getting satisfaction, call. It also doesn’t hurt that when doing screen submissions, screen print the upload screen showing ‘successfully updated’ and/or save any e-mails as proof you did it in good faith. I will add that college computer systems IME are not always the greatest, lot of them fail under load, and the schools often don’t have the resources to make them foolproof and such. Confirming it via e-mail or voicemail also gives you piece of mind.
And if you do have a problem, use the phone, don’t use e-mail is my advice, when they have a living,breathing person on the line there is more impetus to follow through:).
I undertstand your anger about what happened, but to be honest this happens all over. A major school screwed up my son’s admission in UG, the admissions department fouled up with his teacher preference (basically his first choice wasn’t going to have room at the school in question,admissions should have contacted the number 2 teacher, didn’t, and when they finally did #2 didn’t have any openings, which he would have earlier…it happens). Admissions is a chaotic mess at many programs, admissions people say it is worse than tax season as an accountant, and things like this will happen, and as @Mezzo’sMama said, whether fair or not it is up to the student and parrent to keep up with all this, and Northwestern’s reaction in your case was basically an oversight, one where following through might end up with a better result (as it seems to). My son just had that with grad school prescreen, one school rejected him for a prescreen, turned out the problem was his teacher had not submitted the letter of rec required to them (personally, I think schools should know many music teachers float out on cloud 9 somewhere, but that is another rant:), my S got in touch with the teacher he was interested in, and ended up getting an audition.
No, an admin e-mailed back. They wrote a very kind and helpful e-mail.
@montane I hope it all worked out!
Thanks! After considering each school, S decided Northwestern–while obv a great school–was not what he was looking for.