<p>Just bumping a relevant thread as people start to weigh their options…</p>
<p>Wow.
I posted to this thread a year and a half ago and see that RunningtheBasses just bumped it for a new crop of applicants.</p>
<p>Son that I mentioned above just graduated with honors with his undergrad music education degree. He switched schools to find more competition, depth and was pleased with his decision even though he left a wonderful private teacher. He’s now applying for grad school in music performance. He did end up taking one extra semester to finish up due to the transfer, otherwise, all went smoothly.</p>
<p>Yes, I remember this great thread full of thoughtful comments.</p>
<p>We had decided last year that if my son did not get into a top pick music school and wanted to continue in music, he would take a gap year to continue to study with the amazing teacher he had at home and reapply this year. We felt that a second string music school would be discouraging and that he already had a great teacher. Luckily, he had choices in the end and was able to get a great teacher at a top school. Now he’s in a place where there is plenty to strive for over the 4 years - there will always be others there who are better than he is (though he is far from the bottom of the barrel) to set examples for him. He is working like a demon and quite happy with his choice.</p>
<p>For those out there who are not happy with your choices, do consider the gap year alternative. It can be a great way to hone your skills in private only to reemerge a better player and well seasoned for auditions because it won’t be your first time. There are a lot of different roads to the same destination.</p>
<p>Credit for the bump really goes to the Master Indexer, violadad, who provided the link on another thread. </p>
<p>Very interesting to read the postscripts, musicmom and stringfollies. Thanks for sharing.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that a phenomenal teacher is a trump card, more that a bad teacher is a veto. A bad teacher can ruin a student. Some of the best schools have really bad teachers. I would not send my son there if he is assigned to a bad prof.</p>
<p>If Son has a phenomenal teacher, then try to make a go of it. Maybe he can find 3-5 other serious musicians and form a trio/quartet/quintet, and get a professor to sponsor them as an ensemble. It is the group playing that is important, not how large the group is. My son plays the trombone in a area youth orchestra of high quality students. It is not that thrilling for him because trombones tend not to do too much. In a smaller group, it is easier to have a significant and interesting role. Smaller groups can also require a lot more effort to play well together.</p>
<p>This will apply to very few people, but it is interesting to illustrate whether people really believe what they say.</p>
<p>Conventional wisdom is Teacher is really, really, important. That, no one disagrees with. The question then becomes: How important is School vs. Teacher.</p>
<p>Situation: As a Junior and Senior in High School, son has been studying privately with a University Voice Professor. The University’s music school could be considered 2nd tier. Not the top conservatories, but has a graduate program and puts out serious singers. The Professor has experience, knows his stuff, consitently produces good singers, but has not had enough history to have developed a name for himself. For a High School Student, he is just fine.</p>
<p>As a High School Senior, son has developed into one of the most promising vocal students for his age. Typical comments are: Very well developed voice; good vibrato/passagio/coloratura, especially for his age; etc. But, most importantly, they say his teacher has taught him well, he has a healthy voice, does not have bad habits that need correcting, etc. In other words, the Professor has done EXACTLY what a good teacher is suppose to do, and has not pushed Son into unhealthy singing. It would have been really easy for a teacher to push him too fast, or let my son’s natural abilities cover any lack of abilities of the teacher.</p>
<p>Son had a choice of staying with the professor at the 2nd tier school, or go to a dream program at a top tier school. A lot of time was spent talking with other voice professors and professionals from around the country. The general concensus was: Go with the dream program, he can find a good teacher there. There were a few people who did say: Son has been taught very well, you should stay with the Professor. Most people were willing to choose based upon the reputation of the school and ignore what the current teacher has accomplished.</p>
<p>For most students, the choice is between New College A, and New College B. In that instance, if College A is a Tier 2 school, and College B is a Tier 1 school, then all else being equal, it is not that much of a risk to go with the Tier 1 school knowing that they should have great faculty. Even if you find a teacher you like at the Tier 2 school, all you really know is that there is a personality match, and you don’t really know, other than by repuation, if you will learn much.</p>
<p>For my Son, the choice was between a known good professor at a Tier 2 school vs. an unknown professor at at Tier 1 school. In this instance, Son decided that singing is really important to him, that he would be able to devote more time to singing at the Tier 2 school, and that he would have a good shot at the Met if he stayed with the professor. A great professor trumped the better school. Note: The dream program was not just singing.</p>
<p>One final thought: I have come to believe that the needs of an undergraduate student are different than the needs of a graduate student. I believe that an undergraduate student needs a lot of technical training to properly train the voice while it is developing. The equivalent of vocal coaching is not enough. If you have a good technician, the student will learn to be able to do things, so when the Vocal Coach says: “Sing it like this”, the student will know how to sing it like that, and to sing it like that in a healthy way.</p>
<p>At the graduate level, a more encompassing program is desirable. Lots of stage opportunities, vocal coaching, expanding repertoire, etc. That’s not to say that those things are not valuable at the undergraduate level, but that technical training should be the priority. I feel the teaching at an Undergraduate level is not the same as teaching a Graduate level. That’s why Oberlin sends a lot of kids to the top conservatories. They have learned how to teach the undergraduates because that is all they do. When taking a sample lesson at a school known for its graduate program, the professor wanted my son to sing big. Well, he is too young to sing big. He is developed enough that he could sing big, but it would hurt the development of his voice at this age. So, just because a school turns out great graduate students does not mean it is the best place for an undergraduate to study. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Kudos to you and your son, OperaDad…you have learned some valuable lessons without having had to pay an entry fee of (negative) experience. Once when I fretted about a singer I knew who had a wonderful voice but no technique because she had a terrible teacher, a wise coach made the remark that if the singer did not have the survival instincts to protect and remove herself from the situation, she was not going to survive anyway, so it did not matter. It sounds like the two of you have great survival instincts. Good luck to you both!</p>
<p>I know this was a very hard decision…knew the way he was talking the other night it would probably go this way…I think he chose well! Congrats! now no looking back :)</p>
<p>I’m bumping this for this year’s folks, since I just spent a fair amount of time finding this thread! After acceptances are all in, I may post again, or at least re-read this. Good luck to all!</p>
<p>Like everything else, the deeper I have become involved in the world of music, the more nuanced the answer gets (and this is simply my view, my opinion, based on what I have seen with my son and with the older kids he knows at various levels in their music path, from high school into college and a couple of kids now applying to grad programs, as well as some working musicians). </p>
<p>I think the teacher is incredibly important, there is no doubt about that, the hardest working student, who has passion and so forth, can be screwed up by a less then stellar teacher IME (I never realized how much, until relatively recently, where I have sadly seen the results of such a situation).</p>
<p>But it comes down to nuances, and that varies by student and instrument. I think the program can make a difference, there is no doubt about that in my mind, that a higher level program, simply because the level of the students is going to be higher, can help push a student towards better playing and so forth. Likewise, higher level schools from what I can tell may be able to give better performing opportunity, higher level master classes and the like (not a guarantee, of course; I know of at least one high level program that doesn’t seem to do many if any master classes…). </p>
<p>As far as the question about whether it is better to have a better teacher at a ‘lesser’ level program then an unknown or relatively blah teacher at a higher level program, that really depends on the student. If the student is already relatively independant, has learned how to learn, is already at a relatively high level when they enter the program, a ‘lesser’ teacher at a big program may be better (I put that in quotes, because quite honestly, I kind of wonder about how teachers are rated. Most seem to go by reputations, either as performers or turning out some successful students, but there are also young teachers, who may in fact be brilliant, who can be considered ‘lesser’ because they weren’t a famous soloist, or didn’t turn out the next Yo Yo Ma or Lang Lang (yet)…Dorothy Delay comes to mind, when she took on Perlman in the early 60’s she was an assistant to Galamian and while respected, was not the ‘monster teacher’ by rep she was to become, so a ‘lesser’ name at a big school could turn out to be a bonanza)…and there are probably ‘famous’ teachers who don’t deserve to be called that, who can’t teach but have the name for the wrong reasons…(no one in particular, just saying that is not exactly unlikely).</p>
<p>In other words, there is no one answer to this, a slightly "lesser’ teacher at a high program may trump a ‘phenomenal’ teacher at a less high level program, it depends on the student, the instrument and frankly what they are looking to do as well. It could be that none of the higher level programs open to the student have a teacher that would work well with them, and the ‘lesser’ program might be better to be able to study with the teacher that does work.</p>
<p>In other words, like everything in music, the answer seems to be “it depends”…</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind- a school that may be thought of as “tier one” for one major may not be in the same category for another (such as instrumental vs. voice) and there are a few schools that are coasting on their reputation and have put nothing into a program in years, whereas a “lesser” school may be actively recruiting good faculty and building new facilities. It does pay to look around and weigh all facets carefully.</p>