<p>As the research into different school options ramps up for my daughter, a question popped into my head relative to the idea of choosing a professor that you want to be your mentor for four years. How often does it happen that a student finds out they made the wrong choice and what do they do about it?</p>
<p>I'm specifically referring to the student-mentor relationship, not the fit of the institution as a whole. Even with campus visits, sample lessons (sometimes more than one), sitting in on studio classes, and/or working with professors at summer programs I realized that choosing that mentor, to a large degree, is still more than a bit of a guess. And I would assume it may take upwards of a couple of years to find out that the relationship isn't working. We know one kid in particular who, now in her junior year in college, is starting to question whether she made the best choice on who to study with. I can't blame the kid as this really comes down to an "educated guess". You try to make it as educated as possible, but you still really don't know until you interact with that professor on daily basis for an extended period of time.</p>
<p>Have you known kids who ended up in this situation? What did they do? I would assume that coming this conclusion 3 months into your studies is very different from figuring it out after 5 semesters. Or is a situation like this extremely rare, to the point of almost never happening?</p>
<p>My recommendation is that one should choose an institution where there are alternative professors with whom the student could imagine studying. Then, if things don’t work out the way one hopes, there will be options.</p>
<p>I agree with SpiritManager. Sometimes the relationship works out but the mentor leaves (or dies, or retires) and it’s the same problem. If there are other teachers that one could study with the resolution is much easier.</p>
<p>It does happen, in various ways. One of the downsides of a small program (that caused my S to decide to turn down one program) is a small faculty, so if something happens, the teacher retires, the mesh is wrong, etc, you don’t have much choice, you might face a new teacher you don’t like (if a teacher leaves or retires), or if it is a wrong fit, if there is another teacher might not work well.</p>
<p>The options range from ‘sticking it out’, with the hope of grad school finding the ‘perfect teacher’, transferring (friend of my S’s just did that, not because the teacher at the old school was ‘bad’, but because a teacher he had worked with before moved to a great school), or trying to find another teacher in the same program. The last sounds like the easiest, but you can run into politics, if the current teacher is an egotistical jerk who sees it as a slap in the face, it could be difficult, and sometimes other teachers won’t take a student from a teacher like that, fearing reprisals…on the other hand, good teachers should (and some/many do), that ti is a personal fit and want what is right for the student, so transferring may not be bad. Where there is only 1 or 2 teachers, it might end up being either the kid stays and hopes for the best, or transfers. </p>
<p>I don’t anticipate a problem like this at all, but all of you touched on the reason this even entered my mind in the first place: with a daughter who’s an oboist more often than not there is no alternate professor.</p>
<p>To expand on musicprnt’s comments, I can certainly see the egotistical battles that might go on between faculty members of one institution, but how is transferring viewed if it comes to that for a kid? Aside from egos at play between institutions, can a music student get labeled as “transfer prone”, or “hard to work with”, or “high maintenance”, etc?</p>
<p>I think the chance is not so much that the student will be labeled as punished by Herr Egotistical Jerk for the narcissistic insult of requesting transfer. In other words, it’s less about the student than about the teacher. Changing studios is not terribly uncommon and is done for many reasons. </p>
<p>Earlier this year a bass student agonize on CC about transferring to a different program; her biggest fear was that the old teacher would be offended by the switch which made sense for her in many ways. </p>
<p>Although not common, at DD’s school 2 voice students changed studios in a year, both moving out of the same one but going to different ones. One did it the right way, working with both professors. It was framed as fit issues with understanding the professor. Through coaching on a duet had discovered the other professor connected better and explained that to the first one. The other just dropped the bomb on the first one. There is definitely a difference as to how they both are treated overall the next year. </p>
<p>Mcson had a mentor (and dept head) who retired halfway through his degree. His department was strong, and he learned a lot from both a new prof and the newly promoted department head. In the end, while he sorely missed his ‘perfect fit,’ he also benefitted a lot from working with new people. </p>
<p>But this is why, if asked, I’d be inclined to weight overall dept strength, size and variety pretty heavily in choosing a school, and almost (but maybe not quite) equally to individual mentor calibre. Because while you can follow a mentor to a different program, you can’t exactly follow them into retirement ;)</p>