<p>Just wanted to share an interesting moment from our first college audition day. We attended a Q&A session before the audition, as my D was the last auditioner of the day. This session was basically a "what the music department is all about" session, but the professor didn't really have much to say and everyone kept coming in late and disturbing his train of thought (imagine THAT from a musician!). He spoke for less than 5 minutes and then opened up the floor for questions. Of course, no one wanted to throw out the 1st question, so, being a graduate of a music program myself, I asked a question about the music school curriculum. This started the ball rolling, and it quickly became apparent that most of the students sitting in the room wanted to be music majors without having to attend music thoery class or take class piano. One girl even asked if advanced piano meant "playing both hands together." The same girl asked if she could just give them a copy of her garage band's CD for an audition, instead of doing a live audition. She wanted to know if this would put her at an "unfair advantage" against the other auditioners. My daughter asked questions about taking private piano as a voice major, and whether the percussion emsemble took too much time for a voice major. She also asked about composition classes and foreign languages.</p>
<p>About 4 hours later, after we had completed her audition, we waited for the exit interview. Who should come to interview us, but the professor from the Q&A session who just happened to be the head of the music department. His comment to us was, "Ah! The good question people!" </p>
<p>If the girl you spoke of was typical of the school’s applicant pool, I think I’d run the other way, and quickly! Voice majors have to take piano, music theory and languages and any teacher who sent students off to audition day that unprepared should be keelhauled…</p>
<p>It did scare me a little, but the department head kept reinforcing that they were a music school, training musicians to work in the field of music, and that if what these students wanted was more audio engineering, they needed to go to another school, and then he listed other programs for them to check out. My D had an overnight visit earlier in the sememster, and attended classes for two days. She said she was impressed with the abilities of the upper class students she heard, and the students I heard were very talented. Not a conservatory, but we are thinking of saving the conservatory experience for grad school. </p>
<p>There were 2 students running off at the mouth, and both of those students weren’t there to audition, just check out the school, which meant the other 30 students in the room were squirming in their chairs listening to the conversation. These students were interested in the schools new commercial music degree. The music ed and performance students were very articulate, just not as loud!</p>
<p>This isn’t uncommon, even though it doesn’t take much to look up what music school entails on the net so you would figure kids would know, but more then a few don’t. It isn’t just kids who simply are clueless about what music performance involves, there are also high level instrumental students, the kind who have won competitions, etc, where they assume music school is like what they have done up until that point i.e focus strictly on playing the instrument to achieve a high level…and are often resentful when they find out about things like music theory classes and ear training…</p>
<p>Friend of DD’s went to a good music school for VP. He had auditioned well and received merit awards. When he got there he was shocked at all of the academic music classes he had to take. He was not interested in studying music, just performing. I think the admissions offices and folks that do the tours really need to impress on the difference between performing and studying music. Might head off a few of the applicants who aren’t really serious. Sometimes it is hard to find the courses that are required for a degree on the school’s web pages . They should make it easier to find and point to it in the “about” section of the school. .</p>
<p>Great thread!
I have noticed that some schools do post the class distribution on their web sites but it’s something that should given to all students/parents on tours and audition days. Singers, in particular, tend to be the most “clueless” about what is required because they don’t have the earlier exposure to ensemble playing that instrumentalists do. Many have arrived at conservatory/college having had leads in school musicals etc and have no idea that the study of voice involves so much more than just opening their mouth and having sound come out. They may have won some local competitions, but as musicprnt and I have pointed out before, those local events are often not an indication of anything more than a popularity contest for area teachers.Attrition rates in the VP programs are the highest because the kids just can’t handle a lot of the required work and never took advanced classes in HS. Imagine their shock when the are plopped down into a Music History sequence and they’ve never done an outline much less an annotated research paper! Vocal pedagogy, diction? A nightmare. I’ve heard of well-known teachers telling their “star” students to just “get by with a D” in an academic class, which is disgraceful. With the advent of the FERPA regulations, conductors/directors/ studio teachers do not know that students are failing subjects.
If all of this and the school’s expectations were spelled out before they sign the acceptance letter spaces would be available to kids who would actually benefit and thrive in such an atmosphere- instead, studios dwindle and what began as say, a class of 15 VP majors, is down to 5-7 on graduation day.</p>
<p>Ya know, I think that most schools do post degree requirements. I studied and compared and contracted the curriculums at all of the schools my son applied at. The hardest thing is often trying to figure out the content of a course as the curriculums frequently don’t link each class in the list to a description or any other info about the class.</p>
<p>I think that most of the time students either don’t fully understand the course names, or don’t know to look for such. If you don’t realize that it is important to preview the curriculum, then you don’t bother to look for the curriculum, and if you do run across it, but don’t understand it, and don’t compare it to other colleges and even other majors, then it is pretty much meaningless to the potential student.</p>
<p>Thus the importance of students having someone knowledgeable to guide them through the college selection process. You would think that would be the job of the high school guidance councelor, maybe not to do the leg work for the students, but to explain to them how college works, what credit hours are, what “general education requirements” are, college class scheduling, what to expect, what to look for, etc. But of course when you have maybe 1 or 2 guidance councelors per 500 students, “one on one” guidance isn’t possible.</p>
<p>I tried explaining college to my son the best I could, but he’s a hardheaded one who doesn’t like to listen to the “rents”. He may have been more attentive if they went over this stuff in his highschool. I’m thinking there should a class that every senior should have to take the first quarter of their senior year in high school that would cover this stuff in detail.</p>
<p>One of my son’s high school peers who is attending the same college that he is got into a special program at the college that is just for students who don’t have any parents with college degrees. That program went over the “college experiance” with the students the week before classes began, and the students check in with a councelor weekly to answer questions, solve issues, review grade progress etc. It’s a great program, but by the time the students get into it, they are already in college, so it’s nearly too late to correct any unrealistic student expectations.</p>
<p>I agree that most Colleges put the curriculum on their websites - you have to be willing to look for it. When my older daughter was trying to make her final decision between her 2 top choices, I told her to go online and see what her freshman year would actually entail. She was choosing between two excellent schools, both in cities, etc. One turned out to have a more traditional curriculum, the other less defined. It made her decision easy, and she had a very successful undergrad experience. Fast forward to D2 - the musician. She pretty much knew where she wanted to go, but looking at the curriculum requirements was really helpful. It’s also helpful once you’re enrolled. I’ve heard too many horror stories of students that didn’t graduate with their class because they missed one requirement!</p>