<p>This is a great question and really important at your child’s age. That said, I’m not sure there’s the perfect answer. It’s important to have a trust/respect relationship with the teacher which it sounds like you have. The student should be making consistently significant progress and be challenged. If you know you are going the music major road, then the student should be given opportunities to prepare for that with the appropriate competitions, summer programs, etc. that give them confidence, network opportunities and the skills to handle the workload and pressures. You expect input from your teacher about prospective schools and the faculty at those schools. In short, you hope that your child is prepared as best possible for the college audition/application process - both mentally and musically. If you are seeing problems early, you should try to address it. In my case, the teacher was great on the teaching end but was not very organized on deadlines, etc. I took over that role for my D’s sake and let the teacher teach. Your case might not be that simple and perhaps there are other teachers in which you might have more trust.</p>