Recently I went to the music school college fair and found out that flute programs at the schools whose zoom “booths” I visited are really small—like, 7 new students a year small. Apparently, CMU didn’t take on any new flute students in 2020! One thing I forgot to ask them was how many applicants they got in total, or how many they auditioned. I thought before trying to email I’d post on this forum—how many flautists tend to apply to these schools, of which they only choose 7? Is it possible to get into a music school without practicing 5 hours a day and sacrificing my sanity to the flute gods?
For the record, I visited Eastman, Northwestern, NEC, and CMU, although I didn’t ask Eastman how many students they admitted I assume it would be about the same.
Flute is very competitive. There are a lot of flute players…a LOT. And each school only needs a few to fill their ensembles.
Are you planning to major in music performance? Or what?
Music performance majors do practice multiple hours a day.
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I’m trying to dual degree 
(yes I’ve read the dual degree dilemma) with performance. I have been immersed in environments (summer camps) where I ended up practicing 3-5 hours a day before, and have no problem doing so once I actually go to a school, but right now I can only afford about 1:30h per day… even that is stretching it sometimes, due to external circumstances.
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You will need to practice enough to have fabulous audition screening tapes, and a fabulous in person audition. With the repertoire for each college…and they are not all the same.
Double degree with what?
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Seven flute slots? That’s more than enough for two orchestras - and that’s just freshmen. Seven per year over four year is nine full orchestras. I suspect that there are somewhere around seven full-time positions opening up per year over the entire country.
This is very, very competitive. And at 1-1.5 hours per day, it will be very hard to compete with people who practice 2, 3 or even 4 times as much.
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most flute programs that OP is asking about are not just filling orchestras. They have slots in wind ensembles, chamber groups, and concert bands, and not all upperclassman will want to play in orchestra. I would not be surprised if these large conservatories take many first year flutists.
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Can you get feedback from your teacher as to your level? My D practiced about 90 minutes per day in high school and successfully auditioned into a performance major at a SLAC with a conservatory. (She actually just switched to a Music BA because she didn’t like practicing three hours per day for the BM.)
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The advice to speak with your teacher about your competitiveness is excellent. Are you a junior? If a senior, I assume you have already been preparing preliminary audition tapes and your teacher has been advising you? The programs you mention above are some of the most competitive, although all places are competitive for flute. As noted above, there are LOTs of fine flutists.
It sounds to me that there may be some disconnect in your thinking. You are willing to commit many hours to practice once admitted to a program, but don’t have that time available now? With a dual degree and the opportunity for a college social life, how will your time allocation and priorities change from the busy high school schedule you have now?
What is your ultimate goal? Comp Sci professional? Have you considered a CompSci school with ensembles that are open to all majors and an excellent flute teacher who also teaches non-majors (or a private teacher outside of the college)? That allows for continued studying and playing through college.
If you hope to be a professional musician, it may be counterproductive to have a time consuming secondary focus at this stage of your music education and development.
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Thank you for your advice. Yes, I’m a senior, and I’ve already started practicing for the pre-screenings with my teacher. I love your question about my ultimate goal because I genuinely have no clue. I hate the idea of working in the compsci field, even though it’s what I’m good at, and I would love above all else to become a professional musician. However, I understand that not everyone can make it as a professional musician and I want something to fall back on. There’s a high chance that, maybe one or two years into a hypothetical dual degree program, I will drop one degree or another to focus on the other full time.
also most of these programs I’m looking at are 5 years, which should lessen the load slightly. And I’ve taken a good amount of APs…
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