My S is currently an 8th grader, but he is starting to seriously consider a music degree and is investigating university and conservatory programs and gathering his thoughts.
We are seeing that they will only accept “x” number of instruments each year into each program - but that number changes each year.
At what point do the students know how many spots are open for each instrument? At pre-screening application time? Or is there a way to learn this information for each year - even as a non-applicant?
S is a trumpet player, so we know it’s going to be competitive - we’d just like to start gaining familiarity with the process & the odds.
Thank you!! 
@fivethirtyfive welcome! It may seem a little early to be thinking about this in 8th grade, but to tell the truth I began learning about this process when S was in 9th grade and was already sure he wanted to study music and having several years to read this forum and observe a few admissions cycles was really helpful for us and allowed the advice to sink in.
It may be difficult or even impossible to find out those numbers for some schools. In other cases a professor might tell you straight out in a sample lesson. One prof told S how many spots there were, another said he was trying to downsize the studio due to unexpectedly high yield in a previous year so there would be very few spots. You might be able to get the music school to tell you how many they take in an average year. In large part it will depend on 1) the number of teachers on that instrument at a given school and 2) the number of students graduating that year.
On my son’s instrument, there is usually only one professor at a school (or at most one for jazz, one for classical). Most full time professors on that instrument seem to have a studio of 16-20 students including grad students, and most schools seemed to be aiming for a class of 4 incoming freshman (one quartet’s worth) unless the number of graduating students was unusually high or low. There is a finite number of students each faculty member can handle. Adjunct faculty (professional performers, for example) may have fewer students in order to balance the teaching load with their other responsibilities.
We found that some studios had their own web sites or Facebook pages. These will often include a photo of the whole studio or even individual student names and bios, which sometimes allow you to see how many are in the studio, which students are seniors, that sort of thing. You won’t find them for every studio, but when you do they can be very informative. Some professors will have on their Web sites a page for those interested studying with that professor and sometimes those will say how many are in the studio and how many new students they typically take per year.
Good luck with your research!
As you note, it changes from year to year, it depends entirely on how many slots are open in the studios for that instrument that year, and that can change, students graduate but they could come back as a grad student or artist diploma so an expected slot may not be open, so even at the beginning of the year they anticipate X openings, there may not be that many. Some schools will audition even though they don’t have open slots.
It can be difficult to get this information, some schools admissions department will tell you, others won’t. The other thing is that it also depends on what teacher the kid is interested in, they may have 7 slots in the department with 2 teachers but teacher A may have 1 slot and B, 6…in the end not sure how useful those numbers are, any audition at a decently competitive school is going to be tough, and probably best best is to focus on teachers/programs they want to study at and audition.
I don’t know of any school that “announces” this information. Sometimes it’s possible to calculate it if there’s only 1 or 2 teachers of a given instrument. When my son had sample lessons before applying, teachers were generally willing to discuss the maximum number of students they want in their studio and how many seniors they currently had.
Keep in mind that that many schools work with “yield” percentages and will accept more candidates than available slots, knowing that not all accepted students will choose to attend. Even schools considered to be in the top 10 music schools will have lower yields than you may think, because they’re competing for the same pool of students. At two of the schools my son applied to, there was only one studio for his instrument and the teacher told him that there would be 2 spots available. An admissions officer at one of the schools and a faculty member at the other both told us that their yield was about 30% and they typically accept 5-6 candidates (makes sense since they consider each other peer schools competing for the same students.)
Some schools won’t over-accept to cover their yield but will rely on wait lists instead, or a combination. Whatever their method, the point is that with the exception of maybe Juilliard and Curtis, there are generally more acceptances than spots at any given school.
When my son was deciding where to apply, and stressing about the fact that all of his choices would only have 1 or 2 spots, his teacher calmly told him not to worry… he said not to think in terms of 10 applicants applying for the 2 spots at school A, and another 10 applicants at school B, and so on. But that it was much more likely to be the same 10 applicants all applying to the same 5 schools and it was going to be a matter of whether my son gets his #1 choice or #2, or #3… and that as long as he’s willing to go to one of the 5 schools, he would have a place that fall.
@ScreenName48105 :
well put, and yes, with top level programs it often is the same kids applying all over. The key thing you said is that even with X slots being open, they will admit more than that, at a place like Juilliard the yield is roughly 90 some odd percent from what I heard from their admissions people, at another school it might be 70%, it all depends, and they use that in determining who gets in (some will waitlist the ‘extra’, others will admit the top ones and waitlist the lower kids, it varies).
Keep in mind that the ultimate goals is a teacher and program that the student thinks will drive them forward, what would the point be of applying to ‘safety’ schools that likely would be an easy admit and yet wouldn’t work for the student? Music is very different than studying other things, the teacher and the environment have a lot more to say about a student’s chance of making it as a musician then a kid studying computer science or engineering and the like, music study is more like an apprenticeship or master/acolyte kind of thing.
Thank you all so much - this is very helpful information!
@fivethirtyfive, welcome to the site! Is your son leaning towards classical or jazz? Or is it too soon to tell?
@ScreenName48105 touched briefly on something that shouldn’t be glossed over. That is the use of waitlists. If a student is put on a waitlist they can not really know the significance without knowing, as pointed out above, what the schools’ overall admission strategy is.
For example, School A needs to fill 4 trumpet spots and accepts 4 trumpets. The first kid on the waitlist is essentially the first alternate, or 5th in line, and so on down the line. School B on the other hand has to fill 4 spots, but they know from past years experience that their typical yield is 66% so they accept 6 expecting to get the 4 they want. The top kid on the waitlist at School B is actually 7th in line, not 5th, and stands a lesser chance of getting accepted than the kid at School A.
To further complicate things, my scenario above may or may not hold water unless you know how the school handles their waitlist. Some schools have a rank order on their list while others, if a spot opens up, view their list as essentially a second “pool” to choose from and will reevaluate all the kids in the waitlist if a need arises.
Good points, @DesignDad - plus some schools are need-aware when it comes to waitlists, so if a spot opens up, they might take someone who needs less financial aid off the waitlist vs. someone who had more significant need but was ranked higher.
@DesignDad, that’s an interesting point. I don’t recollect much conversation here about kids getting off waitlists but it sure seems more probable than non-music spots. We kept running into the same 10 jazz guitarists all through auditions. It could be useful to understand how a school handles waitlists, just like I found it very useful to see the ‘history’ with merit awards at particular schools. It definitely can be like comparing apples to oranges but I think there’s patterns.
@drummergirl - Right now, he leans classical. He’s the youngest trumpet of the city’s youth orchestra here and loves the music (even though half of it is counting rests, I think! haha!).
He’s also part of an informal jazz band and it’s “okay,” he says (I think the informality is what he doesn’t like, though, as opposed to the music…).
He is auditioning for the city’s youth jazz ensemble this fall and we will see if that sparks an interest in the music for him.
@classicalsaxmom I forgot about that variable but your absolutely correct. We’d like to think its always about talent, but …