My S got into very respected program a few days ago.
The thing is that we are not sure how to approach with professor selection.
We did already two trial lessons prior to audition, and first professor didn’t seem to like him (could be false, but it’s my S’s impression, so he’s reluctant to approach the professor).
Then in second trial lesson with another professor, it went well, but after admission, the professor told my S that studio is full.
Apparently someone in that university liked him, but we can’t figure out who, and who’s going to be best fit.
What should we do?
Just saw this. Posted something similar just now. Don’t mean to hijack, but trying to consolidate - if that doesn’t work and these are different questions - let me know and I can pull this. Below was my post.
For UG students, how do you select a professor or studio? Is that done as a freshman or later - or can it/should it be done before you even select a school? I am sure it varies from school to school, but I am curious. I am specifically interested on how this works for composition students, which may be different than for performance majors.
Do you enter the school knowing your advisor/prof/studio (what is the correct term?) Should a student contact the professors ahead of time to make sure the professor you identified as the one with whom you want to work is available and equally interested? If so, any thoughts on how to reach out and what to actually say? What should you know about the prof before doing it (I am assuming the student has met the professor in person, as in our case)?
Any thoughts on this topic are welcome. Thanks!
The professor he said “didn’t like him” may have a very formal style, or be detached because he was not yet an admitted student. Their interaction might be quite different now that he has been accepted. Similarly, the one without studio space may have a different situation now, and it would do no harm to gently ask whether this studio is still closed to him.
A quick e-mail to each faculty member inquiring about studio availability and opportunities for sample lessons/discussion could be useful to see who bites. Then, follow up with a campus visit (if possible) to have the lessons, or minimally, have 15 minutes to talk with the faculty of interest. It could be that he doesn’t click with ANY of the faculty with available studio space, and that could make for a miserable 4 years!
Trust your gut. That said, sample lessons now could be helpful. D3 - who is very sensitive to relationship vibes - made her choices for both undergrad and grad based on how well she connected with the prof. That worked for my special snowflake but may not be the most appropriate for everyone. 
Every school works differently in regards to this, and obviously it is important, the teacher/student interaction is probably the single biggest factor in a music student’s life.
With many schools, when you audition you are asked to name your first, second and third choices (more on that in a bit), and if you pass the audition admissions will handle the studio assignment based on your choices, so if your #1 was not available, they would check with number2, and so forth (keep in mind you get accepted if you pass the audition criteria and at least 1 teacher says they would be willing to work with you, though that may be none of the teachers the kid put on his list, at least this is what I have seen; that said, there could be schools where if none of your chosen studios have space/are available, they will reject you…depends on the school).
Some schools you apply to the studio (Colburn for example, and I believe Rice) and if the teacher accepts you, you are in, if not you get rejected.
Indiana from what I know you audition, get in, then try and find a teacher after you are admitted, and other schools are reputedly like this.
It isn’t an easy process, because there are no real objective criteria, that ‘great teacher’ may have his/her reputation based on being a great performer, doesn’t mean they can teach, or teach a certain kid, well.
In terms of the situation mentioned, where the kid needs to find a teacher after admissions (a lot of kids kind of know who they are targeting going into a school, it is one of the prime factors in selecting a school), common ways are to do research, the Net is not necessarily a great resource for this, the kids current teacher might be a source of information for this.
If you then have a target list of teachers, I highly recommend then having sample lessons with the teacher, even if it is only skype. Kids do take the ‘pig in a poke’ approach to teachers and are successful with it, but I think this is really important to try and get a feel for the teacher, based on what I saw with my son and his experiences.
With the primary music teacher (to answer one of the questions in this thread), this is not an advisor, this is the person teaching the instrument/voice to the student, it is why it is so critical. Students can and do change teachers, but you have a teacher from the moment you get into the school until you graduate, they are responsible for a lot of the training a music student gets, hence the criticality of it.
Getting back to the OP’s question, with the situation your kid is in, first step should be to talk to the music department about potential teachers, who of the people on the audition panel said they would teach them, so you know the choices.The first question I would have is if the teacher they did the sample lesson with indicated they wanted your kid in the studio, what you thought was a bad lesson might not have been, as others said, if in the audtion he ticked off your kids name, that says a lot (obviously, if the kid didn’t feel good about the teacher, then it wouldn’t make sense to take him). Then ask about if other teachers indicated they would be willing to teach your kid, and try to arrange sample lessons with them if at all possible. Sometimes the music department or admissions will see if teachers not on the audition panel might be willing to teach the kid and they would be a potential pool, too.
A lot of times on these threads the standard response is ‘contact the school’, and in this case that is really, really good advice, I wouldn’t tell them about the sample lesson that didn’t go well, obviously, I would simply ask them if that teacher indicated he would teach your kid, and then ask them about other teachers your S could consider, do sample lessons with, etc. You don’t have to see every teacher they recommend, if it is a long list, you can and should filter out teachers you have reason not to work with and then concentrate on the smaller list.
I have no disagreements with the above. It is the best case scenario; and much helpful advice is given.
I only write separately about voice since our experience was different and still it worked out. I don’t “know” but I do think for instrumentalists the teacher relationship has been going longer (in most cases) and the student’s needs are more defined/understood by college entry. For voice, some students may have only been singing seriously for two years. My D and I have been asked how do you know a good teacher? Well of course trial lessons will help and that ole “gut instinct”. However if I’m being perfectly honest my D and I had not a clue what she “needed” when she entered UG - besides maybe some personality traits for the teacher. For grad school, she finally understood what her issues were and what kind of teacher she needed. Maybe we were behind the curve. My D did go to a private music school for lessons and took part in a Sat program for performing MT and art songs. But “singing” was still low key in high school (compared to college). That doesn’t mean she was extraordinarily busy doing shows at school! She just wasn’t practicing voice 3 hours a day!
She did win a competition at her music school senior year and got to perform and it included pianists, violinists, wind instruments etc. So the pianists gets up and plays for 15 minutes like a possessed demon with the local orchestra (they applauded her in the end) and she’s like 14 and it’s amazing. Then my D gets up and sings a couple minutes of an art song. Then a darn violinist gets up for 20 minutes and knocks everyone socks off! The voice dept was pissed about where she was presented in the program bc they felt it didn’t respected how voice develops. She’s has a beautiful voice…but when she was 12 she still spent her weekends eating pop tarts and watching spongebob not practicing voice! She had only been singing “seriously” for 2 years. I just point this out as voice is a different journey that makes understanding your strengths and weaknesses a bit more difficult prior to college. I also think it makes it a tad less high stakes…bc most voice students really grow (particularly boys) during UG…I don’t want to say with any teacher…but with many teachers. That’s when you really start figuring our where you are at. This is opinion so I could be wrong but it is what I experienced…so I’m sharing.
So if you going into voice and you and/or your kid is on your game about teachers, congratulations! If not, I would just do your best to check out teachers. My D did go to IU where many voice majors enter blind on their teacher (my D was lucky and had an invitation to a studio) but it worked out fine for her firends. There’s a big faculty and in most cases particularly for UG moving around didn’t seem like a big deal…and again maybe for voice it’s more understood. We didn’t understand the whole sample lesson thing after acceptance so we just asked around about the teachers reputation (mainly personality traits - not wanting a hard nose) and thought it sounded good so she accepted. My D met her for the first time at her studio class Freshman year (although they had emailed some).
I’m not advocating how we did it. I just want people to know if you can’t cross every T and dot every I…particularly for voice…you can still be successful.
^this is what makes CC great, you get different perspectives, and voice is very different than instrumental music, voice develops later, the amount of work you can do at a young age is limited, so it has much different dynamics, a voice parent told me that voice is a lot more grad school centric then UG; on the other hand, with violin they are getting close to pre natal training (my S saw a family the other day with a really young kid, my son swore the kid could barely walk, with the tiniest violin he had ever seen…:). One of the things with this whole process is there are really no absolutes, no ‘this is the only way’ with a lot of the things, and every student is different. There are some unkind truths, that someone who picks up the violin at 16 and wants to be a concert soloist faces basically an impossible chance of doing that, whereas with a voice student 16 seems to be when kids really start being able to seriosly train in voice, so they could go on to a career as a concert artist or opera singer starting at that age.
@macdeutsche :
You may want to mention the instrument/area without mentioning the school, people on here may contact you privately to ask about the school who are in that world and may know the school and faculty. That kind of thing shouldn’t be discussed publicly, but you may find people on here who know the school and teachers and can give insight.
One thing D did was to listen to the professors and their students perform (sound cloud, youtube, senior recitals, anything she could find) to see if that is how she wanted to sound. While it was for voice, I think this would be applicable to instrumentalists as well.
@bridgenail Ha ha- pop tarts and Spongebob. Sounds like our Sat mornings! Missing those days…
@songbirdmama:
That is a great suggestion, yep, finding students and their playing on videos can be a good thing to do (just make sure you don’t do what one less than bright person did,look at videos of the kid from high school and saying “that teacher sucks” when the kid studied with the teacher in college…you often can tell a lot about their teacher, what they emphasize, and also to a certain extent how good they are, that way.
I appreciate all the responses. I read this very carefully with my S. Still trying to figure out what to do.
Instrument wise, it’s piano. And yes, there is a sheet to select three choices.
We actually followed songbirdmama’s advice and sent a short email to several professors for availability and quickly got response.
To recap: he did two trial lessons with professor #1 and #2 before audition.
For some reasons, my son was not entirely comfortable with professor #1. This professor’s CV and position in the school is enormous (can find youtube video of his playing without any problem and he plays fantastic piano).
Reputation wise, I think it’s foolish not to choose him and repertoire is similar, but I think something is not entirely clicking with my S. (I don’t know how to use gut feeling here)
Professor #2 said no space in studio, before and after the admission, so it’s no go.
Then he was into professor #3 but thanks to quick email, we figured no space is available.
Then quick email to professor #1 says welcome to my studio.
Finally, another quick email to professor #4 results very willingness to teach my S. We haven’t met this professor yet, so we are trying to arrange a meeting.
Now we are worried that if we choose the professor #4, how professor #1 would feel. (or vice versa)
I am sure this is one of the school where politics are very complicated.
It does sound complicated, and obvious that your S and Prof 1 seem not to connect from their divergent opinions of sample lessons (which resulted in Prof 1 wanting him in the studio but your S not feeling quite right). That intuition is very important, and insofar as he has had two sample lessons, it is probably not just jitters or an off day. Is this the only school your S is considering?
No, this is one of five schools he got into.
All the rest four schools have two faculties each and he did trial lessons already in all the four, and so in terms of teacher selection in those schools, it’s are all set if he choose to go to the school.
But this is the only top school he got into. So we are approaching this very carefully.
Top school is a somewhat arbitrary term- if the fit isn’t right it may not be tops for him. My Ds voice teacher during high school was astounded that she did not leap at an offer from a top conservatory (which came with a nice merit award and personal phone call from the Dean). Despite people thinking she was crazy, she just couldn’t find a studio that she could see herself in for 4 years. That said, while studios probably drive the decision, one does need to weigh connections and opportunities that the elite schools can offer. It’s such a difficult decision. I wish you luck !!
A suggestion for voice students-both undergrads & grads-visiting colleges: Go while classes are in session and sit in on the teacher’s studio class as opposed to observing lessons (which many teachers won’t allow anyway). That really gives you a great overview of how the students sound, how the teacher makes correction and how the students have learned to apply those corrections.
Changing studios later on, while possible, isn’t ideal, so if you can get it right to begin with it’s so much better!
@Mezzo’sMama I second that. Attending classes is a great idea. It is nice to see how they are run and how the students interact with the faculty and each other.
The kind of choice your S has is quite common, and it can be hard. The ‘top school’ thing enters into the picture generally because of the average level of student in the program, usually the schools with the top reputations attract strong students, pure and simple, so if let’s say the kid gets into a top program they will be around much stronger students likely then they would be at the one that is regarded less well. This can be important, some students want to be around higher level students, for example as a pianist he would do chamber, at the ‘lesser’ program he may face ensembles where the playing level is significantly lower than the ‘top program’.
As far as the situation within the top school, that is hard, but a big thing about the teacher/student relationship is that it is two ways, a great teacher for one student might be a dud with another, if your son feels something doesn’t work with the guy that may be a sign of future trouble. Did he feel the person couldn’t explain things well? Did he go to fast? did he feel attacked in the lesson? It can be useful to try and drill down on why he feels the way he did, though in some cases it may not be easy to figure it out.
Could there be bad blood if he chose teacher #4? Possibly. First of all, your S will need to do a sample lesson or some other way to evaluate teacher #4 before even going there. If he feels teacher #4 is the better option, if he really feels in comparison #1 would be a problem for him, then if he otherwise wants to go to that program it may make sense to take #4, while this is a small world and it can be uncomfortable dealing with the politics if you chose #4 over #1, if your S strongly feels it wouldn’t work with #1 it doesn’t make sense to choose a teacher he felt uncomfortable with over one he does feel comfortable with. I would be careful with the why, sometimes kids are put off by a teacher who is gruff or not personable, problem is the ‘nice’ teacher may not teach very well (at a program my son was in, there was a teacher who was known for being very mother hen, brought cookies to lessons,
etc, and to be honest her students were shockingly bad.
If #4 doesn’t work out, then you may be faced with the choice of a possibly flawed teacher (#1), or the trade offs of the other programs. That choice is similar in some ways to what my son faces, not with teachers, but with the whole experience (This is grad school).
School #1, highly regarded teacher, who surprised my son for being eager to work with him, known to be a tough teacher. The program itself is high level, has a great orchestra, probably chamber, in a city area. Downside is it is a relatively small program, which may have its own issues, prob lack of access to advanced theory courses.
School #2: Another high level program, teacher is highly regarded, not sure about fit. High levels students, and the environment has other benefits, including a strong theory department and ability to take other classes.City environment as well.
School #3: Big school, school overall does not have the level he would face at the other programs. Absolutely loves the teacher, if said teacher was at one of the other programs, would be a slam dunk. School is in a college town. Big concern is the level of the students there, would having a great teacher be made less by the general level of student or the environment? The other factor here would be not that great a theory department, limited access to it.
3 has a money gap as well, but assuming that is resolved this is his situation, so what your S faces is not uncommon.
I am not a big fan of name or reputation as a guide to teachers or programs, since often those names may be based on things that have nothing to do with teaching. I would be very careful about throwing away teacher #1 without further thought, if let’s say 4 doesn’t work out, going to a top level program may be worth taking a chance on #1 (I didn’t say this was an easy process, it isn’t). There is going to be a lot of back and forth with this, someone in another thread mentioned the daily change of mind I said wait until it gets to being seemingly ever hour or minute:)
musicprnt, Appreciate the comments a lot. Will think about this carefully.
After searching for days on CC, I finally found this forum. I’ve read all of the comments here from Mezzo’sMamma and others, and I want to add that my D3 is in the same boat as @macdeutsche. After traveling so many places for auditions, she is fortunate to have great choices. Many of the choices are the type described so well in this forum, but being through this process a 3rd time but with non music majors, VP is very different. It seems hard to research the feel for a campus in terms of teacher experiences. A “great” school – or top school as referred to by @macdeutsche and explained so well by @songbirdmama - seems to mean very little. I want to know more about teachers and what their personalities are like since many people agree this is important in deciding on a school. This is tough, because basing a decision on a teacher would mean that if that teacher decides to leave during the time my kid is there, we would have invested a lot of money for nothing. I want my D3 to experience a school known for excellent academics and for music. I would appreciate any advice.
Does your D or D’s teacher know any students at any of the schools? We did know of 2 students at my D’s UG and we reached out to them to ask questions. We were most concerned about personality at that time. The reports were positive so that was that.
For a grad school my D did contact admissions and ask if there were any music students she could contact to ask questions. She was put in touch with a graduate student to whom she could ask questions. She had questions about teachers, styles and housing. At another school a teacher put her in contact with some current/past students so she could ask questions. She knew my D was looking at another teacher so she offered up some student names. So asking admission for names would not be odd.
Finally I had a friend with a son who accepted at my D’s UG for grad. He had no idea about teachers (and didn’t seemed concerned). I suggested she have him contact the voice dept head with his situation/needs. He did and a few suggestions were given to him. The head of the dept followed up to be sure he could find a good match. He did some sample lessons the first week of school, clicked with one and went on to do very well.
My D’s UG was a large voice dept and her teacher was gone for one semester (back surgery). She made suggestions for a teacher and it was a good experience for my D. For grad school there were 2 teachers and a potential third so my D was comfortable. So you may want to ask about a couple teachers. Hope this helps in some way.