<p>I'm in the process of creating my short list of schools I plan on applying to next year for vocal performance. I will only be able to visit six schools on my list before I apply and audition anywhere, and I have 32 schools on my long list. That means I have to rely on the internet and connections (like what my teachers say, and what professionals I meet say) to narrow down my list. All the schools on my list seem like decent choices to me. What should I look out for to narrow down my list? I know about looking for the degree I want, looking at sample schedules, looking at teachers (but since I won't be able to meet most of them, I guess I just have to go off of recommendation) - I want to be far from home, but other than that I don't care about location, so all of this is really difficult to me. The more people I talk to, the more my list expands, not the other way around!</p>
<p>So basically, what should I do and what should I look for to help me narrow my list?</p>
<p>Also, I've been told by some people that Eastman should come off of the list of someone who is really serious about performance because their focus is education. Is that true?</p>
<p>Is money an issue?-- because you may need a financial safety. Do you want to be in an urban environment? Do you want a large university experience? Small private? Stand alone conservatory? Have you been evaluated by a professional other than your teacher? Have you done any competitions, such as NATS, to give you an indication as to where you stand in the vast soprano talent pool? Try and answer these questions, reduce your list and start contacting schools.By the way, you may only be able to go to six, but you may need to send out pre-screening tapes additional schools in order to accumulate six auditions to got to.</p>
<p>I think what musica said is good advice. But to answer your question about Eastman, their focus is not on education, although they have a great program and are one of the few out east conservatories to even offer it. Eastman is probably (by some accounts that I’ve heard from credible professionals) the best music school in America. Don’t count it out for performance; I’m actually really surprised to hear that anyone said that.</p>
<p>Keep reading and networking. I can tell you that my D started out with a list of about ten schools when she was your age and had them ranked. We went to a few during the summer before and after visiting them, she was better prepared as to what sort of environment she was REALLY looking for. And as they say in the Bible: “the first shall be the last” The list completely reversed itself. For example, at the start, she was interested in a stand alone conservatory and later decided she preferred the feel of a university. We then deleted the conservatories completely. I had REALLY thought that she would love Oberlin. But it seemed far too isolated for her and its relative proximity to Cleveland was not what she considered a “strong point”. So we deleted that part of the country off the list as well. It’s a process that is highly personal and you may just want to start asserting your own personality into the process! You may just need to start going with a few arbitrary gut reactions!
(FYI D sent out five auditions tapes and ended up doing five auditions. That little summer trip to the mid-west probably saved us a bit of money and time. )</p>
<p>The first thing you need to do is realize that there are perfectly fine schools out there that you might decide not to apply to. After D3’s audition season, she suddenly discovered that one school she had discounted looked good to her and another that she had avoided due to someone’s bad personal experience might have been perfectly ok. But there’s nothing you can do about that. </p>
<p>Is geography really not an issue at all? You can afford the cost of long-distance travel (don’t know where you’re located) and/or you won’t mind not being able to pop home for the weekend? Or perhaps there are schools that are “too close to home” that you could cross off your list?</p>
<p>Have you tracked your “gut instinct” while looking through a school’s website or facebook page (the “accepted students of class of x” pages are particularly helpful here)? While this is definitely NOT a 100% strategy, it can also give you important clues about the culture of the school without your having to visit.</p>
<p>Perhaps you can do a preliminary sort of your long list to reach/match/safety (someone is going to jump in any second and admonish me that “there’s no such thing as a safety for an audition program” and they’re right…but there are still some differences). Then you could narrow each category down a little bit more.</p>
Geographic considerations: Do you care about weather? Proximity to large city? Being out in the country? Accessibility (how easy is it to get there)? How many direct flights from home there are per day? Relatives in the area that might be available for emergencies?
Teacher: most important consideration.
Campus vibe/Extracurriculars/Student Life. If you love to tango and there is no tango club, will you be broken-hearted? Would you be willing to start one? Is housing guaranteed for freshmen? Where will you live after that?
Academics: Do you care about non-music classes? Do they have courses/majors/minors that you would like to take? Do your GPA and test scores match the accepted student profile?
Caliber of other students: Do you excel when others around you are better? Will it slow your development if you are always the “Big Fish”?
(This is really important): AUDITION REQUIREMENTS. If most of the schools want the same thing, and one school wants a whole set of something completely different, it may not be easily do-able. Would be a good idea to check now.</p>
<p>Once you start looking at the websites, it gets easier to narrow the focus. Also, you can search from past final acceptances threads and perhaps contact people who are at the different schools now to see their impressions.</p>
<p>Another consideration - top music programs are often stronger in one instrument (or voice) than another or have a reputation for a different teaching style/philosophy. Focused research specific to VP might help.</p>
<p>I would certainly not venture to say that Eastman is the best music school in America…maybe at one time it was more distinguished from the pack but certainly not now. It is probably among the top schools but best? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I wish such a thing existed but I haven’t seen it - if it does please let me know:</p>
<p>Stats for admission like how many applied to each instrument/program, how many were accepted, average music scholarship. The sort of thing that’s easy to find for academic institutions in the common data set.</p>
<p>CLRN8MOM I love your list. From my own S’ experience I’d also add one possible consideration: if you are not 1000% sure about majoring in music, what will happen if you decide it’s not for you a few months or years into the program? Will you have to change schools altogether? Simply switch majors?</p>
<p>The master on the “shortening the list” topic, and pretty much every other topic, remains BassDad, so LaLaLovely if you haven’t read his article “So you want to be a music major”, that will help you tremendously. Everything I mentioned came from that article.</p>
<p>Also, I’ve been told by some people that Eastman should come off of the list of someone who is really serious about performance because their focus is education. Is that true? </p>
<p>Um, no. Especially not for voice. They do have good music ed as well. The voice program is quite strong, they have many good teachers. Go visit if you can, PM me if you like.</p>
<p>My D did not visit schools that were very far until after she had passed pre-screen, ie, at the audition.</p>
<p>One for reach schools, one for comfortable schools, and one for safetys, and then try to reduce each of those lists, but leaving at least one on each list.</p>
<p>Of course a lot of people on this forum only audition for the top schools, so that may not be possible.</p>
<p>As far as shortening the list, we really had to be in “attack mode” due to D’s teacher was not able to be as helpful as we had hoped. We also did the following:</p>
<p>1) E-mailed a few teachers around the country and asked “Besides your school, where else would you recommend for undergraduate training for (clarinet, voice, etc)
2) E-mail grad school admissions offices and ask “Which schools are your admitted graduate students coming from” (the professors should know this also)
3) (I totally forgot to mention this before and it is also key) Ask profs: “What do your students do after they graduate?” Do they continue to pursue music at a high level? Do they go on to non-music activities? You will have to decide what sort of answer you want to hear.
4) You can try to ask around in other forums, for example we used the Clarinet BBoard quite a bit. There you will be more likely to find people who are currently in programs you are looking at.
5) We peeked at “Rate My Professor.com”. Would not necessarily recommend this. Typically it is only the truly disgruntled who post there, in my experience. However, there was one city where D would have truly loved to go to school (Boston) and there was one university there that seemed to be a great fit but we could find very little about the clarinet prof and the comments on Rate My Prof were plentiful and uniformly extremely negative. Crossed that one off the list.</p>
<p>Lastly, D’s list became a lot shorter junior year after we realized she could not survive on less than 7 hours of sleep so multiple AP’s were OUT.
If I think of anything else I’ll let you know. (Too bad I didn’t keep a notebook. All these somewhat painful memories are trickling back into my head a little at a time!)</p>
<p>Enough! This has always been a forum that supports everyone’s individual path to making music without criticizing any student’s or family’s personal choice of a school that’s a good match for their own needs. That’s true whether the endpoint is a famous conservatory, state flagship, lower tier music school, community college, or hidden gem. Whatever baggage each of us carries about types of schools has traditionally been left out of the conversation, and that politeness is one of the things that I appreciate about this forum.</p>
<p>As my son got closer to the application process, he looked at the details of the auditions and timing of admissions. He applied and was accepted to one school early action, and it is a school he would be happy with. Once he got that acceptance, he withdrew applications at a few other schools as he felt this school was a better choice for him. So, what was once a very long list ended up being a much shorter (and more doable) list.</p>
<p>I don’t think I saw it covered, but one thing that helped my son sort out his list with some unusual criteria early on was talking to students in each program AND studying the actual curriculum from admitted student handbooks even before he was admitted.
(Sample lessons and listening to the studio profs’ opus of work equally important but I think already mentioned.)</p>
<p>In that way, he was able to tease out some of the nuances of different programs, and to compare the ACTUAL DEGREE requirements. So for him, for example, it was telling that one program required at least six composition courses, whereas at another program, composition wasn’t actually a pre-req. One program required 4 units of music theory, another did not. Etc. (But his program is a little unique that way – VP likely is much more uniform.)</p>
<p>In talking to students in the programs (can ask a department head or prof to help put you in touch, or talk to music students you know from your city who know people from summer camps, etc.) the caveat is that each will usually love where they’re at. But you can sometimes still learn something about the emphasis from the conversation.</p>
<p>Agree 100% and also love that about this forum. My S didn’t audition to any “top tier” music schools and yet I got tons of advice and support and congrats here as I went through this process with him. </p>
<p>Even as he questioned majoring in music at all, I got a ton of support and help.</p>
<p>I like what KMCMOM13 said about talking to other students. You are inevitably hear how their teacher/school/experience is AMAAAAZING. What you should do is explain what sort of musician or student you are and do they see someone such as yourself thriving at that school and specifically why. You generally get a different answer.</p>
<p>I would also suggest using the “SuperMatch” feature on CC. This won’t tell you anything about the music schools in particular, but it will get you thinking about how you feel about those other things - size of school, city vs country, etc. Obviously, things like the music program, teachers, etc will ultimately be the most important - but if you’re going to be living somewhere for FOUR years, “incidentals” like weather (Minnesota winters or Texas Heat) and Greek life (or lack thereof) aren’t so incidental. If nothing else, it’s fun to try out - and may shave two or three schools off that list. </p>
<p>Good luck! </p>
<p>p.s. It’s amazing how the parents on CC, including myself, had to go through this process 20-30 years ago with no internet. You kids are so lucky! (not to mention how we all had to walk three miles to school each day in blinding snow storms!)</p>
The list completely reversed itself. For example, at the start, she was interested in a stand alone conservatory and later decided she preferred the feel of a university. We then deleted the conservatories completely. I had REALLY thought that she would love Oberlin. But it seemed far too isolated for her and its relative proximity to Cleveland was not what she considered a “strong point”. So we deleted that part of the country off the list as well. It’s a process that is highly personal and you may just want to start asserting your own personality into the process! You may just need to start going with a few arbitrary gut reactions! 