<p>It is funny about people’s ideas of valuable education, Linguistics is not exactly a field that is going to generate 6 figure salaries easily in of itself…and math majors, unless in applied fields, are not necessarily going to do any better than someone getting a music degree then deciding to not do music…</p>
<p>Anyway, the answer to your question is it all depends, and quite honestly, no one on here can answer that. It depends on how high a level you were working at (simply having a strong teacher doesn’t mean the student was at a level to get into a decent program) and also in the time you ‘gave up’, what you have been doing.</p>
<p>-How much time have you been practicing each day (and how much were you practicing before you dropped it?). You will need to do a pre screen for most schools that is due by December 1st, which is only a couple of months away. If you haven’t been seriously practicing all along, keeping your technical skills sharp, you likely will be rusty,my son and his friends complain if they don’t practice for a day or two. The fact that you are in first chair says something about your playing, but to be honest, the thing that placed you there and what they are looking for on a music school audition are two different things, I know some concertmasters of top level youth symphonies who likely would not get into a competitive music progam, so it probably doesn’t mean much</p>
<p>-Take a look at the kind of music schools you were thinking of auditioning for, and see the audition repertoire. Have you mastered the pieces they ask for? Can you play the concertos, Sonatas, solo pieces at a high level, or have you? If you are lacking in repertoire, it is unlikely that by the time audition season rolls around in January, Feb or March, that you will have mastered it, especially given you are probably rusty. The rep is on their website, I am not familiar with viola, but I would assume it probably is something like the Hindemith concerto, A sonata, and probably one of the Bach solo suite for cello that violists often play (again, that is a guess, I haven’t looked). </p>
<p>I will tell you that despite all the myths and such about the viola, it is extremely competitive and getting more so as students take it seriously, rather than see it as an alternative to the violin that is ‘easier’, it is a tall order, given that you haven’t been seeing your teacher for a while, I suspect no matter how good you were, you probably have lost some of your sharpness if not a lot of it.</p>
<p>My real answer to you is to contact your old teacher, ask for a 2 hour appointment, then play for him and get an assessment of where you are, if he is knowledgeable about things, is connected, etc, he would be the one to ask.</p>
<p>One thing I would tell you, I personally would not recommend going to a program that is less competitive, that either doesn’t audition or tends to take a lot of kids, it seems like the ideal thing, get into a music school, then work your way back,. but in my experience (and that is all that is,my experience and opinion), you are likely to find it won’t work, that in a sense it gives a false sense of what is possible. </p>
<p>Okay, so what are some other options, assuming your teacher tells you it isn’t likely you would get accepted at a good school (hey, if he thinks you can bring it together, give it a shot, you never know)…</p>
<p>1)If your teacher says you are still good, but need work, you could take a gap year, and work on getting your technique and repertoire to where they need to be. A lot of music students do this, my S was prepared to do it if he didn’t get into the programs he wanted to, and there is nothing wrong with that. if your teacher thought you were good enough, that year can make an immense difference, you could focus on practicing, maybe take music courses or something as well, without the distractions of classes and so forth. </p>
<p>2)The other thing to keep in mind is you don’t have to give up music, if you decide not to major in it. If you are an academically advanced student, you likely could get into a top level college, and many of them, like the ivies, have orchestra programs, and for more then a few of them I am certain that being an instrumentalist can help with the admissions process, and you would have the ability to take lessons, ieither privately or through the school, and do music…and it could be that after 4 years of this, you might be good enough to go on for a masters, it has happened (obviously, it would be tough sledding, since you would be competing for grad school admission against kids who had gone for 4 years to a music school, with all that entails). But whether or not you go on to grad school for an MM, you would have music in your life, and you could continue to. There are orchestras all over who are full of professionals, Doctors, lawyers, you name it, who play music because they love it.</p>
<p>I really wish you luck, I am not out to dash anyone’s dreams, but I also want to be realistic about what is out there and what the reality is. A lot of people mean well, will tell you anything is possible, but you also need to be aware of the reality of things and make decisions based on that:).</p>