Jacobs School of Music

College Majors Music Major
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<p>Hey, guys. I was wondering if anybody on here could give me any useful information on the Jacobs School of Music. I was wondering about the difficulty of getting in. I realize the acceptance rate is roughly 25%, but can you give any detail to this? What's the average player who auditions like? What's the skill level of an accepted student who auditioned?</p>

<p>If you have any sheet music that has been used for auditions before, that would be very helpful to see and get an idea of where I need to be as far as performance level. I would definitely be a music education major, and the requirements on the IU website for a music ed. major is two contrasting movements (or an etude in place of one movement). That's fine and all, but I'm curious what specific pieces people choose so I can visually see how difficult it is. If you have a link, that'd be perfect. :) Sheet music would be the best help, but any tips or advice at all would be great.</p>

<p>PS: I play the alto sax and if you have any specific information on that as far as your experience or advice, please tell. Thanks!</p>

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<p>I work closely with someone who went to IU for music and also have known some other students and musicians who went there. Jacobs is larger then most other comparable music programs and they admit more students. My friends take is that IU’s philosophy is to admit more students then other schools and then allow a natural ‘weeding out’ process to happen, where students realize they aren’t making it and switch out of music (as my friend did,btw).
As a result there seems to be a wider range of student at a place like Indiana then another music program might be.</p>

<p>I also would be careful with the 25% admit rate, because that is the overall rate, and each program can be different. To give you an idea, juilliard has an official admit rate of something like 6.5% last i checked
but in that same year, they were admitting only 1 flautist, grad and undergrad, and they might have had 40 or 50 students auditioning for that (I don’t have a specific number)
IU may only take x students and the rate of admissions could be higher or lower then 25%.</p>

<p>Others can talk more intelligently about music ed, but from what I know of it, the performance aspect of Music Ed tends to be less rigorous then performance (on the other hand, I am led to believe that academic grades and such in terms of admissions weight more heavily in Music Ed,)
</p>

<p>One question for you, where are you in terms of auditioning? Are you planning to apply and audition this cycle (prob winter early next year)? The reason I ask is your request to see the music for the audition pieces, that implies to me they are pieces you have not played yet or are familiar with. If so, and you are planning to audition in this cycle, you may want to rethink that. General rule of thumb is someone going into an auditioned program should have the pieces worked on and pretty much ready the spring before their senior year. </p>

<p>Even though Music Ed may be a bit less demanding in terms of level on the audition,it still requires quite a high level. If you are just starting to explore this and have a couple of years, that is a different story. </p>

<p>As far as the music goes, there is at least one online website that has music available for free (I wish I could remember the name of the site! It uses a wiki format I recall), you may be able to find some of the audition pieces there. The pieces online are old versions that are public domain, but to see how difficult they are it should be fine.</p>

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<p>Well the IU site gives these audition requirements for saxophones who are music ed majors:</p>

<p>Bachelor of Music Education
Bachelor of Science in Music and an Outside Field
(screening recording due December 1)</p>

<p>Two contrasting movements (lyrical and technical) from standard works. An etude may be substituted for one of the movements.
Full range scales: chromatic scale, all major and minor (harmonic, melodic) scales, and triad arpeggios (major and minor) full range. For the screening recording, include only four of each scale type (your choice).</p>

<p>I am a junior in high school and have not been working on any music yet for this particular audition. But the “two contrasting movements from standard works” is a little vague to me as far as difficulty level. So if there were certain pieces that some students have used to meet these audition requirements (particularly students who were accepted), I’d love to look at the music and mentally note whether I think this audition would be too difficult for me. I would also keep in mind that being able to play the music that someone else auditioned with and was accepted doesn’t necessarily mean I will be accepted.</p>

<p>Thank you for the lead! I will try to find the site you’re talking about and make some decisions about whether or not to audition for sure. Much appreciated!</p>

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<p>Even though Jacobs is a huge school, we found their admissions department to be very responsive to to questions. So you might want to ask them directly. Also, just speculating from personal observation, it would seem that your chances would be better if you took an earlier audition because they have quasi-rolling admissions. My daughter took her Jacobs audition on the earliest date and was accepted very quickly. A good friend, the following year, whom I would have expected to have an equal chance for admission, auditioned on the last date and was rejected.</p>

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<p>Saxguy-</p>

<p>I would be very surprised, if what hold trues for violin and some other instruments I know, that the standard rep will probably be pretty challenging. I will be careful here, I don’t know music ed much at all, but I suspect they will use pretty much the same thing as performance degrees would. One suggestion I have is to take a look at other music schools, whether they offer music ed or not (though if they list the kind of pieces, great, for music ed) to get an idea of what constitutes the ‘standard’ rep. For example, take a look at places like Oberlin, U Mich, USC, BU, Ithaca, and see if any of them list any clues as to what it is. Likewise GH makes a good suggestion, maybe e-mail some schools and see if the admissions department will give you an idea of what pieces are considered ‘standard rep’, at the very least to see the level.</p>

<p>The other one is obvious, talk to your teacher, and if he/she doesn’t know, they might at least know someone to talk to, specifically someone knowledgeable about sax (if you have a private teacher, prob be a good source).</p>

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<p>Aha, found the one I was thinking of:</p>

<p>[IMSLP/Petrucci</a> Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music](<a href=“Error”>IMSLP: Free Sheet Music PDF Download)</p>

<p>This is a legal site, the music is public domain, and they seem to have sax pieces:)</p>

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<p>Thanks glassharmonica for the early audition advice. I’ve heard that before, and will definitely, if I audition, go for a very early date.</p>

<p>Thanks a bunch, musicprnt. I was just randomly googling some search words from what you said earlier to find that website you couldn’t remember, and I came across IMSLP thinking that might have been it. Haven’t looked into it yet, but will definitely find some stuff and check it out. Thanks for the recommendation of the site and to check out other school’s standard audition stuff.</p>

<p>Much appreciated, guys. :)</p>

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<p>Saxguy, my daughter is in 10th grade, planning on auditioning on perhaps both sax and oboe at conservatories/universities for performance. The Indiana website does give suggestions regarding the pre-screen CD–Creston, Glazunov, Heiden, Ibert, Maurice. One or both or your pieces could come from that list. I know my daughter plans on auditioning on something very difficult–maybe the Dahl concerto or the Fuzzy Bird sonata. Saxophone is very competitive, and I see the tendency to ask for very difficult literature. The future music ed majors I heard this summer from her sax institutes could all play those difficult pieces.</p>

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<p>Be careful with those “overall” acceptance rates. For undergrad voice IU has been somewhere around 10-15% for the past few years. Jazz might be very different.</p>

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<p>Woodwinds,</p>

<p>Thanks, I’ll check out some of those, particularly the two specific pieces you mentioned. And good luck to your daughter when the time comes.</p>

<p>Violoncello,</p>

<p>Thanks for the heads-up. I think I recall from somewhere that undergrad voice is a lot more competitive at IU than instrumental generally speaking, but by how much I have no idea.</p>

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<p>Saxguy-</p>

<p>One thing to keep in mind that admissions to an auditioned music program works differently then academics in the sense that the number of people admitted overall to the music school might remain steady (so an X percentage admissions rate holds), with music programs there are variables you don’t have in academics, least not commonly. Here are factors that have to be taken into consideration:</p>

<p>-If the instrument you are on has a need at the school. For example, solo instruments (piano, violin, flute , to a certain extent clarinet) tend to be more popular among music students, which means competition is pretty heavy (popular IMO because they are solo instruments
). Thus though a school may have 30 violin slots, for example, they may have many hundreds of kids sending in pre screening dvd’s, out of which they may choose let’s say 50 to audition (I am talking a top level music school). The school might says there is a 25% admission rate, but on violin that year it could be 5 %, depending on how many kids are sending in applications.On the other hand, if an instrument is less popular, could be there will be less kids auditioning and if the need is great, might make getting in there statistically more easy if you are any good. </p>

<p>-If you are talking an instrument like flute, they may only admit a couple of kids a year. More importantly, they may admit none if there is no opening in the department, if they are chock full of flutes
so your chances of getting in that year on flute is pretty much zero (it isn’t zero, because there is the chance, however so slight, that they see someone so fantastic that they just have to make room for one more)</p>

<p>-When you audition, in most schools a teacher has to agree to want to teach you
thus, if you are in a year where for example very few Saxaphones audition, and you are playing well and it looks like odds are they would admit a large percentage of the auditioning students that year based on slots
and you don’t get in. Why? Could be you met the audition requirements, but no teacher would agree to work with you (this doesn’t apply to IU, they admit a student on their instrument, then they seek out a teacher.)</p>

<p>Obviously, Music Ed could be very different then performance, but I think since an audition is required that it may not be all that much different. If you are really curious, send an e-mail to the admissions department at schools you are interested in, and ask them what the admissiions rate is like in the program you are interested in; with music ed it probably is an overall rate (I don’t know much about it, I don’t know if on Music Ed degrees if the instrument the person plays matters in terms of having X saxs, Y flutes, etc they will admit), but they usually are pretty good about answering questions like “this year, we plan on admitting 5 flutes” or “this year, we are planning to admit Z violins”, or at the very least, give historical figures. One other note, in performance the number of slots is not the physical openings they have, there is a fudge factor there. For a Juilliard, where something like 90% of those admitted end up accepting, it is almost the same number (if they have 30 violin slots, they might admit 34 or 35), for other schools it can be a lot more, depending on their historic rate of acceptance (thus a school with a 75% acceptance rate on Piano might admit more to try and get as many admitted as they have slots for).</p>

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<p>Musicprint,</p>

<p>So one thing to keep in mind is that before I get my audition results back, I will be left in the dark to some extent? That’s fine, but I’d like to narrow that down as much as possible before the audition.</p>

<p>I’ve heard others say this about flute (other instruments too, but particularly flute). Is that realistic, only admitting “a couple or so” a year? I mean, any music school I would think needs more than that per year to have a strong sound, right? A couple a year could mean 10-15 flutes in the whole program. That seems a little low to me. 10-15 flutes per year seems more realistic and I know that’s how it is for even many exclusive schools, but is it not exaggerating (and maybe unnecessarily intimidating those who want to audition) to say “a couple or so” a year? If that’s literally the norm among a few major conservatories or music programs in a university, then I’ll think nothing more of it. But it seems that’s too low to me.</p>

<p>So what might you think is the outlook on saxes? I’m not asking if they consistently have many to apply and how many they accept (because going off of what you’ve said, there probably isn’t anything consistent about it), but more like do you consider it to be a “popular” instrument at a school like IU? I’m sure it is for the jazz bands and such, but since the audition requirements are generally classical-related, I wasn’t sure.</p>

<p>I’ll definitely give them an email. Thanks so much to go out of your way to help me and although I doubt I’ll need to (because you obviously know more about this stuff than I do), I’d gladly help you out as well anytime. :)</p>

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<p>It is certainly not an exaggeration. In some cases it is an understatement. Schools like Juilliard, Rice and Curtis often will only take 1 flute (for undergrad anyway) in a given year. This is common among these three schools in particular.</p>

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<p>Agreed. There’s nothing unusual about that at all. Sometimes, there will even be auditions when no students of a particular instrument are actually needed, just in case someone particularly brilliant comes along.</p>

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<p>Sax-
It is quite realistic. The rough rule of thumb on instruments (excluding non orchestral instruments like Piano, Organ and so forth) is that they admit students based on needs for their orchestra(s). Take a look at a typical orchestra, and how many flutes do they have? How many Clarinets? How many bassons, etc, etc
in a typical orchestra there are very few of most of those instruments, one or two trombones, one tuba, etc, etc
now most school music programs have multiple ensembles, so if they have let’s say 4 orchestras, that might be 8 or 10 flutes, total
and that could cover graduate and undergraduate. If the school has wind ensembles, on the other hand, the number I would guess could be potentially higher, since in a wind ensemble flutes and clarinets are part of the replacement for the violins and such in an orchestra. If you look at the school’s website, it will give you an idea of numbers based on how many performing groups they have; my impression of IU is it had a fairly large number of performing groups and that matches, since IU tends to admit more then other comparable programs; Juilliard, on the other hand, has relatively few groups so they tend to admit smaller numbers(I know for a fact that Juilliard last year admitted 1 flute, and that was between grad and undergrad
).A typical orchestra, on the other hand, might have 60 strings or more out of 100
(on the other hand, from what I know, the number of people auditioning on strings tends to be a huge number comparitively, so the admit rate is still rough)</p>

<p>Put it this way, there are all kinds of theories about music school admits, about how if you do X summer programs it will increase your chances of getting in, if you win Z competition you will be a shoe in, if you bring a bottle of 15 year old scotch to a private lesson with D it will get you a favorable chance, etc
(last one said in gest, if you are serious about getting in, aged cognac alone will do <em>lol</em>). Seriously, auditions in performance are about preparing the audition pieces at the highest level possible, and after that while there are things you can do, like hopefully get a teacher you want to work with to notice you and hopefully put down they want to teach you, things like making sure your audition rep is at audition level 6 months before, that may improve chances in some way, there is just no way to quantify it, for the reasons people have mentioned.</p>

<p>Yes, it is useful to know if you are a flautist that Juilliard that year is admitting only 1 student, to make sure that you have alternates at the ready, but that is good practice anyway. It is better to apply to a number of schools you feel you have a chance at making (at differing levels) and working it from that angle, rather then looking for programs with high admit rates (reputedly) and basing a strategy on that IMO. It also would be smart to ask the schools you are thinking of admitting about whether, for example, if you are trying to go in for Music Ed, if the instrument you play matters in terms of the admit decision (for example, if you send IU an e-mail and say you plan on applying in Music Ed and your primary instrument is the sax and wonder if that has any impact on admissions, and they reply “EEK, not another sax Music Ed major”, you will know (<em>lol</em>), or if they say “music ed is by how well you play and not what you play”, then you have your answer. </p>

<p>I also again will add that if you are talking music ed versus performance the numbers are probably much, much higher I would guess for an individual instrument (I could be wrong on that), since the emphasis is on education
but that one you would need to find someone more knowledgeable then I about admissions.</p>

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<p>the admission process at Jacobs is the same no matter if you are music education or performance. You are evaluated at the same level, as with your upper division examination. The percentage of acceptance rate fluctuates GREATLY with the department here, we had well over 100 tapes submitted during pre screening and we have 4 undergraduates and 1 graduate student in my studio. If you are BME at IU, there is still a performance emphasis with your degree, but it’s just another wonderful opportunity to learn here. I love IU, you should absolutely audition here!</p>

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<p>While son did not apply at IU, I’ll agree with the above poster. Son applied as music ed at all schools he auditioned and for those that permitted performance/music ed. At all the schools, he had to be admitted by the studio teacher(s) as well as by the music ed dept. So, the music ed acceptances were limited by space available for the instrument and how strong your audition for your instrument is in comparison to those auditioning on your instrument that year.</p>

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<p>Does anyone know how good your grades have to be to be admitted for Performance majors? Do they have a certain cutoff like if your grades are below 3.0 gpa then you will not be admitted despite how well you play?</p>

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<p>It is two separate applications, really. You need to be admitted to IU itself, and then you need to audition for Jacobs. My daughter applied and was accepted in August. Then she auditioned in January and was accepted a few weeks later. Some of her friends who auditioned later did not hear back from Jacobs until April 1.</p>

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<p>To the post above mine, it’s worth noting that IU/Jacobs have changed their application procedure for this year. It is no longer 2 separate applications: Jacobs applicants complete a single online application. This one application is used to determine whether the student is admitted to IU academically. If the applicant is admitted to IU, then the same applicaion is reviewed by Jacobs admissions to set up an audition date.</p>

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