Looking for conservatories with a strong focus on piano performance

Hi everyone, first post here.

First I would like to say that I am very clueless about living in the United States and colleges in general (please help me). I live in a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I graduated high school in 2016 and now study under my local music professor albeit not being enrolled in the university.

I need schools that would allow me to submit a recording in lieu of a live audition because I can’t spend thousands of dollars traveling with my screwed sleep schedule.

My high school grades are fairly… mediocre. I did somehow get into AP calculus in my senior year but many of my classes are littered with bad grades. I took the 2015 SAT and got a 1790 score, but I am not sure if colleges still accept the old SAT.

Schools I am considering are San Francisco conservatory and Thornton at the moment. My level is probably not at those of Curtis students but I think its enough to play all standard repertoire (I played Gaspard de la nuit, Prokofiev Sonata #8, and Beethoven sonata #32 [of course not at a professional level] at my local university’s fine arts theater)
I would really prefer schools on the west coast. Thanks to all

Gaspard de la nuit, Prokofiev Sonata #8, and Beethoven sonata #32 are pretty high level pieces. USC, SF Conservatory and Colburn are great schools for piano! However they won’t accept you just by your recordings. You have to spend money to fly there to have live auditions after passing their pre-screenings. How about CSUN (California State University, Northridge)? CSUN is not a top notch school but keyboard faculties are wonderful! Mr. John Perry and Ms. Pei-Shan Lee are very well known piano teachers! They also allow online video and DVD auditions!

Sf has regional auditions in Asia, I don’t know if that would help the OP, but they have Seoul,Taipei and several places in China, Colburn is LA only, USC allows you to use a recorded audition (basically you can use the pre screen for the audition, since they require the exact same repertoire, they do have requirements of how the audition video is shot).

Your best bet is to look at the programs website with your current teacher and figure out which of the schools you might want to try for that allows video submissions, if you can’t get to regional auditions or to the school itself.

In all honesty, the thing with pianists is that there are so many more of us than there are people who play other instruments that you really won’t find a “bad” piano department at any major music school; in fact, many B-level conservatories have piano departments full of students who play at an extremely high level with fantastic teachers. To that end, if you’re looking at West Coast schools, I’d recommend adding University of Washington to your list. I was perusing their piano department’s website recently for my own purposes and I thought it all checked out very nicely.

Other California schools to consider are at University of the Pacific in Stockton, and University of Redlands, in Redlands. You might also look at University of Puget Sound in Washington, but I don’t know if your grades/scores will be an issue. These three schools have conservatory like Schools of Music and offer merit aid. Thornton and SFCM will be very competitive for piano.

Do you know how competitive entry to Thornton and SFCM are? I would like to see success/failure stories to applying.
About Thornton, I’ve read on these forums that they require very good high school and SAT scores (like over 2000 on the old SAT) Do I have a chance at applying with a moderate SAT score, bad high school grades but a good audition?