<p>Yes, we’ve found visits make a HUGE difference. We will have to work out spring logistics for visits and lessons (that will be second half of junior year) a little later in the year, but we are looking forward to it. We’ve pretty much determined to do lessons whenever we can make it work with our travel schedule, which is a bit restrictive.</p>
<p>I do have a general logistical question about scheduling and asking about music lessons… do you just ask up front about the rate, or is that considered crass? Do you just show up with a checkbook and assume you’ll be writing a check? Or do you set it up and simply ask, “what is your standard fee?”</p>
<p>This is an area that requires a little delicacy. Some teachers will charge nothing; some have a policy that they don’t give lessons, but they will “hear” students. Others charge a standard fee. My daughter always approached the teacher by asking if she could play for them or have a lesson. (“A lesson” means a chunk of time they may not be willing to commit to; hence the expression “play for”, which could mean only 15 or 20 minutes.) Some teachers at that point will immediately say “my fee is x”, so she could then bring a check. For some teachers (depending on the conversation) she would ask upfront about fee. For others I would send her in with a signed blank check or a stack of twenties, and at the end of the lesson she would ask what she owed. The rate varied from free to $50 (which seemed weirdly low) to hundreds of dollars.</p>
<p>One thing not mentioned above is that it’s important the student herself be the contact. And the parent should make herself scarce at lesson time. It’s okay maybe to meet the teacher in the hallway, but don’t talk much, and don’t hang around. </p>
<p>Of course it may seem a little artificial to you since you paid for the plane tickets, and the lesson, and helped orchestrate everything. But the teacher wants to deal with the student, not the parent, because that is who s/he will be teaching for four years if it works out. It’s a red flag if the parent appears too involved. </p>
<p>It’s also important to remember that the teacher is auditioning you just as much (or more) as you are auditioning the teacher.</p>
<p>Thanks, GH this is helpful. Okay, one more thing. Is the student expected to make all the phone calls? Given that the kids are in school all day (and in my d’s case, not permitted to use their phones), how does that happen. All by email? It seems harder to be ‘delicate’ by email. Is it acceptable for a parent to do the initial setup and <em>then</em> bow out? So the student does everything from the meeting/lesson or simply “playing for” (which we are familiar with), to the followup thank-you. etc.?</p>
<p>I realize we are getting into nitty gritty, but it is very helpful…</p>
<p>I did the arranging of lessons by e-mail for my son. Maybe it would have been better for him to do it, but I just had more time and knew our scheduling and logistics better than my S did. Once he had met a teacher he did any subsequent e-mailing, follow up and thanking.</p>
<p>In my opinion, parents should not call or email teachers. One of the points of the contact with teachers (and schools) is to demonstrate maturity. (Even if you’re standing behind them when they make the call, they should be the ones calling.) As for email, that can be done any time of day. If your student doesn’t know the scheduling and logistics, then let them in on it. </p>
<p>As for being in school all day: call after school or get permission from the school. Emailing is always a better point of contact <em>if</em> the teacher has email. Some older teachers don’t have email. My daughter had a funny experience in which she was told to write a letter to a prospective teacher (he ended up retiring so it was a moot point.) She sent it to his faculty mailbox and never heard back. One year later she awoke to a 9 AM cellphone call in her dorm room in college. It was the teacher (who had retired and only just checked his mailbox, months later.) He’d found her letter, not realizing it was 13 months old, and called her back. They were both terribly confused for about 5 minutes of conversation. </p>
<p>There are two basic reasons for a sample lesson, and given the nature of student/teacher relationships in something like violin, sort of obvious</p>
<p>1)Can the student work with the teacher? Do they seem to be clear in what they want, is the energy there, whatever you call it. As everyone usually points out, teaching violin is a master/apprentice, and it is very personal and one on one, and a teacher, for example, who multitasks like crazy, spews a ton of stuff at the student and the student is a serial learner, or the teacher is the brutal autocrat who would look good in a Prussian Helmet and boots for the student who is kind of fragile, wouldn’t work well (and yes, both types exist…)…some teachers IME will be ‘definitely yes!’, others will be “Heck No!!!” and the worst ones, “Hmm, seemed okay, but not sure…”…but it is valuable. Plus, too, the teacher may give valuable feedback of things they think aren’t working as well, things the kid needs to work on, and that can be invaluable. </p>
<p>2)Then, of course, can the teacher work with the student…again, styles may clash, and in some ways #1 will influence #2…among other things, if the teacher feels he /she can work with the student, they may make a note, mental or otherwise, to look for them on auditions (or put their name in red marker saying “noooo”). </p>
<p>3)Doing this the teacher has had face time with the student, which might give an edge after the audition, where the teacher says “oh, yes, I remember that kid, did a mean solo sonata and really worked well with me” and puts down they will work with them…the problem, of course, is does the teacher remember them? If the teacher actually makes a mental note (and remembers it!) or a physical note, that is great, but CW is the longer the term from seeing the kid, the less they will remember…and I will add that some teachers, who might otherwise come off as the absent minded teacher, seem to have great memories for students, my S had exposure to his teacher summer between Sophomore and Junior years, and I think the guy remembered him almost 2 years later…so it can happen.</p>
<p>My take is to bank more on #1, about the teachers the student wants to work with, as a goal of doing the lessons, and let #2/3 work themselves out. If there is a teacher you really liked (or teachers) from #1, then perhaps try and schedule time during the audition day at the school (or day before/after) with the teacher, to refresh their memory and such.</p>
<p>The thing to take from this is there is no science to this, kids have been accepted (in fact a lot of kids are) based on the audition, the sample lesson simply mitigates some risks, like getting a teacher you can’t work with, or also, having them interested in you because they saw you before, but it isn’t rock solid science, it is simply edges. A kid who is a dynamite player who blows away the teachers on the panel in the audition may not need that edge, a kid a little more on the ‘work in progress’ end of things might gain an edge from the teacher having seen them, and get the magic check on the sheet after the audition they might not have gotten had the teacher not seen them before. Even doing multiple auditions can help, teachers often teach at multiple programs, and a kid might have a so so audition one place, and a good one at another place, and the teacher will know the kid simply had a bad audition at the first one, and want them as a student…</p>
<p>Okay, with picking teachers to even select, that is tough. Some programs you search for the teacher after the audition (like Indiana), so you audition, get in, then there is a mad scramble, I guess you seek out the teachers, play for them, and see what comes out. At other programs, you have to specify teachers, at Juilliard, NEC, I believe CIM, Rice, Peabody, Eastman, USC and many others, the student indicates their preferences, and the way admissions works, if none of the teachers on the panel indicates they want to teach the student, they don’t get in, even if there score would otherwise be high enough…schools will I am pretty certain, if the student specifies X teachers and none want to teach them, but other teachers say yes, they will notify the student of their choices, others may say "none of the preferences wanted the student, not getting in…(sometimes a student thus rejected by their preferences may get put on the waitlist, and told that if they can find a teacher with an opening, they can get in…). I think if the student put down no teachers as preference they wouldn’t get in, not even sure they would get to audition (I can’t say that with 100% certainty, but I am fairly certain of that). </p>
<p>Okay, so then how do you choose teachers if you never have seen them? That is a tough one. There are some obvious things, you can look for videos of master classes with the teacher (some of these may be online), and you can ask others (like people on here, or on Violin.com, though I have problems to be honest with some of the stuff I have seen on there…). If your teacher is knowledgeable about teachers at the college level, talk to him/her, since they know the student, that can be valuable, if for anything the teachers to avoid (like, teacher X, who hasn’t picked up a violin in 15 years or teacher Y, who falls asleep in lessons), or if you happen to run across musicians and such, ask them their impression of teachers. It isn’t perfect, but it can help narrow down the choices. </p>
<p>One of the things I would highly recommend is if you are aiming for a program with only 1 or 2 teachers on the instrument, try and get a sample lesson with them. If a teacher doesn’t work out on a violin faculty with 10 teachers, odds are you might be able to find a suitable replacement, if the teacher there is the only one, or maybe one other, that is really taking a leap of faith, if they turn out to be incompatible. </p>
<p>Also be very, very careful of the great teachers whose reputation is based in being great performers, besides the fact that they a lot of the time have very few students (and everyone wants to study with them), so the competition is fierce, it also could be they aren’t great at teaching, or more likely IME, can’t really teach what made them great, in large part because I am not certain they know what made their playing great:). Put it this way, there are violin teachers who were/are fantastic performers, either solo or ensemble, who are first rate teachers, there are ones who can’t teach their way out of a paper bag, and more than a few in the middle:), so it is important to try and find out about their teaching and not assume anything from their performing. </p>
<p>In the end, you end up like a lot of students, where there are teachers you have seen, and liked enough to specify a preference, then there are teachers you do the research, ask others, that you think might be good teachers for you, and you put them down. You can’t see every teacher, it would just be too expensive and time consuming, so you always do the best you can. </p>
<p>Once the auditions are done, the list of potential teachers will be a lot smaller then what you applied for, and then you can whittle down the list based on what you know, and perhaps do a couple of trips at that point, in the April 1-May 1 window, to try and see potential teachers you are unsure of, be a lot cheaper then trying to see them all before applying/auditions. </p>
<p>As always, both @glassharmonica and @musicprnt have the experience and the ability to distill it into helpful advice.</p>
<p>For my D, there were two major advantages in the sample lesson/ playing for someone:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>familiarity with the campus. She actually chose her grad program based in large part on her comfort level in the community at the audition.</p></li>
<li><p>deciding if the connection with the teacher worked for her … she’s on the end of the spectrum of people who really need to connect emotionally and intellectually with the teacher. Part of that is personality, part is physical: she’s an extremely petite violist who is prone to injury, so it’s important to her to have a teacher who (a) understands the health element and (b) gets the small hand thing. There are some wonderful teachers she’s worked with who happen to be larger boned folks, and they just don’t connect on the whole “I can’t reach that” thing.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>But even in situations where it was clear that she wasn’t going to attend a particular school, she always found something positive in the experience of playing for “new ears.” Often, a teacher would have a new perspective on her playing, or sometimes, it was the reinforcement of an already-familiar critique with a new twist. Even in the worst -case scenario (which didn’t occur by a long shot!), it strengthened her understanding of “what she didn’t want.”</p>
<p>Re payment: she always went into the room with a blank check or cash. No one ever accepted, but don’t count on that. 
(Me, I drank a lot of coffee in the student center that year.)</p>
<p>Thank you everyone. These are so helpful. </p>
<p>If there is a possibility that your D will be interested in a particular school and it’s convenient to do the lesson then have the lesson. It was terribly hectic during my D’s senior year going back and forth to schools. If you can have a sense of who she wants to study with that is a major plus. The pre-screen/audition will be the determining factor on whether or not the school thinks she fits into their program but by all means if you can get those sample lessons out of the way, Do It! </p>
<p>We did it all wrong last year when my D was applying. We applied, got in, then did sample lessons and some schools she just did not want to attend. What the What! We wasted a lot of money on applications and travel when if we had already had a sense of the teachers/program/school, she would not have applied. And then another program that she really wanted to attend we gave very little effort. She ended up getting priority waitlisted but at that point it was too late. She loves the program she ended up in but she was taken off the waitlist at the last minute and then we had to travel again to do sample lessons. Ugh! Should have had those done already. She knew she liked that program. lol </p>
<p>Also, and this is really important, I did not find this forum until well into the application season of her senior year and these people were incredibly valuable for us during that time. You have found them early and that is smart! You are well ahead of the game already. Just my two cents. :)</p>
<p>My son’s junior year, I set up lessons since we were traveling so far. His senior year, my son is doing it. There is a big difference in maturity and abiity to navigate schools, teachers etc. He is just now getting picky. He used to just like everybody.lol</p>
<p>A couple of years into paying for a conservatory education I have to say that money spent shopping schools and paying for sample lessons is a drop in the bucket when the larger picture is considered. We knew right off that we would be coming into any school hat in hand looking for a LOT of money from the institution and I considered it in bad taste to not have made the effort to come out, see the school and PAY for a lesson, or at least offer to pay for a lesson. I would also recommend researching the school and the teacher beforehand. What’s a couple of nights on the internet cost? In one case we found out that one of the pieces my daughter was going to play for a certain teacher, the teacher had written a very famous paper about, so of course we had to at least read the paper. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the advice would be for a full-pay student, but for a family depending on scholarships to make school happen, spending money and TIME upfront seems to be common sense. What’s the old joke about if you have to ask how much a tune up on sports car is that you can’t afford the car ? It occurred to us early on that if you have trouble with paying for lessons or the hotel rooms when you check out a school, that maybe that school isn’t for you. I don’t mean to sound insensitive about this, but if you think paying for a practice lesson is rough, or that visiting a school is expensive, just wait for the first tuition bill- scholarship or not, it’s an entirely different ballgame. </p>
<p>As always, I appreciate the group’s knowledge. Thanks to you, we will be soooo well prepared when our turn comes around. @cellomom6, I think that is how we will end up dealing with it. We also are traveling great distances, my d can’t do the travel planning, and adding her into that portion of the logistics just so she can</p>
<p>@jb1966, I don’t think anyone suggested that “paying for a practice lesson is rough…” (though it can be, for many), the question was twofold—the first being my OP about whether it is advisable to have lessons as a junior (because we had received conflicting advice, and hoped to benefit from the collective wisdom of the many posters on this forum, which we have). The tangent about payment (also mine) was a question of sensibilities, not budgets… not wanting to offend the teacher for whom one is playing, by either not offering to pay when payment was expected, and seeming stupid or being offensive, or offering to pay when payment was not expected, and fearing to appear crass. </p>
<p>FWIW, I agree that the time and money spent upfront is well spent; however, for some families, logistics will be such that they cannot make two trips around the country (perhaps the parents only have two weeks off a year, or one, and the student does not drive, or they live far from an airport and lack public transportation, in which case logistics could trump even the desire to pay, such as it might be). Everyone’s situation is different, and I would not make assumptions based on the fact that it can be difficult to get from point A to point B. For many, it seems that only one visit (during audition day/week) was doable, and for many of those, prospective teachers might or might not have been available. </p>
<p>There are an awful lot of factors going into this, and it seems to me it’s not quite as simple as “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Many aspiring musicians have parents whose other children took a more traditional route to post-secondary studies, or, like my dh and me, are going through it for the first time. So, yes, despite countless “free” hours spent doing our due diligence on myriad websites, and reading bios and reviews till our heads spin, we have to ask. Because we can only afford <em>some</em> of it, and feel that the outlay of time and money that it will take <strong>our family</strong> is a worthwhile investment, if it will help narrow down teachers/schools or provide other valuable information, including having teachers potentially remember our prospective student when audition week rolls around. But I wouldn’t say that families for whom it’s a stretch to even do the visits should just give up before they should start. In fact, quite the opposite. For families of talented musicians but little means, I would say “go for it” to whatever extent you can. If there is really need, and a student is really talented and auditions well (yes, and if the stars align and all that, too), the combination of financial and merit aid falls into place. </p>
<p>The above said, I get that there are no magic wands in the music school application/FA process.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that many students never have a sample lesson or meet teachers before the audition; some wait until the audition trip and grab a lesson while they’re in town. </p>
<p>I still stand by most of what I said. Having extremely limited resources, and a touch and go elder care situation we realized early on that getting into a car for extended trips wasn’t going to happen. There can be alternatives. We found out that several of the teachers we wanted to look at were going to be together at a seminar giving a series of masterclasses so we went there instead of what would have been a lengthy spring car trip. My daughter also emailed some of the teachers and asked them if they were going to be somewhere closer than their school and could we meet up with them for a lesson in that location, which was much less expensive than going to their school. Because our search was teacher driven, things were a bit simpler. </p>
<p>I would just start with the problem ( checking out schools ) and let the solutions come as they may. Heck, at one point we were looking at some East Coast schools and realized they were all on the same Amtrak line. One of the closer corn field schools we were considering had a shuttle that ran from an airport not too far from our house right to the school for much cheaper than gas would have been. </p>
<p>Thousands of parents have the same problem every year and I’m just advocating thinking about different ways of solving that problem besides piling into the car and spending countless hours on the road. </p>
<p>Absolutely, JB, I think that’s why these CC boards are so popular. A lot of really detailed questions and answers are shared on these forums, which leads to an ability to do more informed research… because let’s face it, after reading dozens of school websites and teacher bios, it’s a lot to absorb and everything can really run together. So a little information from experienced parents would be a good part of that preparation and potentially money-saving research. </p>
<p>We took my son for his first lesson the spring of his junior year, and the professor told him what he needed to do be ready for college auditions, and said he had 45 weeks to do it. It was not what we expected, but turned out to be time and money very well spent. </p>
<p>Exactly. What’s the phrase “You can’t buy that kind of advice.” ? Well, actually, you can and us parents do. </p>
<p>Jb it is rough to think of paying for a conservatory. That’s why we’re being selective of where we apply. And if we can’t afford my son’s dream school, we’ve done enough research that other schools will do well.</p>
<p>Clarinetson raises a good point about sample lessons, and that is you can get valuable feedback from those giving the lesson, since they are the ones who do the auditions for admittance. One of the things that comes up here a lot is on how do you know if you are good enough to go to conservatory, are ready for auditions? Most kids thinking of heading into music already have private teachers, but there still can be questions as to whether that teacher has kept up with the playing level out there and what is required for admission, and using a sample lesson, where you pay the person for a full lesson, and get feedback (some sample lessons last a short time and are not going to be great for evaluation), as a tool can be huge. I highly recommend getting an outside evaluation, and if you can kill two birds with one stone (hopefully our companion bird doesn’t read these forums <em>lol</em>), do a sample lesson and get an eval, that is great. </p>