Music/Professor Fit vs. Overall College Fit

College Majors Music Major
1

I’m the parent of a junior, trying to help my son winnow down his initial list of ~16 schools for a BM in performance, music ed, or a combination of the two. We are finding that our son’s list of potential schools, which is based on his private teacher’s recommendations and online research, includes many schools that would not appeal to him at all if not for an excellent professor on his instrument. Since (classical) saxophone is not an orchestral instrument, we do not have quite the variety of high quality choices available to many other instrumentalists. Many excellent music schools have only jazz programs/profs for sax. In a way that makes things easier, because it greatly limits the amount of research and visiting we need to do to settle on a target list. On the other hand, If he weren’t wanting to study music and the saxophone in particular, none of these schools would even be on his radar except the two in-state schools on our list.

Obviously professor and music school fit are the most critical factors for a music student. That’s where they spent almost all their time. But almost all of the schools on our initial list have not just one but often multiple characteristics that would be “deal breakers” for him if he were shopping for colleges as a non-music student. For example - very cold winters (had to get over that one quickly!), cultural mismatch, unappealing city/location, overall weak academic reputation, OOS publics in states w/ significant budget problems, etc. We quickly realized that the usual standards of “fit” are going to have to be significantly adjusted for his musical needs, but how much is too much? There is only one college (considered as a whole, not just the music school) that I would call a good fit on paper for his preferences and needs but he is iffy about that prof so it is not likely to make the cut. We do have two in-state public options that are very good for music ed but can’t match the out of state options for performance.

We have visited 8 schools (have not been able to do sample lessons at all of them, just some) and have only been able to eliminate one of those, because he has liked all the profs and/or music schools, even if he wasn’t keen on the college or university over all. Even at the one we eliminated he liked the prof, but he felt the school was way too small. We’ll be doing more visits/lessons this summer, but are trying to figure out which schools are most important to visit before applying.

Do any of you experienced parents have advice to offer on the topic of balancing music fit with more general college fit factors? Should we just not worry due to the amount of time he’ll be spending at the music school vs. the rest of the college or university? We are in the process of looking deeper into music fit at all the programs so if you have suggestions of things to consider or to research in order to compare programs, I am listening! DS isn’t sure whether he wants to do sax performance, music ed, or both, so schools that either allow a double major in ed/performance or that have either a music ed program with high performance standards or performance with teacher certification programs are going to be more attractive unless he can make a firm decision on one vs the other between now and this fall.

Any other tips or general advice on winnowing the list? We don’t want DS to have to do more than 5 or 6 live auditions, and so far only two of the reach schools have prescreens so I expect he will be offered an audition almost everywhere he applies, and of course most of the schools will have overlapping sets of audition dates based on 2016 dates. Since I’m sure that the topic of money may come up, there is only one that we are probably going to drop for financial reasons - a certain very expensive private known for stingy or non-existent merit that also would be an academic reach.

Thanks!

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@classicalsaxmom - we are at the same phase as you are. Can I ask, “What will your S see himself doing the first two years (or more) after college?” I am not familiar with classical sax. Our S envisions scraping together all the musical and networking resources he can in this brief 4-year episode of college to make a good try at moving to wherever he needs to move and focus on playing, writing, or whatever people do to make a living playing music. That sounds almost like a mission statement (sorry). My hope is that his college expenses will be so low that we can offer some financial support for the first couple years so he can gain traction. If it all falls apart, who knows, he may go into management or business somehow with his Bachelor’s degree and worldly skills.

With this general idea in mind, “we” are considering the best scholarship targets. Thus, to keep the imagined scholarship, at places where programs are big enough to sustain the loss of a single professor and still deliver. So we think about more massive programs and/or places that pride themselves on the program enough that we think they would take care to keep it in shape. That is combined with at least having a great current professor there on the primary instrument.

BTW - S loved the visit to UIUC, but you do wonder what happens to scholarships if Illinois budgeting goes wrong. A scenario I can’t decode the probabilities of.

When you say “reach”, do you mean academically or audition-wise. We are trying to aim for “matches”, but don’t know if S is actually a reach at some of them.

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A few responses @GoForth - when I say reaches I am generally talking about the top 3-4 classical sax programs in the country, which take only 2-5 people per year so cannot be categorized as anything other than a reach for anyone. He has a couple of schools that will be slight academic reaches, but they are a bit lower on his list and I think his stats will likely be fine for most schools.

If you’re curious about classical sax, check out the EastmanSaxProject YouTube channel to get an idea.

As far as what does he see himself doing after college, very good question! Hopefully that will be narrowed down a bit before application time or at college acceptance time, which could make some of these possibilities less likely and others more likely. Some of the possibilities include 1) public school teaching to 2) Master’s Degree (with the eventual goal of college level teaching) 3) some sort of salaried position that doesn’t necessarily require a specific academic degree but is (hopefully) at least tangentially related to music 4) some combination of private teaching and music-related entrepreneurship of some sort 5) military band (if he goes to a top program and is EXTREMELY lucky). We are like you in terms of trying to get him through school debt free to enlarge the possible range of initial career choices.

I’m glad to hear you loved your UIUC visit - one of our DS’s ensemble friends is going there this fall for music so I’m sure he will keep in touch w/ that person to see how budget cuts might be affecting things.

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I know you want to winnow and not add - but Tim McAllister posted recently about his graduate assistant being appointed to the faculty at University of Arizona. That might be more a match, financially, at least? And warm weather? I do hope University of Michigan is high on his list. It seems like a wonderful classical sax studio.

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Well, that was neat over on YouTube.

I would say the professor was a fantastic lesson-giver. The top jazz group was a mix of grad students and undergrads and sounded quite good. The bassist and S exchanged cards. That bassist was better than S we easily agree. There was a variety of skill levels among the undergrad. This was the first time we have seen many undergrads on that instrument at once, so the breadth of level was interesting - is that typical, or at the top programs, is each and every undergrad just going to be impressively awesome?

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My D always has a rock in her shoe - and likes to tell me about it! For 4 years of UG, it was that she wasn’t in an urban setting. An urban setting was at the top of her list. But we just couldn’t find the other elements in an urban setting. So we had to expand her idea of fit. She was fully part of the process and understood the challenges. After going through the process twice I would just make it clear to your S that the chance of finding a school that fulfills ALL his needs is pretty tough. They’ll probably be some give and take. And I wouldn’t ignore it. I would ask him to think about what "could " work for an environment if the music fit was really good. My D did not pick a small school in a small town. Instead she picked a big school and big program in a small town so there would be a variety of social outlets even if it wasn’t in an urban environment. It worked fine despite the complaints. Also visiting different school environments can be helpful in stretching the idea of fit.

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I also would not underestimate the growth that can occur in Senior Year in HS. Growth will even occur this summer. If there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion a gap year where your child focuses on his music might be helpful as well. We tend to forget that the 17-22 year old brain is still developing. Some say the changes that occur in these years are as great as the changes that occur in the toddler years. We just don’t acknowledge them. No one would expect a 3 year old to succeed in Kindergarten.

Last night I attended a senior recital that included my son’s rooming group from college. I have photos of this same trio playing their freshman year together. The photos from last night make the photos from 2013 look like a muppet baby version of the three men. That is how much they have all changed physically. Imagine what that means for their brains.

My suggestion is to not overthink it too much. Give your son space and time to process all his options. Set some limits as to how many schools he can apply to and audition at and then let him make his own spread sheet and sort it out this summer. I think you will be surprised at how he grows and changes and rises to the challenge.

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First of all, my frank recommendation is to not disregard financial realities if that’s a factor. It’s easy to shrug and say “impossible to predict” and decide to wing it, but if you want to limit it to 5-6 auditions, I think you want some confidence that they are, in fact, viable choices. I would run the NCP’s on all the schools without considering any merit, though some of the NCP’s build in expected merit/gift when you indicate that you’re apply for the school of music. IF you quality for financial aid, most schools will give you FA grants to cover the gap between merit aid and need, so the net cost to you is often unaffected. FWIW, my son applied to 6 schools, auditioned at all 6, accepted by 5. He got 1/3-1/2 tuition merit from each of the 5 accepted schools but, ultimately, the net cost of attendance at every school was right in line with what its NCP estimated. A few of the schools replaced loans and work study that would normally be included in the FA package with merit – adds up to quite a lot by the end of 4 years.

I’m saying this especially because your son is a sax player; jazz or classical, there are a lot of saxophonists competing for limited music school/conservatory spots. You son may be exceptional and still not get huge awards unless he chooses a program that “needs” him, which may be less likely to meet his criteria. My son knows a few very talented musicians who applied to and got accepted to top conservatories and simply couldn’t attend any of them because of finances. For those schools in major cities, even a full-tuition scholarship can still mean a net cost of $25K a year to pay.

If he has financial safeties in his list, just be sure that he will actually be happy going there.

I agree with @StacJip in that a lot of development will probably happen between now and next spring when auditions actually happen. My son’s criteria changed a lot as he visited schools, talked to other students, talked to faculty. My son ultimately chose the school that was at the bottom of his list going in.

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@SpiritManager Michigan is already on the list as one of the top programs. I think we will have a number of affordable options w/o debt (we have saved quite a bit and can contribute more from income and he is an only child), but we also don’t think a 70K/yr full pay private education is realistic.

@GoForth re: your question on the level of students…from what I have observed at visits (without having had as much experience as many of our veterans here) on my son’s instrument, anyway, public U’s other than the tippy top programs seem to have more variability in student skill, even if there is an excellent prof on the instrument. Presumably a lot of that comes down to affordability. A lot of schools can’t afford lots of music merit or need-based aid or out-of-state tuition waivers to attract good OOS students so they end up with a mostly in-state group that varies in ability. DS’s teacher says some public music schools have endowments that help them attract high level students, others do not. I think the students at the very top programs are pretty universally amazing, though, judging from bios on studio pages and some of the streaming concerts we have listened to.

@bridgenail I agree that the idea of “fit” needs to be expanded in most cases when you’re looking at music schools. Fortunately DS has been pretty open-minded at this stage, anyway, and that is part of why visits have not really narrowed the list much. I think the prof and the “culture” of the school and the individual studio will end up mattering a lot more to him than weather, urban/rural/suburban, school size, etc.

@StacJip excellent point about senior year and summer growth. DS will be attending two good summer programs and that will probably help him assess where he stands relative to others nationally, and whether being amongst other high level players energizes him or feels too competitive. He has grown so much in the past year in so many ways - physically, musically, socially. I smiled at your “Muppet baby” image. I am doing a lot of research, but I’m not bombarding him with tons of info and opinions at this stage, I do want to see where his own preferences lead him. My intent right now is to learn enough about individual schools to fill out our spreadsheet, to make sure he is fulfilling any requirements to apply, and to make sure that he doesn’t rule out any good choices prematurely or get his mind set on options that are not realistic for one reason or another.

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@ScreenName48105 I totally agree on the financial realities and the limited number of spots, and I am keeping that in at the front of my mind. NCP’s will be less accurate for us, though, since we are self employed. We also have quite a lot of home equity that CSS schools will consider but which we do not want to be required to use. We are fortunate enough to be able to afford quite a bit more than our in-state rates, but there is still a huge range between a $26-28K COA in-state and a $70K COA if we turned out to be full pay at an expensive private. His teacher is excellent and well connected and has sent former students to many of these programs so he is a great resource for estimating whether a school is a viable choice. Fortunately DS does like both his in-state music/financial safeties.

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Lots of things do change, and one thing to keep in mind is that when choosing a teacher/program, there is no science to this, there is no perfect method guaranteeing perfect outcome. For example, people often choose schools/teachers based on reputation, but teaching is individualistic, so the person you think would be perfect may not be, and so forth. Likewise, environment wouldn’t seem to be that important, but if a kid is absolutely a fish out of water where they go, how well will they focus on the stuff they are supposed to? So maybe a less ideal teacher (and keep in mind, even with sample lessons, it is to a certain extent only guesswork if a teacher is the best for your son) at a better fit school would work better. In the end, the combination of teacher and program, school, and finances will tend to come together and work itself out, and in reality you won’t know until you go there, do the auditions then see what happens.

Once you have the choices, once you been admitted and gotten the financial aid and the merit grants and such, then start weeding them out. If a school is impossible financially, if aid appeals fail, and it would mean breaking the bank and going into debt, you likely won’t want to do that, no matter how good a program is. Hopefully by this point you would have weeded out before applying schools that are not a fit, a very conservative school for a liberal person or vice versa, for example, so if the finances apply, then you would be weighing teach and program and the environment to come to a decision.

As one poster said, it is very easy to overthink it, and in the end it often comes down to a gut feeling a lot of the time, there are rarely perfect choices. My S was faced with some really good choices, we were fortunate that finances weren’t the big issue with us, but if it had been he would have chosen the school with the teacher he liked, but was a small school and had other drawbacks, because it would have been full free ride (that is my wallet you hear crying lol). His finall choice came down to two schools, one of which he had been admitted to the studio of his dream teacher, he was shocked to get in but the school overall had some drawbacks, versus the school that he probably would have preferred to go to, but the teacher was way up in the air due to a bureaucratic foul up, he would be taking basically a pig in a poke in regards to teachers, and he ended up with the first one, and yes, to this day he wonders if option 2 might have been better, but that is being human:).

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The teacher is very important but the school should be a good fit, too. Remember teachers can go on sabbatical, have babies, get sick or move to other schools to teach leaving your student behind in a studio with a temporary teacher for a year or two until a suitable replacement can be found. If the school is a good fit, then your chances of the replacement teacher being of a similar or better caliber increases.

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What jumps out at me in your original post is the uncertainty about performance versus music ed (or the desire to do both). From reading the rest of your posts, it would seem that he is headed more for performance. Is the music ed idea just a practical “back up” or does he have a genuine drive to teach in a public school? If not, then it would seem he could drop any criteria related to music ed, and that might simplify and focus things a little more.

If he really does want music ed, then of course doing it in the state where he wants to teach makes sense. There are grad programs for music ed as well. If it were my kid, I would leave that decision for later, after undergrad, but that’s just me.

How limited are classical sax programs? Are you saying he has 16 classical sax programs on his list?

I think the music program, teacher, location, size, academics, peer group etc. etc. can all be considered in the proper balance at the end of the process, and that a “gut” feeling is really helpful. Visits can coincide with concerts if at all possible. Research helps, but in the end it really will be about how he feels on site,I think.

Sixteen schools is a lot but it’s a good place to start. Perhaps you can winnow based on multiple factors.

He sounds like a great kid who loves music. He doesn’t need this but I always like to share it anyway:
http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/conservatory/admissions/tips/doubledegree.html

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@musicprnt - you said “Hopefully by this point you would have weeded out before applying schools that are not a fit, a very conservative school for a liberal person or vice versa.” As a matter of fact this is exactly what we’re struggling with right now. There are at least two Southern schools that have a conservative cultural reputation, not much diversity, and big Greek presence which would seem to be a big mismatch for my liberal, non-religious, non partying kid who values diversity, but on the music side of things they are strong matches. We visited one - he disliked the main campus tour but really liked the music school tour, studio class, and lesson with the prof. Music schools might tend to be more liberal/diverse than the university as a whole, but at what point do you say a campus culture mismatch overrides a music match? His gut said no after that first tour, but he changed his mind after the music school visit, so it’s still on our list.

@Momofbassist always good to be reminded that teachers don’t always stay where they are for 4 years.

@compmom yes, he has 16 on his list now but we are hoping to bring it down to 10 or less by the summer and then audition scheduling will force some tough decisions in the fall as we come up with a final list. There are certainly more schools that offer classical sax in some form or another, but most aren’t better than our in state options (one of which is especially good) and these 16 are the ones his teacher and others have recommended that have well regarded profs as well as strong overall music programs.

DS has talked repeatedly about being a teacher since he was little, but as his mom I am not 100% sure he will be cut out for it. Then again, I think about how much I changed over my college years and I think “who knows?” His desire to teach in a public school definitely goes beyond a “Plan B” but perhaps not so far as a calling yet, if that makes sense. Leaving a Music Ed degree until after undergrad might make sense for him, though it seems from looking at studio web sites with student bios that it is not uncommon even in the top sax performance programs to find people doing both at the undergrad level. He really wants to become the best saxophonist he can be and the peer group and performance standards may not be as high at the in state schools as he prefers. He does not feel geographically limited to teaching in his home state or area but there are opportunities here due to strong support for music education.

I have read that Peabody essay quite a few times. It’s always a good read even if we aren’t considering double degrees. He is definitely a Howard.

15

One other thought. My D always had a few “too many” schools on her list. We went around in circles a bit (partly so I could have my say about financials like, sure having NYU on your list is fine but just be aware we can’t afford it so I wouldn’t suggest doing their application first). NYU never got applied to. She simply ran out of time…or had finally given up. So at some point you leave it up to your son and his gut. You’ve done a lot of research so maybe he could spend some time on the list this summer prioritizing all on his own (with financial and time constraints in mind). Just note it will be an ever changing list. And that’s fine.

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If he were ruthless with the list, how many would be left :slight_smile: I mean, if he really had to choose 5 or 6.

I would think the overall culture of a campus will be important. Musicians live their lives, so to speak.

Sometimes, a peer group that is mixed means more opportunity (solos, or being chosen for ensembles, that kind of ting), ironically, though I would probably choose an environment that has peers who play really well and love what they are doing. Just saying there are pros and cons to every aspect of the search, making it complicated : )

It sounds like he has a good option with the state school, which is great. Maybe you can build the list uo from there instead of paring it down from the 16!

ps maybe others can come on to comment about mixing performance and music ed: I had assumed it would be difficult

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For music Ed your solid instate option is probably hard to beat.

For music performance professor is key and if there is a college option that doesn’t use CSS profile that might help you out a lot. If the net price calculators show you as a full pay, then focus on choices that are fairly generous with merit aid.

If you are budgeting 30-40k per year, your upper range opens you up to schools that are out of reach financially for many families.

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@compmom if he were ruthless then yes, he could get it down to 5-6 (most likely a different mix of 5-6 than I would pick ;)) but there are still a number we don’t know enough about yet because we haven’t visited, so he wants that info first. I’m sure he will have a lot more clarity by the end of the summer. I like your point about building UP the list from the state school vs. winnowing down. Ultimately, if he’s sure he’d choose the state school over some of the out of state options it’s not really worth applying to those.

re: mixing performance and ed, it is challenging, and sometimes takes an extra semester (e.g. Eastman’s FORTE program with the tuition free final semester for student teaching) or even an extra year. One school we visited said they are planning to add an option of Music Ed with a performance certificate and that is another combination he might like.

@ClarinetDad16 yep, that’s exactly what we’re doing (focusing on choices with the possibility of decent merit in addition to the in state options). 30-40k/year should be doable without debt with just one kid to put through college so hopefully that will expand our range of possibilities.

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It’s less common in music, but many teachers have a BA/BS in something other than education, then go through their state’s alternate route to teacher certification, or get their MEd. I know one music teacher here that did the alternate route. He wanted to be a music teacher, but felt he would be better served concentrating on music, rather than education classes, so he got a BM in performance then did the alternate route for teacher certification. Something to consider, especially if your son wants to put in the extra time in performance to be the best he can be. It would also help since he is open to teaching in other states. He could then choose the state he wants to teach and go through their certification process.

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Or he may want to go on to grad school in performance…

The programs that you describe that mix music ed and performance with some extra time do sound promising though, and catch two birds with one stone.

Just for fun, here are some sample grad programs for a master’s in teaching music:
http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/departments/music-education/index.dot
http://dgs.bard.edu/graduate-programs (scroll down for El Sistema and also the MAT)
http://www.tc.columbia.edu/arts-and-humanities/music-and-music-education/

Apparently there are 581 undergrad schools for music education on this list…not helpful!!! The first page has some usual suspects but then I saw it was only the first page. Consider this a little bit of a joke :slight_smile:

There is always private teaching, and teaching at the university level, neither of which would require a master’s in teaching…but if he knows what he wants, he is on the right track!