Music/Professor Fit vs. Overall College Fit

Though that is good information for most instrumentalists @musicprnt - I just wanted to be clear that I am aware that for my son we can be 100% sure he won’t get an orchestra job, because there are no orchestral jobs for saxophonists.

@classicalsaxmom:
Yeah, I was really responding to Clarinetdad’s post. With a sax player, it would be in how they prepare the student to get real world jobs, which would likely be gig work, teaching and the mix many musicians do to make it out there. Outside of maybe a sax player who gets into something like Jazz at Lincoln Center or becomes a member of let’s say an indy rock group or a jazz ensemble that does well enough to live off of, yield would be the students who go out there and make a living at playing, or at least make something of a living doing it with other things:)

I would visit the schools and try to do summer programs where teachers are teaching and have your son really pay attention to the teachers personality and whose best interest they really have in mind. This is so important.

I have met the sax professor at uiuc and he was a lovely person and seemed to be a good communicator. And we are not even sax people lol.

We chose to do most of the auditions on a very long presidents day break and he only missed two days of school. He had two other auditions on a different weekend.

@cellomom6 yes, my son has done all of those things, and they have been very helpful (he is a rising senior). And yes, we have eliminated one program based on a lack of personality fit and a couple others are much higher in his ranking than before based on a very good fit.

I think the whole professor/school atmosphere question is really tricky and depends largely on the school. If you’re looking mainly at top conservatories (the Juilliards, Eastmans, CIMs, etc), then the teacher is probably most important because those schools are all essentially tiny and very similar - not much in terms of extracurriculars or campus events outside of performances. If you’re looking at top schools of music that are more closely attached to their college or university that they’re connected to, then I’d say the fit of the school may overall be more important. (But obviously, you CANNOT leave out the teacher from this equation since you’re going to be working with them several times a week for four years.) While I connected really, really well with my college piano professor (and there were terms where I literally had some type of class with him 4 days a week), I think it was overall even more important that I was a good fit for my school. But I went to a conservatory attached to a LAC, not an independent one

@pianodude12:
I would disagree about Juilliard, Eastman, CIM, Curtis et al (the stand alone conservatories), when you talk about campus events outside of school you forget something else, where the school is. If you go to a school that is in the middle of nowhere, like Oberlin, then campus events may be important, but if you go to Juilliard in NYC, there are a ton of things to do outside the school, both musical and non musical. I don’t disagree that the environment is important, my son is wrangling with that with grad school, he seems to be leaning towards not being in a ‘bubble environment’, though his conservatory is in a city and major college town, so it of course plays a role. Could a less optimal teacher be worth going to a school with other factors you want? Yep, to me the process, though not scientific, is a hash of elements with different weight that you come up with an answer. The school that is the dream school that would put you in debt would weight less than a financially doable school that is not the dream school, but will do what the kid wants, and so forth.

I will add that with these discussions, there is no right and wrong, and what is valuable is seeing all these viewpoints, because no two students are the same and no two answers are going to fit every student. I have learned things over the years on here, had my perceptions changed, the art of figuring things out is seeing what applies to you/your kid, doesn’t, and putting it together in your own unique package.

I would also venture that Juilliard, Eastman, and CIM are not really that similar. Each school has its own culture. And another thing that happens, although undergrad might be too soon to think about this, is that where you study is where you put down your musical roots/connections. Anyway, a good fit is also important when it comes to a conservatory.

@glassharmonica:
Other than all three have cold weather:)

lol, so true!

I never quite understood why many of the major music schools, especially those often deemed ‘top of the heap’ are in cold places, you would figure it would be a draw to get top teachers if the place was warm (like, let’s say University of Hawaii). Maybe the theory is in cold places, there are no distractions lol. (And before someone gets their nose bent out of joint, I am aware that there are top tier music schools, like Rice, in warm climates, I was talking the ‘old guard’ schools). Maybe that is why Siberia produced two great violinists (Vengerov and Rapin) lol.

Funny story about that, not in music. The guy who invented packet radio (what basically today is wifi) was at the University of Hawaii in their comp sci department back in the early 70’s. . He said he invented wireless networking/packet radio because Hawaii didn’t have the leased lines for data transmission to tie computer systems together. Someone asked him why he was in Hawaii, as opposed to a major research university in comp sci like Stanford, and he said “the surfing is much better in Hawaii”.