<p>One of Interlochen's top double bass players (just graduated) wound up auditioning at all the top schools, and chose LSU because it had the best teacher for him (full ride). You REALLY have to be open-minded about all this, and Interlochen was good about making sure the kids and parents understood this from the very beginning. They did NOT let you get into the Julliard-or-bust mindset for even one minute.</p>
<p>Edad
Im surprised your child had so much trouble getting information.True theres no outright "ranking list" but there are guidebooks,a Peterson's comes to mind.There's also all the contacts you make at performing groups district wide or state wide,the private youth orchestras,the private teachers,other students who have gone before (how we got specific info about Rice,for example) and the publications,message boards,and professional organizations associated with each instrument.
For example, D is a flautist who had membership in a local flute club,and a student membership in the national club.That brought newsletters and publications to the house.She also subscribed to Flute Talk...the trade magizine in her instrument.There she read articles by the top teachers,read about schools and their programs and there were even advertisements for workshops,summer programs,etc.
Find a name whose article you enjoy,google it and see where they teach..go on from there.
The music world is small,once you reach a certain level you start seeing the same people over and over..for orchestra auditions,state ratings (in our case NYSSMA) ,summer program auditions.Parents have plenty of time to stand around and chat!
D saw people she knew at all her auditions all over the country...even in the far hinterlands of Arizona she ran into a singer she knew from a summer program.</p>
<p>Concerning audition experiences. I have already mentioned the worst. I will mention 3 of the best. Eastman was well organized. They had lots of students to answer questions and sort out the warm up rooms. The orientation and parents sessions were a bit cold, with little information. We did not do the tours since we already knew Eastman from a summer camp. Peabody was very good, especially the parent's session. We actually learned a lot. Everyone was friendly. We had a first rate tour and there were lots of events and things to do while the students auditioned and took tests. Parking is a problem unless you use the school's underground lot. Ithaca College may not be much of a conservatory but they did an absolutely impressive job. The mixer was great with good food and the administration and faculty were impressive in the efforts to meet students and parents. The studio heads also had individual "mixers" with a formal presentation and then Q&A with students. The auditions were a bit slow, but worth it. After the audition, the faculty spend a few minutes with the student and the parents.</p>
<p>I went with my son on most of his initial visits during his junior year, hubby went with him to auditions, so I can't really speak to the audition process. However, I do want to mention that my son visited Eastman twice - once as a freshman and once in fall of senior year. He had lessons with same teacher both times. The lesson he had senior year was over an hour and the teacher was very encouraging. We figured that the teacher had pretty much made up his mind if he was going to accept son or not, so son ended up doing one of the regional auditions in our area where auditions are taped by a member of the admissions staff. That process lasted a half a day with an audition, a theory test, and and info session. Son was accepted to Eastman into the studio he wanted. If you have done all the previous leg work, regional auditions can take the place of regular and help save some travel time and money.</p>
<p>I certainly agree visiting in advance and arranging lessons is valuable. Otherwise, I don't have much faith in a regional audition. My D did two and was rejected at both schools. I thought she should have received acceptances, especially considering her other acceptances for regular auditions.</p>
<p>My S did one regional audition (CCM) for the same reason that Shennie's S did. He had already met the teacher a couple times, and knew the teacher wanted him. He had flown up to Cinci a couple weeks earlier for a scholarship competition (academic) and didn't see the need to repeat the trip. Especially because he was traveling alone.</p>
<p>The regional audition was via video tape. He chose to hire an accompanist (optional), I think in part so he wasn't "alone" in the room -- he always plays better with an audience, even if it's just the accompanist!</p>
<p>He did get accepted there, with scholarship. He felt bad ultimately telling the teacher no.</p>
<p>Definitely consider University of Cincinnati, which is the parent Cincinnati Conservatory.</p>
<p>I missed this thread earlier. Here are our audition experiences, as compiled by my daughter and I:</p>
<p>BU: Much as described above. You signed up online for a time slot months in advance then showed up an hour beforehand. They checked your paperwork and eventually led you to a small and vastly overheated practice cubicle somewhere in the bowels of the building. They called you to a somewhat larger and only slightly less overheated room where you played a ten minute audition for one faculty member and a videotape machine and then you went home. No recitals, no departmental Q/A session, no place for the parents to sit, no coordination with the admissions office, not much of anything that could not have been done at a remote site.</p>
<p>Curtis: Easily my favorite - they held a Q/A session and a bass department recital the evening before auditions for both the prospective students and their parents. The recital was held in the audition room to let everyone get a feel for the acoustics of the place. Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer (two of the best bassists in the world) are also two of the nicest, most down-to-earth gentlemen you could hope to meet. The atmosphere was quite intense and they did their level best to put everyone at ease. Hal handled the Q/A and Edgar and about six current students played. Amazing stuff. The twenty applicants vying for a single place were assigned time slots for warmup and audition on the following day by lottery. Warmup was 30 minutes alone in a classroom and the nearly 30-minute audition was really half audition and half lesson. It was taped even though both decision makers were present, because they wanted to be able to go back and observe things carefully. To a casual observer, the activity in the lobby appeared to be absolute mayhem, with several departments auditioning that day as well as a performance by the school orchestra going on. In fact, things flowed smoothly and efficiently and everyone was pretty much right on time. It was even interesting in the hotel across the street - you could walk down the hall and hear really good musicians practicing in about every third room.</p>
<p>NEC: Kind of like BU with better thermostats but without computerized scheduling. They at least provided an area for the parents to sit and compare notes while the auditions were taking place. Also, both faculty members of interest were present.</p>
<p>Oberlin: (Note, she auditioned for early review in December. I don't know if the later auditions were similar.) Very well organized with parallel tracks for the parents and applicants. No department recital, but the teachers were available for sample lesons and individual Q/A sessions. Nice practice rooms, many with windows and natural light. Both teachers and the usual video machine were present for the 30-minute audition, which also had the flavor of a lesson at least part of the time. Good coordination with the admissions folks, with tours and info sessions available. A bustling lobby with helpful students coming and going who were happy to answer questions.</p>
<p>Peabody: Reasonably well organized once you got a feel for the place, but entirely swamped with far too many people in not nearly enough space. It was kind of like a cross between a road rally and a scavenger hunt. The buildings interconnect in complex ways that were not adequately described by the map provided, particularly if you have a large instrument and favor the small, extremely slow elevators over the small, extremely crowded staircases. You needed to find the area where packets were being distributed before getting even that map. Then you had to find various rooms for info sessions, theory and sightreading exams and squeeze those in around your audition in another area. Warmup facilities were shared and crowded and the process took a lot longer than at any other school. They held a department recital the night before at which the playing was rather mixed. Both teachers were present at the 30-minute audition with the ubiquitous videotape machine. Several students from the department were hanging out in a crowded corridor with the applicants as they waited for practice room and audition times. This worked well for the first 30 minutes or so, but after that they just seemed to give the impression that they had nothing better to do. Some of them really should have been off practicing somewhere.</p>
<p>Rice: Rice was the only school that prescreened applicants, requiring a videotape early in January. Daughter was not invited for a live audition.</p>
<p>After acceptance at Oberlin in December, she dropped applications to CIM, CMU, Shenandoah and West Chester, the last two being extreme safeties that were there to appease her high school guidance counselor.</p>
<p>D's Rice audition was her favorite- that's part of why she chose Rice. The faculty was very friendly and welcoming. They invited her to come sit down with them after she sang and talked to her for quite awhile. She had previously met the teacher with whom she now studies when she first visited Rice.<br>
The Interlochen kids generally go to the auditions without parents- sometimes a group of kids will travel together, which is kind of neat. So-I missed out on the experience, but had visited the schools previously with D.</p>
<p>BassDad -- Your Curtis experience is interesting, because it is quite different from ours in many ways. We showed up Saturday morning, for our assigned audition "group" time, drew lots for audition order within that group. We then sat around in the lobby, trying not to talk about what was foremost in our minds, until each kid was ushered upstairs to a warm-up room. S warmed up for 30 minutes, in a room with great acoustics, then auditioned with the teacher (there is only one for his instrument) and a tape recorder, in a room with very bad acoustics. Audition took 10-15 minutes -- playing and talking. Then he came out, and we left. No parents' meeting, no orchestra, nada.</p>
<p>Everyone was very nice, it was very orderly, -- a well-run audition. But not what you describe. He auditioned Feb. 2004; was your D's this year?</p>
<p>Yes, the audition was this year but in March. The extras were completely arranged by the double bass teachers, except of course for the concert. That just happened to be going on that day. The bass players mostly knew each other from Tanglewood, Interlochen, or other programs and were a pretty talkative bunch.</p>
<p>New England Conservatory has tours and gobs of information about their prestigous joint program with Harvard. From what I know, this is the best double major program in the country. You can go to <a href="http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu%5B/url%5D">www.newenglandconservatory.edu</a> for info!</p>
<p>Just an FYI...the quality of the audition day does not necessarily go along with the quality of the music program. The very best audition day we attended by far was at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Students received schedules, parents had info sessions, there was a nice buffet continental breakfast all morning...and it ran like a top. Plus they had tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony for anyone spending the night. We felt wined and dined when we left there. The program is solid and DS would have been well served by it...but it was not NEC or Peabody or BU or any of the others to which he applied. In all those cases he showed up, warmed up, played and left...that was it. At Peabody he did have a theory placement test also. Re: BU...DS had a completely different experience. He auditioned in front of a committee of brass members (I think he said two of the three full time faculty were there). They videotaped as well, but the folks were there too. He warmed up in one of the upstairs practice small rooms, not the basement practice rooms. I actually sat in the hall with another mom and we chatted while our boys auditioned. He was doing a dual audition for BU/BUTI so that may have been the difference.</p>
<p>stonewall, you'd better look at this carefully. When we were at Harvard a couple of weeks ago, we were told that they didn't know of any student in the program we could talk to...and that they think there is only one student in the program. Last year was apparently the first year.</p>
<p>D said she never heard of that program (Harvard/NEC) so it is clearly new and very under-populated. The Tufts/NEC dual degree program is really tough to get into and a number of those who do make it in wind up dropping out of the dual program. The dual programs really work better when you are on the same campus or in very close proximity.</p>
<p>One thing that's clear from these postings is that there is absolutely no standardization of the audition process from schoool to school -- or even within the same school. Others have complained of auditioning at BU before a single teacher & video camera, but my D's audition there took place in front of at least three relevant faculty members, one of whom followed her out of the audition room afterwards to tell her how much he had liked her playing. They provided an accompanist, and the scheduling was very efficient. Can't comment on the tour; we didn't take one as we were already familiar with the campus. </p>
<p>She ended up going to BU (and studying with that friendly teacher), then going through the entire audition process again for grad school --- again, with a huge range of procedures & experiences. The most grueling was at Mannes, which insisted on two entirely separate trips into the city, one for an info session and theory test, and another for the actual audition.</p>
<p>It would be great to have somebody rate music schools the way US News rates colleges, but I think it might just be impossible given the many variables involved, in particular the all-important relationship with the studio teacher.</p>
<p>Incoming undergraduates take theory assessment tests at time of audition at CIM, CCM, Mannes, Eastman, and Juilliard (called back singers, maybe some others). Is it part of assessment? Does it represent best thinking effort by very nervous auditionee? Mannes actually gives results at the end of extra day of tests, and while everything else about Mannes is VERY friendly, the theory folks are not, just cranky for having to be there!</p>
<p>I was always told at all the schools that do theory tests that the test was for placement only and had no effect on admissions. They realize that many high school students just don't have access to theory training, but that doesn't mean they can't be successful musicians. However, I would also recommend that prospective performance majors get as much theory prep as possible in high school as it will helps to have the basics when starting out as a freshman. My son said that the kids who had little theory coming into Eastman had to take an additional 2 days of theory each week for which they received no credit, to try and help them catch up. Obviously these students were admitted to school.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>I was always told at all the schools that do theory tests that the test was for placement only and had no effect on admissions.>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I believe this is the case at most places which is why most places just do the theory placement exams right before the start of the first semester for enrolled students. BUT at Duquesne, there were three sections of the audition that you had to "pass" for admission...the audition, the theory exam, and a sight singing exam. I do not think the criteria was too difficult, and DS thought the theory exam wasn't too hard (he had taken years of theory, however). They were clear...to be admitted, you had to pass all three. If you didn't pass the audition, it really didn't matter what you did on the other two, you would not be accepted. If you did well on the audition but not the other sections, you could take them again one time for reconsideration. Re: theory...most folks would suggest that one way to help with theory is to take piano lessons. My son said that often he pictured the keyboard when formulating answers. He was fortunate to have taken theory in 11th grade (ditched Spanish to do so) and had taken 4 summers worth of theory too. BUT piano made a huge difference (he says). It also helped that he was in a childrens' choir and the director felt that theory was an integral part of understanding the music.</p>