<p>My son is a HS junior interested in pursuing a degree in music education. His primary instrument is the trumpet. We are planning to start visiting schools in the northeast this fall. I have been following this forum and have found some very useful information but what would be helpful is to get some tips (all in one place) of what he (we) should be looking for when we visit the schools. Are there specific questions that are important to ask and find about during these visits? I am getting very confused as to culling out the really important things to pay attention to so am looking forward to some advice from those of you who have been through this already.
Thanks much!</p>
<p>I’m sure other parents with directly related experience will chime in. In our case, there were some very specific nuances we were able to tease out with DIRECT visits, which in our case included sitting in on classes, meeting with the department heads and spending time with students in the programs. But we were looking at technology-based programs, and each has a different flavor.</p>
<p>Sample lessons, hearing student ensembles, asking about performance opportunities (variety and number), financing, job placement/career development services, statistics (eg. what percentage of music ed majors are employed within 2 years, etc.) – and “extra time” as it relates to the degree (what percentage of students complete this degree within 4 years) are things that in your shoes I would find germane.</p>
<p>Asking the approximate number of trumpet music ed students accepted each year versus number of applicants will also give you an idea of the odds (but cannot tell you much about where your son will stack up, which is what you CAN’T ask directly with any degree of success) might also be helpful.</p>
<p>You might also wish to access the actual course sequence/curriculum to notice variances, if any, among the programs. All of the foregoing were helpful considerations in our case. One last consideration is what I call “student spidey sense.”</p>
<p>Sometimes a student (at least mine did, and I know of others) have something like a “deja vue flash forward” where they are absolutely convinced they see themselves at a school – there is something “familiar” feeling. It’s not rational or practical, and they might get it about a school or even a faculty member, but when they have it, I say listen 
I didn’t believe my own kid when he had his. </p>
<p>But everything he said to me that day in his junior year when we were standing knee deep in the snow outside the Umich SOM came very precisely true, including his doing what it took to increase his stats, securing a scholarship and otherwise having some skin in the game. He’s loved every minute of his program and likes to remind me that I thought it was quite a reach ;)</p>
<p>You are way ahead of where my family was (with a trumpet playing music ed student) during “our” Jr. year. You are way smarter than we were for looking into these things so early.</p>
<p>Honestly, aside from finding a reasonable academic match, it’s mostly a personal preference. </p>
<p>We initally created our list by only selecting colleges with music schools that were within an easy days drive - that yielded a huge selection, we just couldn’t find a reason for him to have to go to a college any further off.</p>
<p>Then we marked off most colleges that didn’t have student bodies with academic stats within his range. We left the range quite large though.</p>
<p>My son is very much into the marching band thing although he slightly prefers concert band, so one of the first things we did was to eleminate all schools that didn’t have marching band. Since most wind/percussion music ed students will eventually find themselves working with a marching band program, it just made sense to us for him to go to a college with a “serious” marching band program. That eleminated half of the schools. </p>
<p>We also eleminated conservatories as he desired a broader education than most conservatories provide, and also due to some fear that he wouldn’t be in the ballpark for performance skills at many conservatories.</p>
<p>Son also plays violin, he’s not real interested in it, but sometimes public school music teachers find themselves also teaching string orchistra, so we eleminated any colleges that did not also have a string orchistra program (which wasn’t very many, I think maybe it was one).</p>
<p>Someone on CC mentioned that sometimes non-performance majors don’t get the best applied music instructors, so we narrowed our list again by only selecting colleges who’s schools of music are small enough that they only have one studio for trumpet, but large enough that they had a full time trumpet instructor. </p>
<p>In the end, we selected a major university, 100 miles away, with a small to medium size school of music (about 200 students), that had a full time trumpet studio professor who taught no classes other than applied music. There were several factors that lead of us to believe that it is the best fit. First, it’s fairly affordable since it is an in state public college. It has also contracted Allen Vizzutti (you can google/youtube him if you are not familar with him) to teach there for a few weeks each semester for the next three years (in addition to the regular trumpet professor who is also great). The college also offers a music performance certificate for non-performance majors, with the same performance skills expected of performance major (with selection for the performance certificate track by audition) - since my son has sort of struggled between music ed and music performance, the performance certificate option made a lot of sense to us. We also found student reviews of the trumpet professor online, they were positive without exception. We also researched the band director and found her reviews to be equally glowing.</p>
<p>Although the school he selected is not famous for music by any measure, we feel that it will offer him the same quality music education that the famous colleges do. After he enrolled they published a list of trumpet BM students that enrolled, it was only four of them, but all four are Allstate level performers (was able to look them up on the state band director website). Also, just having Vizzutti, who taught at Eastman School of Music up until this year, for a few weeks each semester (and yes, son will take lessons and master classes with him) is something huge to put on his resume.</p>
<p>So to sum things up, our selection was ultimately determined by (not in any particular order):</p>
<p>1) Location
2) Size
3) Ensemble opportunities
4) Quality of instruction and instructors
5) Cost</p>
<p>Of course your criteria may be totally different. Whatever floats your boat, there’s a lot of choices out there.</p>
<p>My biggest regret is that he didn’t audition at some higher ranking schools. We didn’t think he was likely to get in, and we didn’t think we could afford it. Also you really should ignore the sticker price of college, as a student with special skills some higher ranking colleges will tend to weight acceptance more on the audition than academics, just like they do with student athletes. And some colleges will wave out of state tuition rates and give fairly large scholarships. Regardless, I think we found the best fit.</p>
<p>For my D, sitting in on a studio class was often the most informative part of any visit.</p>
<p>My D made a list of questions that she asked each school (how many jazz/voice students, what are the strengths of the program, are there study abroad opportunities, where do the students go to grad school).</p>
<p>After each visit she made a list of what she liked and disliked. We also recorded what she wore to the visit so she wouldn’t wear the same outfit to the audition.</p>
<p>imagep - we are learning from those a year ahead of us. Quite a few friends told us not to wait till spring of jr year to look they felt they waited too long so we are starting early because of that advice.
Your suggestions are good ones. I keep hearing about sample lessons and studios and didn’t quite figure out what that meant (the studio part). As far as sample lessons go - we are planning on attending open houses on the weekends so not sure professors will be available on those dates for sample lessons. Guess we should call and see?
Seems like looking for a school and then a music school within that is so much more complicated than just looking at a college. Going to be a long year I think.</p>
<p>SJS, the “studio” is a particular instrument/instructor. Like at schools that have just one applied music (private lessons) instructor per instrument, they would just have one “studio” per instrument. The studio is basically a group of students studying an instrument under close supervision of an instructor. Some schools may have multiple studios for the same instrument, with each studio having a different instructor. I would assume that if the college had instructors who taught more than one instrument then it may be possible for one instructor to have more than one studios (one for each instrument), but I think that is rare.</p>
<p>Typically all BM students are assigned to a studio, regardless of specific major concentration. That would be the studio for their primary instrument. In my case, which should be similar to your case (trumpet - music ed), my son is in the trumpet studio and studies trumpet with all BM students who play trumpet as their primary instrument. </p>
<p>At one of the schools my son applied at, he was assigned to two different studios as he auditioned on two different instruments and was accepted for both instruments (piano and trumpet). At the three other colleges which he applied at, he was only accepted into the trumpet studio. I think that being in more than one studio is quite rare.</p>
<p>In my sons studio, every student attends one private lesson and one studio “master class” (with all students in his studio) each week. Also, at his college, his studio professor is also his advisor and basically his “go to” person for everything except ensembles, so the studio professor, even though the student may not meet with him/her as many hours per week as regular professors, essentially becomes the most important instructor for all the students in his/her studio. And ideally the student will have the same studio professor for the entire time.</p>
<p>Thus the importance of making sure that the studio professor works well with the student.</p>
<p>We didn’t know about sample lessons, but my son did get to meet the trumpet studio professor for three of the four colleges when he auditioned. He coincidentally had a master lesson with the professor at the college that he ultimately enrolled in - when he went to a band clinic held at that college the week before his audition.</p>
<p>It’s also possible to do some online reseach of the studio professor. Typically you can find his/her name on the colleges website, and then do a google search (and maybe even a youtube search). </p>
<p>I was also able to do some research on other students in the trumpet studio as they published a roster. I don’t know that doing this is really important, maybe I am a “creeper” for doing so, but I just wanted to know about the other students that my son would be spending time with.</p>
<p>Imagep thanks so much for that explanation. It makes sense to me now. And thanks to everyone else who responded. All this info is very helpful.</p>