@stradmom Thank you!! 
@jb1966 What an incredible story! I think I’m going to re-read this whenever I get frustrated that I’m “not good enough”. Thank you so much!
Son is a senior looking to be clarinet performance major. Has a very strong academic profile / test scores.
Leaning towards university based programs as the top competition typically shoots for the name conservatories. Many of the international applicants especially.
Is there a way to find out how many freshman clarinet spots should be opening up at certain schools?
@Stradmom - What’s funny about this guy is that he is married to an equally successful soprano who came up the traditional route: singing early, top rated programs in major schools and eventually Juilliard. Both of them are extremely talented, totally focused, hard working and had inspirational teachers along the way. So maybe one took the train and the other took the bus- they ended up in the same place.
I’ve spent most of my adult life in the pop music business and one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from the music industry legend that owned the record company that my band had just signed it’s first contract with. He said " If there was a sure fire way to sell records, a formula, don’t you think the walls of every music company office would be completely covered with platinum records? We try to follow a general business model until we get lucky and somebody walks into our office with a hit record."
You just have to have the goods and be able to produce them on demand. Having a certain teacher or having been to a certain school can really help you get your foot in the door, but when you open your mouth it’s what comes out that counts, not how you arrived where you are. When I’m listening to The Met on a Saturday afternoon and I hear a fantastic singer, I’m not thinking about what school they went to.
Hi ClarinetDad and welcome. The best way to find out about clarinet openings is to contact the schools - admissions or the clarinet professor(s). Has your son identified teachers he’d like to contact for a trial lesson? The number of openings is sometimes discussed in that context. Conservatories (as you note) will have fewer openings as they often fill only enough slots for an orchestra - maybe a limited wind ensemble, but no band-size instrumentation needs. It’s probably best for you to re-post your question in the general discussion area. I know more about strings than winds - there are probably people out there with much better answers from their own experience than my general comment.
Hi, not sure if I ever put myself up here.
I am a rising senior in High School intending on going for either a BM vocal performance or a music BA at a top academic institution with voice lessons included, either leading to an MM in vocal performance. I am (shocker) a soprano, and even though I only started formal lessons two years ago, I’ve garnered a first place showing at a NATS competition in a highly competitive division and other placements. My list is really scattered though due to my straight A’s and 35 ACT, so right now I have Yale, USC, Michigan,and Northwestern as schools I am definitely applying to.
Hi, I’m a singer-songwriter from indonesia. My dream is about having an international music career in America. Lately, I applied for Berklee College of Music. Is there any information/suggestion about how to make/start music career for foreign musician in America? For now, I consider taking music education is the best way to start your career. But if any of you have different calls, please give me your opinion. Regards
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Berklee’s is full of musicians from many countries, and you should find that in many top schools. Berklee will really appreciate your diversity being from Indonesia and all the music you were exposed to there. Be ready to work hard, collaborate across genres, and you will get a great boost. First get your foot in the door at Berklee and then network as you go. You have to first have the goods, then your network will help get the appropriate exposure for where you will be successful.
Hi folks–I’ve started a couple threads in this forum and so I might as well chime in on this one. I have a rising senior french horn playing son who is interested in music playing a very big role in his college career, but doesn’t want it to be his sole avenue of study. Computer science is his other most likely major focus. He prefers small school environments, so we’re looking primarily at LAC’s. He’s seriously contemplating double degree programs, but that’s still under discussion. He’d also like to be at a place with a strong academic reputation, but probably doesn’t have the stats to get into the very most selective tier of schools. As of now, we’ve only got a list of about 5 schools that look like they’re potentially a good fit from an interests and culture standpoint, which I’m finding somewhat distressingly short.
Five schools might be perfectly fine. Many on this forum applied to just those few, or even fewer. I know it’s unusual in this day and age, but if your S has really narrowed down schools to ones that are just what he’s after, it may be enough. If you worry he might get shut out, set the rest of your search to that safety school he’d be happy to attend.
I think you’re probably right – I do think it will actually be fine, and I think it’s a balanced enough list that the risk of a shut-out is very small. It’s just a bit smaller group of candidates than I anticipated going in to the process. Heck, back when I was in his position, I zeroed in on my favorite pretty quickly and just applied there ED and was done, so I ought to know that having myriad options is by no means a necessity.
Hi. I’m a parent of a to-be high school senior, aspiring to be a professional jazz saxophonist, with very ambitious plans for music school. It’s a challenging balancing act, to be supportive but not push… and not freak out at the price tag. For those of you who have successfully (but lightly!) steered your kids through the application process, you have my total admiration!
Hi ScreenName, welcome to the world of jazz. My D is a jazz vocalist, writer and arranger, and her BF is an up and coming jazz saxophone professional. They both graduated from Berklee and live in LA right now, and I am no longer paying any bills for her, so it does work!
I’ve posted/commented on a few things so far. Going to be a senior in HS this year, planning on majoring in cello performance.
Parent (dad) of a HS Sr. (D will be comp. major next year). I’ve been lurking as a guest on this site for several years to know what we’d be in for (and now we’re in the middle of it)… College pre-screen waiting, audition scheduling, etc. @compmom and @spiritmanager, you guys have been more helpful than you can know. Thanks! Looking forward to the next two months and beyond for our daughter!
Welcome @MusicPrepDad! Let us know how we can help further.
Hello! I am the applicant/student/person who performs. I am a “classical singer” who wants to eventually be an opera singer. I went to LSU as a Vocal Performance major for Fall 2014 but needed to step away from school and make sure I wanted to do music. Long story short, I do and now I need to get back into music schools. During this time off I’ve been working on myself as a performer and conservatory candidate. I’ll be applying during the Fall 2016 audition “season” for entry as a student in fall 2017. I’ve been given the gift of time to be able to really focus on finding the right place for me without juggling senior year as well and I can’t wait to take this journey.
Hi everyone, I have been lurking here for a couple of years now since it became clear as early as the end of 8th grade that my son would not be deterred from his interest in studying music in college. I was a good but not great high school musician myself but I never studied music beyond HS so this is all new to me. I have learned sooo much already, so thank you to everyone who posts here! It has been very interesting and enlightening to watch two classes worth of kids and parents go through the process (and now a third class has reached the audition stage! Good luck to all seniors and grad applicants!).
My son is a junior at a large public HS in a major metro area and he is interested in (classical) saxophone performance and/or music education. His private teacher has given us an annotated list of schools to consider with comments about the profs and (if applicable) his past students’ experience there, and we visited a few schools last summer. My master spreadsheet is filling up with info. Thanks to you all and to his teacher I feel like we are on track and that we are doing all the right things to prepare, it is just a matter of seeing how the rest of junior year goes so we can winnow down our list of schools based on visits, sample lessons, overall fit, finances, stats, summer program experiences, etc. I am sure I will be participating a lot more over the coming year rather than just lurking. In fact, I have at least a few questions I will be posting about soon.
Among the things I am currently fretting about…upcoming senior year curriculum choices and that academic vs. music balance, SAT/ACT prep, and the fact that most of the programs on his instrument have only one prof and the number of new freshmen entering the studio each year often can be counted on one hand. I can’t believe that by this time next year he will have all his applications in, will have completed at least one audition and we will be packing our bags for Winter 2017 auditions!
My son plays Bass Trombone, graduates in May with a Music Performance degree from U of South Carolina (out of state music scholarship). Applied to and made it through the pre-screen to audition at the following graduate music programs:
U of Georgia
U of Maryland
Rice
Cleveland Institute of Music
Yale
Happy to offer advice to any HS parents, would love to get some on how he can nail his audition at Yale. 
My D is a HS senior and is a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist interested in Popular Music. She applied ED to NYU-Tisch-Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and was accepted. So she is very happy she is done. But before that acceptance was quite anxious.
She also applied to:
Belmont - Curb (Accepted)
USC Thornton Popular Music - Songwriting (Invited to Audition)
UMiami - Frost MBEI / Hornsby (Invited to Audition)
Anecdote - The day she was accepted to Clive Davis the USC Chairman contacted her and asked her if she was going to retract her USC application herself of should he do it for her? She found that odd that he sounded a little cold since she knew him and had never known him to be that way.
FYI - She loved and visited all of the above music schools and did summer programs at each. She chose to ED Clive Davis because it was a great combination of Industry and performance, the proximity to home,the NYC connections and it had and Early Decision option. (She honestly didn’t think she would be accepted though.)
Greetings - I have been using this site as we helped my son apply to college. He is applying for Bass Performance and we are half-way done with auditions! He also went from first wanting a school with a strong music program where he could double major to deciding to throw his hat fully in the area of music. It was seeing the difference in facilities and caliber of students in a college with an excellent music school compared to a non-music school with a strong music department. He also was adamant at first that he wanted to be in a city and we only had urban schools on the list, but now his favorite schools are smaller and rural - go figure. It was meeting the faculty at the smaller schools that made all the difference.
He is auditioning at Temple, McGill, Hartt, Ithaca, Fredonia (accepted) and Brooklyn College. We looked for schools with strong bass faculty where he would be likely to be competitive. Strong music education programs were a plus too as he is thinking about music ed as a career. Cost is a big consideration (we don’t want him to carry too much student loan debt and we would like to retire too) so top tier schools with high price tags were not appealing at this stage as we felt that even if he was accepted the cost would be too high as he is very good - but we know that there are kids who are even more prepared than he is. I couldn’t justify spending the money to travel to the school, audition and pay the extra application and test score fees just for the satisfaction of saying that you got into a school that we can’t afford.