@followurheart, my Soprano D is waiting for her VP prescreen results from Carnegie Mellon, too! Take heart!
Hi everyone! What a ride!!!
My daughter is a Senior Soprano and has applied to 7 BM (except CMU) VP programs. She is interested in a career in Opera, although she has had a lot of success and experience in Musical Theater. At this point, she has 4 auditions scheduled: Oklahoma City University, Oberlin, Lawrence University, and Central Washington University (more of a safety school). We are still waiting to hear about her Carnegie Mellon prescreen, and delaying scheduling a couple more auditions until we hear. Are you all hanging in there??? Fall was brutal for us, with all those application and prescreen deadlines! Sending out positive thoughts to all you parents!
@dramasopranomom thanks!
Anyone have auditions this weekend? Itâs my Dâs first and I have a little anxietyâŠthe anxiety item right now is trying to keep us healthy in the middle of winter. Just a few more days until we board the planeâŠmasks in hand! BAL to all. This is really excitingâŠEnjoy your journeys and please post and share them as you can.
Best of luck to you and your D, too!
My S has one, out of state, on Friday. It will be his second - first was at an in state public and was very relaxed and pretty close to home. He has already been admitted early action there, which takes some pressure off. We know that the studio he is auditioning for this weekend has more than the usual # of spots due to a large graduating class, so thatâs encouraging. DH is taking him this time. Sâs biggest stressors are getting back in time for a dress rehearsal Sat. afternoon and trying to get a project done for school that is due the following Friday.
I hear you on the health concerns! I will be sending the guys with little bottles of hand sanitizer.
Hello all! My D is currently auditioning for flute. Likely Music Ed at most places, except Oberlin where they only have Performance. She has already auditioned at the following:
Penn State (and has been acceptedâŠwaiting on financial aid)
Youngstown State University - Dana School of Music (unofficially accepted, but this is where her current private teacher is the flute professor, and they REALLY want her)
Oberlin - Dâs favorite by far, but even if she is acceptedâŠfinancial aid would have to be VERY generousâŠand since they had almost twice their expected yield last year, I donât hold out much hope for that)
IU Bloomington - since weâre OOS, even if sheâs accepted there would have to be very generous aid to make it doable. Plus, their audition experience was, while very organized, kind of âassembly line.â This was by far the shortest audition sheâs had (10 min, as scheduled) and the only audition sheâs had so far with zero feedback. So even though it was her first choice before auditions started, she came away feeling a little but deflated.
This weekend itâs Baldwin Wallace and next weekend is Temple.
Then itâs sit and wait. And wait.
Best of luck to you all!
Hoping to get the most out of this site! My son is a high school junior, plays and loves both bassoon and clarinet.
Canât decide which he likes better, but thatâs a lot of work applying on both, I thinkâŠWants to do music performance as a major. Hasnât narrowed down a thing yet, so I feel like we are behind the eight ballâŠLooking for input, both good and bad, from anyone out there who has considered double instruments. Thanks!!!
Hi everyone! My D is a HS junior, jazz vocalist and singer/songwriter. We are currently in the hunt for the perfect music school for her. We have visited NYU/Clive Davis (she loved it but holy hell $$$), USC/Thornton and Berklee which is currently her top choice. We are headed to Miami to visit Frost at the end of March. That looks like a fantastic program as well. I will be interested to follow everyone in their journeys as we move through the audition process next year. She is spending the summer at Berklee and will audition for admission and scholarship at the end so that will be one done early on.
Iâm hopeful we can get some insight into getting merit scholarship money since none of these schools are even remotely in the budget! Thanks so much!
@SpartanDrew - We just got back from Frost a week ago. It seemed great to us. S did have a voice audition there. He picked âThere Will Never Be Another You.â I donât know how to say it just right, but voice is not his primary instrument, but he works on it. The purpose of the audition was to see if he might fit in one of the vocal jazz groups as a secondary instrument to his jazz bass. S likes Slam Stewart, who sand while he played bass. I think S said that after a certain part of the song, the piano played into the solo section, which S wasnât used to, so he just scatted through it. He liked the prof.
We do know someone in our area who did recently get either a full ride or full tuition to Berklee (to the school rather than the camp) for jazz guitar. We think they said full ride, but we reserve room to say full tuition in case we heard wrong. I really donât know what the key factor is there aide from being perceived as very good. Although that person also has been known to sing while playing the guitar.
We are anxious to learn about merit money. So far, we are OK with how our energies were allocated. We had UNT as a baseline of affordability. Then a small number of places selected where S liked their sound, and we spent effort on being there. I think it was really important to have/develop a great amount of talent/skill/awareness/passion during the time leading up to the auditions by continuing to verify that the student has a lot of growing desire/drive/passion still, playing a lot, getting chops up, playing in different scenarios with different challenges, knowing what is normal/expected in various situations and songs, sight reading, and creating a little bit of breadth too (such as singing if an instrumentalist) to be able to bring a little extra dimension and maybe get a bit more money (speculating).
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@GoForth I follow your journal and will be very interested to hear your news as well as your S final choice. Does he have a first choice at this point? Thanks for the other info. Merit money will be key for my D to attend one of these pricy schools!
I always assume that schools, professors, competitors(?), or whoever may be reading my every word on here, not because S/I are important, but because I am just very cagey, so I am just going to be vague whether there are any favorites. Merit money is key indeed. In a way, we equate money to âfitâ. We kind of took a 2-pronged approach up front - find schools that S would probably like, then [1] list the ones that are already affordable, then [2] also collect info on which ones show money-love to their favorites (how do you learn which ones show love? how do you make sure you could be a favorite?).
I envy peopleâs audition trips that are say 7 schools in the Northeast. Broader trips, like to Boston, then LA, then Miami, etc can get burdensome. The better the studentâs skills, the safer you will probably be with each visit choice, on average.
I like your two pronged approach. My only problem with one of the prongs is we donât have a school on her list thatâs already affordable! Lol
Once S had his list put together, there was only one school (out of 8) we could afford without significant aid. So I forced him to add a second that we could afford in case the one audition went wrong.
Turns out the second affordable school was one of his favorites (still not his first choice, but near the top) after his audition experience. He would be very pleased to attend there if thatâs how it works out. You just never know!
Hi everyone, my S is a sophomore in college. I am new to CC and wish I had found this forum two years ago. Reading through this forum made me realized that I really didnât know what was going on when my S went through his application and audition process. Excellent forum and I am learning a lot.
Hi! My son is a HS sophomore and a serious double bassist. He wants to be someplace where he can do solo classical/ orchestral as his main jam, but also wants to study conducting and jazz. Not sure if it will be university or straight up conservatory. But we plan to visit as many places as possible during Junior year, meet with conductors and take trial lessons. My main worry is he wants to keep ALL his options open, so he is overloading on the AP classes and doesnât always have enough time to practice. Aarg!
Hello all:
I am a HS senior who plays euphonium, tenor/bass trombone, and saxophone. I have applied to and been accepted by 6 great music schools and will be making my decision soon. I will be majoring in classical euphonium performance, but will also look to study jazz and orchestral bass trombone.
@Music2023 Welcome. I am the mother of a Double Bass player who is just about to graduate from his Masterâs program. Itâs a great instrumentâŠalthough itâs size can be challenging. My son went to NEC undergrad and loved it. It was a great place for somebody who does not want to stay within one genre but really wants to explore being an âartistâ with their instrument. He now is a grad student in Berkleeâs Global Jazz Institute. He chose it because it is 1 year only, completely free, and he felt it would help him explore the other aspects of music he was interested in. He did not feel that spending another 2 years practicing and focusing on getting technically better was going to help him sort out what he wanted to do with his music. That being said he is studying privately with one of BSOâs Bass players a
Thanks, StacJip! Itâs so tough because my son wants to finally have a chance to immerse himself in music, but i feel he will really benefit from all the offerings at a university. I think a lot is going to come down to where the right teacher is. Luckily he has a great teacher right now, who should be able to advise him.
Music2023 my son is also academically capable. As were many of his peers at conservatory. The thing is if a child is self-motivated they can continue to learn and explore. Most conservatories have agreements with other colleges so if a student wants they can take University courses. NEC students can take courses at Tufts or Northeaster or even Harvard or MIT if they are motivated. But even if they donât learning is a life-long endeavor. My son has a friend who is now in Law School. And I know other musicians who after conservatory did a post-bac program and applied to medical school. The discipline needed to succeed in conservatory is almost as important as the skills gained by taking random courses at a large university.
Music2023 are you more interested in universities because of the academic possibilities or the all-around experience for your son? I agree with StacJip that a stand-alone conservatory doesnât rule out the former. It will all sort itself out if your experience is anything like ours was, with college visits, conversations with teacher, and we found a nearby conservatory prep program that was invaluable. And, although my son did end up at a stand-alone conservatory, he wouldâve been happy at a program like Eastman too. For him, it was more about size, atmosphere, etc.
But I understand your concerns about overloading on AP classes. It can be challenging to lighten that load, especially when the other top students and your friends are all taking them. In our school, many of the AP classes almost have this mythic quality! The thing is, universities are looking for passionate students who, at some point (and I think itâs junior year) are focusing in on what excites them. A glut of AP classes doesnât tell the same story (or leave much time, as youâve pointed out).