<p>While the music school and conservatory websites should be a primary source of information for students interested in the various schools, these sites can sometimes be maddening since they can obscure what we might consider to be basic information. What are some of the pet peeves of past applicants and parents as well current and future applicants regarding the websites. </p>
<p>My first pet peeve is focused on composition applicants - Why do some schools make it so hard to determine if a composition applicant needs to perform an instrumental audition in addition to the submission of a portfolio of works.</p>
<p>My second goes to schools that don't make it easy to determine faculty by department.</p>
<p>Websites that don’t supply contact information–especially email addresses–for faculty. Even adjunct instrument faculty–they are all required to have school emails, they should be up on the website.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of organizations miss the point when it comes to websites. They have one just to have one, and don’t really realize the value that it has in informing people. </p>
<p>A few years ago a family member of mine who worked at a college well telling me about how the college was hiring this award winning website design company and paying them some rediculous amount of money to make their website. I’ve since looked at that website, it’s really pretty standard and looks like it was built using a standard template. It’s really quite terrible and has never been updated.</p>
<p>Website creation shouldn’t be a one time project that an organization pays big bucks for and then forgets. It should be almost a living breathing entity that is constantly updated and improved. And it really doesn’t take a high priced company to build one. Every teacher and administrator at the college should have his own space on the website and should be encouraged to have a fact filled mini-site that is constantly updated. The technology to do this is inexpensive and it should be fairly easy to learn for a college professor.</p>
<p>I’m fortunate enough that my son’s trumpet studio professor has about a six or eight page mini-site on his colleges website, the guy updates fairly often, provides detail audition information, a sylabus for both of the classes he teachers, links to his online material such as his audition manual, his studio training guidebook, his manual for new trumpet players, etc. He also has a student roster, links to trumpet sites, a list of required books and music for every level, a resources links page, a studio calender with upcoming events and lesson times for every student, even a group photo of his studio members, etc. </p>
<p>I really don’t understand why every administrator and professor doesn’t want to have all that type of stuff online.</p>
<p>Sites that bury audition repertoire requirements so that the viewer must click through a byzantine series of nested pages (often not connected to the pages listing technical specifications for prescreening, or links for audition sign-ups.) Why not put the prescreening, live audition, and technical requirements, and list of deadlines on the same page, or at least link to them from a single page?</p>
<p>I think some colleges just don’t have the bandwidth to update their websites regularly, especially music people. Be patient with them, and if you can’t find your answer, there is always a phone number you can call in admissions to ask questions.</p>
<p>Don’t get distracted by a website at a music school!</p>
<p>The websites of most colleges and universities (not all, but most) are controlled by and are a function of the marketing department. Many of them (again, not all) view the purpose of the school web presence as being the enticement of high school seniors and their parents to apply to the school. Actually providing support to their current community and or providing actual information to specific segments of the “market” (ie those of us looking for audition info, studio faculty contacts, etc) is at best a secondary function. Some schools have portals or intranets which handle the support to community functions, and sometimes prospective students are given access to these areas. Of the 10 schools my S applied to last year, I would say that only one of them provided good “information service”, and even that I view conditionally as we had to jump through some extra hoops to get access. The others were uniformly unhelpful.</p>
<p>Web sites for European schools which have different names for things than we do here and thus make it even more difficult to find even the simplest things, such as faculty within departments. I’m not saying that they need to change things to accommodate foreign applicants, but is it really necessary to bury things in nested pages so that one has to click on a dozen different links just to find out who is currently on faculty. Oh, and is it too much to ask for them to kindly remove the names of those who have been deceased for some years now?
And as if that wasn’t annoying enough, some of those same schools do not accept electronically submitted applications or letters of recommendation! That necessitates a lengthy appeal to those who are writing said letters and confusion as to when they have to be given to the student. Seriously, who would want to deal with all of that paper nowadays? And these are schools in capitol cities of major countries, not tiny ones in provincial burgs, go figure!</p>
<p>Trumpetguysmom, it varies from school to school as to who designs web content. Some universities have a uniform template throughout departments but in most universities department websites are controlled by the individual department, not a marketing committee. Conservatories are smaller and will generally have a single webmaster, but they are conservatories, after all,and should be able to present applicants with a navigable site. It’s the fragmented nature of schools that causes theses fragmented websites, a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. Individual departments have requirements, and there are also admissions requirements. Admissions departments should put effort into creating a clear path to enable prospective students to understand their requirements. The web interface isn’t just window dressing. It takes a lot of thought and work to come up with a website that works. Some schools do this very well. </p>
<p>On a positive note, anyone have examples from this year of admissions websites that were clear and informative?</p>
<p>Point Park’s website for the Conservatory of Performing Arts is my clear winner. So easy to find faculty bios, the required list of classes for the various degree programs and the performance schedule.</p>
<p>The absolute worst: Websites that show conflicting information! Is the application fee $75 or $100? Is the deadline 12/1 or 12/15? Vital information often change from year to year, and because the site is not maintained by a single employee or office, some information on some pages change, but often the overall parent site doesn’t, leading to some very confusing information.</p>
<p>Given the mess that Point Park got itself into last year with their MT acceptances, having their web site work well is a small step on the road to recovery!</p>
<p>And about web sites- it would be really nice if head shots of the profs could have been taken within the last two decades. Most of the VP profs use ancient pics that were taken in their “performing days”, which have long since vanished over the horizon!</p>