<p>Okay, now my patented advice for situations like these:</p>
<p>Take a deep breath…and realize that whatever you have chosen, it isn’t going to result in anyone dying or being forced to eat a sack of White Castle Hamburgers…</p>
<p>Seriously, you have made a life altering mistake by choosing the program you have, music isn’t get it right or die…if your S ends up regretting going there, transferring is a possibility, and it is likely once he has settled in that he will be happy. Judging a school by how they respond to you saying yes doesn’t say what the experience will be like there or about the quality of the school. Sure, there are programs that send all these e-mails about how they love having your student there, how they are excited you are coming, but it could be they are excited that an actually decent student wants to go there (btw, since I don’t know the programs you applied to nor would I want you to write them on a public message board,this is hypothetical) and once he gets there, finds out it isn’t that great an experience, the other kids are well below him, etc…the ‘great school’ might appear cold and indifferent, but when you get there, you find out it is great. </p>
<p>As GH said, schools around this time of the year are overloaded, they are involved in figuring out grad students and undergrad, and it is possible to get lost in the crowd, my S had an issue with that with his studio assignment at one school. I also remember what it was like dealing with any college, and quite frankly, college bureaucracies in general have the reputation of dealing with government bureaucrats…so the lack of response could indicate they simply are scrambling to get things done by May1st, and are simply overwhelmed, so there isn’t time to give out greetings and such. Could also be that the school’s bureaucracy stinks, too, but the rest of the program may be fantastic.</p>
<p>" Immediately, I got emails from caring instructors and people in the “business” saying we made a mistake. "</p>
<p>I would be very, very careful about opinions like these, because they are matters of opinion that may or may not reflect reality. Music is like anything else, and there are a lot of people out there who may have personal biases (including myself). With schools with names, there are people who spend a lot of time bashing the institution, sometimes for legitimate concerns (teachers living in the dark ages, lack of reality, attitude of the students who go there), other times quite honestly it can be sour grapes, of people who didn’t get in there and immediately tell you the school is horrible (meanwhile, if they had gone there, they would be singing its praises), or went there, ended up not achieving what they wanted, and are bitter…</p>
<p>And another person who went to the same program, studied with the same teacher, loved the experience <em>shrug</em>…the music business is a small world, but it is also one full of egos and spats and feuds and who knows what. Teachers, rather than seeing fellow teachers as colleagues, can see them as rivals and spend a lot of time bashing other teachers to make themselves feel good; a teacher at program A can spend a lot of time bashing the teachers at program B, probably because they have an inferiority complex or feel like the teachers at program B get all the attention, you name it. </p>
<p>Sometimes, too, people mean well, but they are repeating what they have heard, rather than what they know. It is always wise to ask why they feel the way they do, how do they know it is the way they say it is, why do they feel that way…and if they say “well, everyone knows school X is like that”, take it with a grain of salt, if they say “well, I know someone who went there, and they didn’t like it”, take it with more, and if they say “well, I went there, I studied with teacher X, and it was horrible” give it some credence, but also ask yourself if it was the school or the person…I’ll give you an example of where I give some credence to what I was told, I have been told by people who both teach and are working musicians that they don’t like working with graduates of a certain program, or rather some of them, and gave specific details, that the school often seems to have these kids that think they are god’s gift to the instrument (talking violin here), they are going to be great soloists, and think working in ensembles is demeaning, don’t think it is worth their time, don’t work well with people because of their ego, etc…and there are teachers at these programs who quite honestly I believe inculcate this kind of thinking…the same people, though, also pointed out that the same schools have teachers who encourage chamber and ensemble playing and students who love music, work hard and are great to work with…</p>
<p>There are also the obverse to this, that believe if you don’t go to a name school, like Juilliard or Curtis, you won’t be able to do anything , and that is not true, as well (I think you need to be at or near the caliber to get into those programs to eventually do well, but that is a different story), but there are legions of kids, especially from Asia, where they believe the name of the school does the magic and they will tell you that…and that is equally false.</p>
<p>In the end, all you can do is go by your gut. My S faced decisions on where to go, agonized over it, had some choices to make, and ended up being very happy with his decision, but he agonized over it, questioned it, so it goes with the territory…and yes, he faced people telling him “you turned down X to go to Y? Bad decision, Y is where it is at…”…</p>
You can’t judge the quality of a car dealership’s service department based on the solicitousness of their sales staff.</p>