<p>Cartera45- thanks. You are right re no Peabody, yes Eastman but she had two sample lessons at Eastman as mentioned above. Bookmama, thanks, too. Yep, I know about even many Met finalists are from the hinterlands. I didn’t think Fleming even applied undergrad Eastman since she was mostly interested invocal jazz and presumably education since I think she went to music ed at Potsdam… But I’m not an expert. Ironically as the day grows older, she is showing more resilience with this— maybe temporary denial, don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. Thanks</p>
<p>Lastroseofsummer–it sounds like you are dealing beautifully which in the long run may be what counts</p>
<p>Westminster Choir College is a great choice for undergrad. They have a huge voice faculty, many with reputations for being very nurturing for the young voice. My D decided against the conservatory route, but had she decided to do that, Westminster would have been her choice based on the advice of many.</p>
<p>DD’s HS voice teacher who was a university voice professor reallllly wanted her to go to Westminster for all the reasons catera indicates and they offered her a great scholarship. But in the end she wanted more of a university experience.</p>
<p>My son did not pass at Purchase or MSM, but did pass all his other prescreens (guitar jazz). We were very surprised about Purchase. Never imagined he wouldn’t pass there. Not too surprised about MSM, given the size of the undergraduate guitar program.</p>
<p>For those still waiting for Purchase, I learned via email from the conservatory coordinator that only those invited to a live audition would be receiving an email (on Thursday morning, she said “in the next 48 hours”), and that the declines would be coming only via regular mail from Admissions at some nebulous later date. </p>
<p>Yesterday, when no email had come, I replied again to politely explain that those of us who are not auditioning need prompt results just as badly as those who are, because we are already traveling to New York that week for other auditions and need to plan our return (Purchase was the last date in our case). The woman was nice enough to write back that my son was not on the audition list, and that it was an extremely competitive year, blah blah blah. </p>
<p>Anyway, I mention this because some of you may be in the same boat. How ridiculous for them to make the “no’s,” many of whom still have travel plans to make, wait for a snail mail letter from Purchase College Admissions. No idea how long that will take. Why not email everyone? At least she was nice enough to tell me.</p>
<p>jazz/shreddermom: That’s horrible. That’s how UMich does their notifications, and not just for the School of Music. People who didn’t receive confirmation emails already knew a rejection/deferral was coming in the mail. The wait for the official rejection must be horrible… I’m just hoping this long wait doesn’t mean rejections for me.</p>
<p>And unless they’ve received one, most people don’t know that the emails have already gone out. For them to withhold information they could politely email (like MSM was nice enough to do, much as we hated the content) just means it’s harder to plan one’s travel. It’s unnecessary and inconsiderate.</p>
<p>Thank you all. Catera and sopranonmom: my D just appliedto Westminster; she had somehow not done so before because of the perception that the social decorem there is rather restrictive, attention to social rules which
are judged to be rather unimportant to my freewheeling D. Is that true?</p>
<p>I am not surprised about Purchase, as that’s they are not very polite, or even friendly even on initial contact. The attitute matches the rather “cold” look of the campus in general! Eastave, sending you a PM!</p>
<p>eastave - I have never heard that about Westminster. My D and I visited twice - once for a sample lesson and once for the audition and we didn’t get that impression. There is a dad who posts here whose daughter is a sophomore there. I’m sure a search would produce his screen name and you can PM him.</p>
<p>eastave, the poster ray198 is the one cartera45 is referencing. The poster theantidiva is also at Westminster according to the '09 Master List thread.</p>
<p>You all are so helpful. So supportive. BTW as D was applying t WCC she pulled up hee common app “personal statement” to rework and I was amazed to see some substandard grammar… even in a child who did a decent 680 in SAT writing. I do wonder if this might gave contributed to Ithaca’s decision… probably not, huh?</p>
<p>I am a VP major applying for MM this year. </p>
<p>I’ve passed pre-screening rounds at NEC and MSM, but didn’t pass Mannes. </p>
<p>This is weird to me since both my teacher and I thought Mannes was not as competitive as NEC or MSM…</p>
<p>Is something like this supposed to happen a lot?</p>
<p>aychoi84, if you read through the threads I think you will see that there is NOTHING predictable about audition based admissions. In DD’s school and studio there is a really large MM class every other year. So if you audition the year they are all there for their second year, there are very few spaces and maybe none for your voice type. The other year there are lots of spaces. Your quality would not have changed, just the spaces available. </p>
<p>You don’t know how many are auditioning for how many spots on what voice type compared to how many openings there are. It is a huge variable by school.</p>
<p>I haven’t logged onto CC for a long time but it’s great to see this thread and all of those going through the same experience we are. My daughter (violin performance) sent applications to Juilliard, Curtis, MSM, Yale SOM (certificate program), CIM, Indiana, NEC, Peabody and Colburn. She has received auditions from everyone except Colburn and Yale, whom we have not heard from yet. We are relieved that so far everything is well-spaced and there are not conflicts. She has decided to drop Curtis because of the low chance for admissions combined with not wanting to stay in Philadelphia (where we live). Not to mention having to juggle six extra movements. For most of the other auditions, she can use the same core rep, with a few stray extra pieces here and there. She had her first audition at IU yesterday. We were disappointed that the two teachers she’s interested in were not on the panel.</p>
<p>“Faculty also wise to sound of premature voice maturation, i.e. using a technique which suppresses the natural voice, taught to students to get their voice to sound bigger, but which instills bad habits, hard to unlearn.”</p>
<p>I have heard the same from the head of one of the local conservatories, that a frequent comment during auditions is “I don’t want to have to spend the next four years un-teaching them everything they have been taught”. He suggested that my daughter (or any serious voice student) not begin lessons until she was 15/16 years old at the earliest, not to sing any arias at auditions - what the faculty looks for is a good basic voice that seems to have potential, and (critically) that the teacher can work with the student to reach that potential. Voice, and auditioning for a vocal performance program, is absolutely different from instrumental performance in this respect - the auditioners are focus on potential and teachability for the former, but the latter does require a great deal of current skill.</p>
<p>This refers to undergrad applicants only, of course; post-grad is another kettle of pizza entirely!</p>
<p>“It was hard to tell in most instances what percentage of the applicants passed pre-screening, but I would guess that on an average it was 4%.”</p>
<p>Seems low - did you mean 40%? The data I got from Northwestern (no prescreen percentage, as this is their first year prescreening) was that their vocal program had an <em>acceptance</em> rate of ~8-10%. Somewhere around 320 applicants, ~30-35 admits, ~20-25 of those are attending this year.</p>
<p>“So I guess the math is that depending on the school, that where there is pre-screening, maybe 1/4 up to perhaps most of the AUDITIONING vocalists may get in.”</p>
<p>Could be, but again this will depend on how fine the pre-screening is. </p>
<p>“This is very rough, and I honestly think the chances are better for males than females.”</p>
<p>Yup, unfortunate since it is my daughter who is applying . . .</p>
<p>“I think one of the main functions of the pre-screen are to remove the applicants who don’t have a clue what is expected or required. You can see even in these forums that there are plenty of applicants who decide at the end of their junior year that chorus or the school musical or camp singalongs are fun and maybe they should take some private lessons, and these students make up some of the 500-700 applications.”</p>
<p>Actually, the “bad” path you describe is <em>exactly</em> what the head of a local (but well respected) conservatory told me that we SHOULD do, that we should NOT start my daughter (or any serious voice student) in private lessons before she was 15/16 years old (say, junior year or so), but rather to just to sing in a chorus or the like until that point. In most cases, the auditioners do not want to hear - or, more importantly, accept - children who have had voice lessons from the time that they were 9, who come into the audition singing “Queen of the Night”, etc. The teacher does not want to have to spend the next four years un-teaching the student what they have learned, and hoping that their voice is not already irreparably damaged. There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general rule.</p>
<p>My daughter finally got word from her Yale certificate prescreening-- no. But the letter was kind of odd:</p>
<p>"Thank you for your application to the Yale School of Music. Your interest in the violin program is shared with talented young artists from throughout the world, and each application is seriously considered by a panel of distinguished faculty members.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we are unable to grant you admission to the Yale School of Music for the 20102011 academic year. Best wishes for continued success in your musical pursuits."</p>
<p>It sounds like a rejection letter <em>after</em> an audition, not a decision not to grant an audition. </p>
<p>Yale wasn’t the top of her list, but it’s still disappointing.</p>
<p>for aychoi84: Mannes is a smaller program than either MSM or NEC and it is quite a bit more selective. MSM accepts a large number of students, and performance opportunities are limited. Mannes has more of a cap, and only those students are admitted for whom they can (and want to) provide performance venues. Many of the MSM graduate students in voice find (and pay for) additional instructional and performance situations away from MSM. Be sure to ask questions about the attrition rate at NEC. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>A few of you have mentioned “Faculty also wise to sound of premature voice maturation, i.e. using a technique which suppresses the natural voice, taught to students to get their voice to sound bigger, but which instills bad habits, hard to unlearn.”</p>
<p>I’m curious, how does one know that a voice is using a technique to suppress the natural voice? I’ve heard some voices that I thought mature for their age, but I don’t think most of them sound artificial. So, how do you tell, or is it obvious only to the expert?</p>