Where there’s a will there’s a way. You are well on your way to making your own future. Carry on!
Now I know what you mean about Miami looking good! Thank you so much for the heads up @XxMU51CxX !
Best of luck to you on the rest!
@XxMU51CxX , congratulations on your UMich acceptance! If you haven’t already been notified or checked, I saw that Wolverine Access now shows the UM-calculated EFC for financial aid. I think they only guarantee to meet need for in-state students but you can get a good idea of what the numbers are. I believe merits are coming out first week of April.
Great news, particularly about Michigan. Fingers crossed for the others. Thanks for posting about your experience with recorded auditions. I suspect that harp candidates, of whom there are fewer and for whom travel is particularly arduous, may have a better chance with recorded auditions. I am pretty sure this is not the case with certain instruments.
I am so glad to know your phone recording worked well. It makes me crazy to learn that parents feel they must invest thousands to record prescreening auditions. That sort of burden in a process that is already very expensive, often prohibitively, is terribly unfair.
I agree and confess to being guilty of perpetuating the trend, but it’s what teachers and music directors around here are recommending and from talking to the guys at the recording studio, they seem to be doing a brisk business every audition season. For us though, being a jazz horn prescreen, hiring the rhythm section (piano, bass, drums) cost more than the studio time. I was originally on the fence about that, but had to agree with my son that expecting 3 friends to learn 10 songs when they’re trying to prepare for auditions themselves was unreasonable.
Still, not quite “thousands”, but about $1K for 5 hours of studio time and a professional rhythm section (3 musicians). Didn’t have to pay for any extra sound engineering/mixing because you can’t edit prescreens. Note that the pro’s we hired were musicians my son knows, so while they took a fee, I think they gave him a big break from their usual session rates. His teacher didn’t attend the recording session, so the guys helped guide him through some of the songs. Overall, much smoother and a lot less stressful than rehearsing/recording with a peer group.
In the end, I think going the pro recording route only made a difference for one school, perhaps two. The pro rhythm section (comparable to hiring an accompanist) was definitely worth it.
We took the same approach @ScreenName48105 for my jazz guitarist S and spent about the same $. He originally wanted to ask high school friends to back him up but I’m not sure they would have had enough experience to truly support his playing. It ended up being a really great experience for my S, and it set a professional tone for how he approached his auditions.
We only spend about $250 on my D’s recording at her music school which had a recording studio in the main auditorium. But that was 5 years ago for a vocalist and we were in and out in less than an hour. Considering the time it would take for me to figure it out and do the takes, I felt that amt was worth it - and we still had BLACKBERRIES back then haha - remember those!! For grad school my D had a friend who had recording equipment record her and she did it in a classroom. Again I paid around the same amount. So don’t be afraid to check it out since in some cases its not that expensive.
BUT point well taken, you can do it at home with an iphone and get acceptances!! So a great way to save money.
@ScreenName48105 I actually got my official FA stuff and for OOS, it is very generous but sadly not close to enough. It is sadly not affordable with FA alone, I am really hoping I will get some sort of merit scholarship so it could seriously be in my reach.
For my son, out of state for University of Michigan, he got about $200 in financial aid! But then, over the course of a few weeks, he got substantial offers of music merit aid, and then academic merit aid, as well. Be patient.
My D was also accepted at U Mich using a recorded audition (BM in VP). It was her prescreen video (which Michigan did not require this year), so they had not seen it before. It was made at a professional studio, but we shared the time with 3 other seniors from her teacher’s studio. Each student had 30 minutes with the engineer and it cost less than $250, including his editing and the shared accompanist. I think we got a bargain!
@XxMU51CxX, if you don’t mind my asking, how close was your UMich EFC to FAFSA’s? I’m just curious how in-state compares to OOS with respect to FA and EFC. Surprisingly, for us (in-state), UMich calculated our EFC slightly lower than the FAFSA did; something I hadn’t expected from any school.
I had the same situation as yours @ScreenName48105 . My EFC was around 1k less than FAFSA’s, which I am not complaining about here 
I guess they do that for all admitted students
@SpiritManager Do you by any chance know how long after an acceptance at Michigan did you receive notification of merit scholarships?
The music merit came within two weeks, if I’m remembering right. And the academic a few weeks later. But it was 7 years ago now and my memory is hazy.