Rejection hurts.

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>Hi everyone! This is my first thread, but I just wanted to give a place to talk about rejections and things like that. It's stressful, this whole process. I've just received my first rejection from a prescreen, and it was my first choice. I've heard back from two other schools and those were positive. The thing is, one of the schools I got a yes from is better than the one I got the no from. To be honest, I'm confused and hurt. I thought that my audition was good enough to at least get an audition, but I guess not.
Anyway, this is for other students (or parents) to talk about rejections and things. </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>So sorry, DBrownMT1. Rejections are never easy, but please keep in mind that there often is no rhyme nor reason to pre-screenings and/or auditions results–it’s hard to know what screeners are looking for or what the reasons for selection/rejection might be. You will encounter this again and again–it’s just the nature of the profession. Passing prescreenings for two other schools is definitely worth patting yourself on the back for! So now you need to just re-think the plan–these other schools must have something for you, or you wouldn’t have applied. So now start working hard for those auditions and don’t stress over the other–it will all work out in the end!</p>

3

<p>Prescreens are a crap shoot. They can be dependent upon the quality of the recording and some people just don’t come across as well as they do in person. Maybe the school just didn’t need another applicant on your instrument or of your voice type. It’s been said here time after time, year after year and we’ve all known kids who got through the prescreens and even auditions to top schools but who were turned down by lesser establishments.
Music is an art and thus is subjective, so take a deep breath, pick yourself up and get on with the audition season. You’re doing great with 2 “yeses” so far!</p>

4

<p>Thank you Clarimom and Mezzo’sMama!! It really helps. I’m definitely trying to direct my attention away from the rejections and into the auditions!</p>

5

<p>It is natural to feel rejection hard, you put your heart into it, you think you played well…and you get rejected. College admissions often boil down to all kinds of weird things, in acdemics a kid could have 2400 SAT, 4.0 unweighted GPA, AP’s, EC’s, etc, etc, and get rejected from Harvard or Yale because they come from California or NY or some state that has a lot of kids of this caliber applying…guy reading your essay didn’t like the use of the word since to mean because, ya never know:).</p>

<p>With music, it is doubly so, because there is no real way to know what happened. It could be you were applying on flute, and they only had 1 opening and had 15 great kids applying to grad school, you could be on violin and half the top finishers in the Menuhin applied that year…you sent in a pre screen, and the people looking at the video didn’t like the style of playing, they were Russian school, you were taught franco-belgian, poof…the person’s chicken salad sandwich was crappy, put them in a bad mood, or they had cable tv, and you don’t get in…</p>

<p>In all seriousness, it is arbitrary, and yeah, there can be, on auditions, reasons you don’t know why you didn’t get accepted. My S went through that, he auditioned at one school, he said he never played better, and was bummed out cause he didn’t get past their first round, meanwhile, he auditioned and got the attention of a fantastic teacher, whose reputation is as good or better than any of the teachers at the school that rejected him, and he got into that guys studio…I also am pretty certain that you could play like heifetz on some auditions (using violin simply because I know it) and not get into a program, because the open slots pretty much were reserved for students the teachers already knew…friend of my son’s who won one of the biggest of the international competitions and is at a stage where he is close to having artists management, didn’t get into one of the top schools, didn’t get past the first round of the auditions, figure that one out…</p>

<p>Get used to it, there is no real science to auditions and often not all that much that seems logical…add into that bias, an audition panel cranky cause they haven’t eaten, a school auditioning when they don’t even have open slots, a school where the slots may be de facto taken by students teachers want in there, and it all adds up to heartbreak and frustration…and even shadier things may be going on…</p>

<p>On the other hand, this is how music works, for all the claims of fair auditioning, of a process based on deliberation, it isn’t, so much of it is serendipity, being in the right place at the right time, knowing people, etc…and it will be like that as a pro, too. </p>

<p>It also could be the school that rejected you wouldn’t have been a good fit, with the school that rejected my S, he realizes had he gone there he would have been miserable, knowing what he does of the culture there and so forth, while he is very happy with where he got in, though take it from me, my wife and I were ready to flay him when he went through the audition that rejected him, he couldn’t see the forrest for the trees, he had a teacher who has his pick of students from all over the world telling him he would like to teach him and he was upset because he didn’t get out of the audition with the other school…</p>

<p>In other words, look forward to the ones that worked, and now put the effort into acing the audition. Keep in mind that it may not work out the way you thought, my S was fully prepared to take a gap year if the auditions hadn’t worked out for him, and take it all as simply part and parcel with being in music:)</p>

6

<p>musicprnt and others summed it up. </p>

<p>But I also think it is VITAL that as a young artist you learn to not let rejections throw you or get you twisted out of shape. The most successful artists are those who move confidently forward ignoring those who try to tell them not to. </p>

<p>Many great well known successful people talk about rejection. Rejection is part of life. Disapproval is part of life. If you read a lot of biographies or watch movies about famous artists you will consistently hear them talk about rejections. Gehry talked about being told that he would never make it as an architect in a film. A favorite artist of mine, William Kentridge, talked about how he failed at film school and in art school. He ended up becoming famous for his animated hand drawn stop motion films. Many paintings that later would become famous and well loved were initially torn apart by critics. Obviously you have worked hard and your hard work has payed off based on your other acceptances. I would move on and continue to focus on being an artist.</p>

7

<p>Great posts and advice so far. We saw this last year during audition season for my son. It seems that all the kids ended up at the program they fit into the best. Fitting into the lifestyle and general philosophy of the studio is as important as anything.</p>

8

<p>I also think it’s okay to acknowledge that it does hurt. You will feel better after some time passes and you refocus on your new trajectory. Hurt is only problematic when you don’t let go. My friend’s daughter, who just finished her first semester at university that is great by any objective standard, is still stewing over a rejection from a higher-ranked school that accepted her friends. She (and her parents) are still talking about how her scores, etc. were higher than the friends’. I wish they would stop so she can get on with her life and enjoy what’s in front of her (maybe they only do this when she is home for break around her high school friends.) Anyway, feel it: it’s part of life. The lows make the highs even better. But then let it go.</p>

9

<p>When I auditioned for Oberlin, a girl who had gone to my high school showed me around. I mentioned that I had just gotten my acceptance to Northwestern and she was so jealous! She wanted to go there but had not been accepted. She had attended their summer program, was a minority and played an instrument that was in short supply. Maybe her grades/scores were not so good, I don’t know. As it turns out, I was rejected from Oberlin but went to Northwestern. And we had waaaay too many freshmen in our studio. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to these decisions.</p>

10

<p>And don’t forget…in voice it is frequently a numbers game. D encounters this in the professional world all the time. Why would she be invited to audition at 5-6 Major “A” houses and not even get the time of day at a Podunk “C” house? “C” house only has the time and money to hear 100 singers, yet they are getting 2000 applicants because young singers might think it’s their best option for a first job. Though they are still happy to take your $50, with their limited resources they may cut off the serious consideration to screening tapes once they meet the 100 mark. And yes…schools and opera companies get thousands, not hundreds, of applicants.</p>

<p>Just remember that accepting rejections with aplomb is part of the battle. You will be auditioning for parts in schools, in summer programs, in YAPS, at grad school and when you graduate you will be spending an inordinate amount of time auditioning and traveling to auditions. You are not perfect for every job or part out there no matter how well you sing. And rather than worry about why someone else got the part or job, just work harder and learn to deal with your own art, your own stregnths and your own limitations.</p>

11

<p>If someone asked me what one of the biggest traits needed to make it in music (besides work ethic and talent for the instrument), it would be having a thick skin. Teachers who seem to think their goal in life is to rip their students apart but not put them back together, conductors who seem to have been toilet trained at gunpoint, difficult fellow musicians, you name it…then, of course, we have critics…Bach was considered an old fart in his time (his kids thought so, too:), his violin sonatas and partitas nearly ended up as wrapping paper in a butcher shop, and Stravinsky faced rioting after the premiere of “Rite of Spring”, and had Rimsky Korsakov call him “a good orchestrator” (though the riots after the premiere were suspicious, methinks it was more Diaghliev then a real riot, and the music actually wasn’t what people were that upset about)…</p>

<p>it is very easy to take it personally, to assume it means you are horrible, etc, when in reality it is simply how things played out…like I said, think about my S’s friend, who is one of the rising young violinists out there, who had one of the premiere schools reject him just before he won a major, major competition…:)</p>

12

<p>I didn’t pass prescreening for two schools (not top choice) but still hurt. Then I thought about it for a while and realized that I still have auditions at other places that are fantastic and I’m going to go there and do my best! Things usually work out for the best in the end :)</p>

13

<p>When my daughter went through this process several years ago, at one of the q & a sessions she went to she was told that school x prepares you for your life’s work… which is auditioning. As a performer you will always be auditioning for a role, for a performance slot, for a solo and so on and so on. She had a friend who dropped out of college to become an actor and gave it up as she couldn’t handle the audition process. I had a colleague who recently left theatre because he is not currently easy to be cast… too old for the romantic lead and too young to be a character actor.
D has had her share of disappointments and frustrations over the past few years. She gets rejected more than she gets cast or hired but she keeps at it and keeps going and picks up many theatre/music related skills and confidence along the way. She has a singing gig coming up in a few weeks in which she is also composing music that she will be performing as well as for an instrument that she doesn’t play for a performer who lives in another city and will only meet when she comes to NYC for rehersal a few days before the performance. It is a stretch but she is pretty confident that she can do this gig.
So much is beyond your control. In her case, she a short blonde, coloratura soprano… but if they only want tall brunettes… she can have the greatest audition in the world but she won’t get cast.</p>

14

<p>Great point bookmama22! It’s important to remember that so much is not within your control; if a school only has an opening for one flutist, for example, and they’ve agreed to hear 25 already, there may not be room in the schedule for another audition. The same goes for singers- if a program has many lyric sopranos and is in need of dramatic voices, then the lighter voice types may be passed over. If one class has almost all females and is in desperate need of tenors and baritones, the class the following year will be front-loaded with male auditionees.
You just do your very best and move on!</p>