<p>One of the most important factors for a student looking to choose a music school is the professor they will be working with.</p>
<p>Thought I would start a thread where people would post some techniques they used to find out more about a teacher.</p>
<p>Obviously researching performance career, listening to recordings if available and asking your current teacher or music director.</p>
<p>But take it a step further and list the other ways. Especially ones that can be used to narrow the choices before you start traveling and visiting or taking lessons with them.</p>
<p>Gather up all the bios you can find from symphony and college web sites for teachers of your instrument or voice. Most of them will list their principal teachers. Create a "family tree" chart from that information. You may need to go back two or three generations, but you will probably find between two and five people who are the "ancestors" of a high percentage of the current crop of teachers and symphony players.</p>
<p>Many of these common ancestors are still alive and at least some of them are still teaching. Look for all possible opportunities to meet them at a summer camp, a workshop, a master class, a "meet the artist" event, wherever. Ask their opinion on where the best programs are. For best results, do this in a one-on-one situation rather than in a group.</p>
<p>The music community is pretty small. Word of mouth is the most reliable source. My D learned a lot by asking fellow students and also asking other auditioneers during the visits. You are looking for techniques that give advance information without arranging a lesson. The advance information was only minimally helpful. It is the lesson that makes the decision.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no substitute for that live, in-person, one-on-one lesson when deciding on a teacher, but we did find advance information more than minimally helpful. After she hit a plateau with her first teacher, we researched other options for my daughter. We turned up one name in particular that did not come from word of mouth or from the local professionals and that (as the poet says) has made all the difference.</p>
<p>The lesson has been very important in my D's college search. Talking to current students and sitting in on master classes (while visiting the school) have also helped.</p>
<p>Word of mouth worked here too. We talked to many professional musicians we know, DS's private teacher (principal in our symphony), orchestra directors, festival directors. Then we started a round of visits to places where DS even talked to THOSE folks about his interests. Not surprisingly, the same names came up again and again. We also heard not positive news about some folks...again and again. The music world is not all that big...most folks know the applied faculty at many colleges. DS also talked to friends who were a year or two older than him and again...some of the same names came up. We visited 8 schools with him and he took private lessons with 10 instructors in all PRIOR to even submitting an application anywhere. One piece of advice...if you plan to take private lessons, begin early. Many teachers do NOT offer them in the spring semester at all. At some places we had to pay and at others we did not.</p>
<p>We, too, found out a great deal by word of mouth. We live in a university town and we tapped a couple of our local professors for recommendations. Both were familiar with my son and his playing. He also asked around at summer music camps. The same names were frequently mentioned. He also chose his summer camps with an eye to being able to meet and work with potential teachers. That practice has continued through his undergrad years as he investigates teachers for grad school.</p>
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<p>He also chose his summer camps with an eye to being able to meet and work with potential teachers>></p>
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<p>DS did the same. In fact, he eventually chose to study with the applied teacher he had worked with at Tanglewood for two summers and really had a LOT of confidence in....and this teacher was "one of those names" that kept coming up over and over as a great studio teacher and trumpet player. DS has not been disappointed. He has also been to summer programs while in college and keeps in touch with a couple of those teachers too...with an eye towards grad school...</p>
<p>I was thinking more about the process of narrowing down the list of which professors would make the short list that you might interview or take a lesson with group. Once you get to the last 8-12 the personal time is the closer. But you can't meet with 20, 30 or 50.</p>
<p>Those second tier schools that are not as easy to get information about, the schools that make the if I dont pass the audtion at my top schools list.</p>
<p>It is difficult to get info on people at the lesser known schools, yet I believe that there are likely some gems out there. Again, I think your best bet is word of mouth. It also might be that if you have a list of 20 or more that you eliminate some of those for other criteria. For example, if you are a string player interested in chamber music, you want to go some place where you can pursue that. As school may have a great violin teacher, but if they don't really have any chamber music programs then you might want to scratch it off the list. Choose your own criteria. Once you get a list of schools that have the programs you want AND teachers you are interested in, you can start investigating teachers at those schools and go from there.</p>
<p>Email them. See what sort of response you get. That can be telling or not depending on whether the person uses email as a form of communication. Write a letter to the instructor. See what you get.</p>
<p>It is certainly true that there are many good teachers at 2nd and even 3rd tier schools. However, it is my impression that these schools are considered to be "ranked" lower because they do not have the same overall strength as the top schools. I can speak most credibly from my son's (a brass player) experience. He is primarlily interested in orchestral performance and identified a number of excellent professors who teach at schools with relatively weak strings programs, thereby limiting the ability of the orchestras to play the repertiore that he is expecting to learn at the college level. So, if your son or daugher plays in a good youth orchestra or has attended any of the intensive summer programs, they will probably not be happy with even the best teacher at a school where the ensembles have only one or two concerts per semester and work on repertoire that is way below their current level. If this information is not available on a school's website, I suggest emailing conductors to inquire about concert schedules and programs, and using that information to narrow the list.</p>