This is a great attitude!
@glassharmonica - thank you - I will take that. I wonder if there is also a dark side to the attitude, such as it being easy to settle for less than we could have achieved, because we know we can come to terms with anything.
There was something about S and his 2 AP classes this year, his junior year (Chem and APUSH). S really did put a lot into them, and the classes really did interrupt his time for practicing - potentially real damage according to any normal, rational thought process. He was able to keep up with his weekly rehearsals at the external jazz program and maybe 4-5 days per week practice bass for an hour - that was it.
But S put in the effort to really dominate the courses.He says he left each exam feeling satisfied - a proper mixture of preparation and challenge. He felt he knew everything and was not short on his preparations. I am now more convinced he can take something big and stay focused on it. We then talked about preparing for college auditions and how having that same level of preparation would be a good state to be in. So, he did get some exercise in preparing for something heavily. Now that those two classes are basically done with assignments, his new lightly loaded schedule is in effect, and he is turning his attention to musical preparations. He outlined his plans for practice and prep. I reminded him of a couple other areas to think about. As far as the amount of time that will be spent on ACT prep - it will be “targetted” - a look at what is needed, how much margin of error in our calculations, and how much study we think is needed to cover that. It looks like a 28 will probably do the trick, so maybe he will dedicate his senior year study hall (never had a study hall before) to ACT prep until the tests are over and then use the study hall for concentrated jazz listening or homework.
@goforth:
I agree with GlassHarmonica on that one, in the end you have to trust your gut feeling, and more importantly, choosing the path you didn’t take, analyzing it, isn’t worth it, what it comes down to in the end is making decisions then making them work, learning from the experience. Looking back with my son, I have no regrets that we ended up homeschooling (despite the gloom and doom chorus claiming it would hurt him, he wouldn’t get the ‘wonderful’ experience of High School, etc), I don’t regret that he didn’t have the crazy academic load kids are taking. Likewise, while my son does wonder if maybe another alternative would have worked better in other ways, he also knows being where he is with the teacher he is with has offered unique things. It is funny, there was an evaluation recently of the Frost poem on taking the road less travelled, and what people assume it is saying is that you should never fear taking the path others wouldn’t, when in reality what the last stanza is saying is that when you get down the road, you tell yourself that the path you took was the path less travelled and in looking back, you tell yourself it was the right decision…and it probably was, if not for some reasons, for others. If I had chosen to go to University of Chicago rather than NYU, I wouldn’t have met my wife, I wouldn’t have my son, and while in some ways going to U of Chicago would have made my life easier, put me on a different path, and that is a thought I would rather not harbor:)
Nice reading of The Road Not Taken, @musicprnt – the most misunderstood poem in America http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem-in-america/
@glassharmonica:
That includes a lot of English lecturers, that poem came up in one of my college classes and the person teaching the class said it was about the New England mindset, Frost was saying you should be that rock solid individualist, when it was nothing of the sort lol…I often wonder if poets and writers, when seeing what literature professors do to their works, are tempted to haunt them silly 
(makes me appreciate Mark Twain even more, his preface to “Huck Finn”, that says 'PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot" by order of the author0.
An essay on luck with the same idea, different poem: http://www.violinist.com/blog/karenrile/20141/15462/
My son is a junior and we just signed up for Kaplan test prep. It was my son’s idea. I read this whole thread and was very happy to see a student accepted into USC with a 26 ACT - a bit shocked too. Everything we have read pegs scores much higher. We visited there and my son fell in love but was worried about being accepted. They made it clear that you have to be accepted to the university before you are considered for Thornton. He also worried about the cost so he wanted to nail his PSAT and SATs to hope for good academic merit money. That would help us at some of the other schools he may apply to - Belmont, NYU and Frost.
I understand that Berklee is an entirely different situation. No academic money - only talent scholarships.
If you’re applying to a talent school I can see not prepping for the tests, But otherwise these scores are worth big money
PS - my son also spent a crazy amount of time on that APUSH class last year but that credits he’ll get saves us money so I told him to think of it as a part time job.
.
@jerseyparents:
If someone is applying where there is the possibility of academic merit aid, then things like tests scores and GPA can help with the cost. Of the schools you are thinking of applying to, NYU has the well deserved reputation of not giving much aid and it is among the most expensive as well. Not saying don’t apply there, you never know, but they are not known for generous aid, or even decent.
One note, with music schools inside universities they tend to be more forgiving with test scores and the rest of the admissions numbers game for the academic admit, programs like U Mich, where it is a tough academic admit (and other similar programs) if you are going in there for an academic degree, will relax the standards for music students, that I am sure of. However, as others have pointed out, having strong academics could lead to academic merit scholarships, which often IME are better than the music merit scholarships they will give. The one caveat with grades and test scores, especially for instrumental majors, is to balance it out, if getting high test scores means losing practice time, or if taking the full academic load means difficulty with practicing, then ramp back the academics to allow more time for practicing, because getting great test scores and such at the expense of playing level can lead the kid from not beign admitted to the music school, in reality it is more like get admitted to the music school, then you also will need to get admitted academically.
Good point, @musicprnt - in our case it would take an enormous amount of time and prep for my son to get his test scores into a range for academic merit and I’m not even sure it would be possible for him even with lots of prep. For his top choices, academic merit either doesn’t exist or isn’t very likely for anyone, so for him, using the time for practice and homework rather than test prep is the better choice. He took a three hour crash course to learn ACT strategies, watched some Youtube video tips, and did a few practice tests, but that was it. Since I am the OP on this thread I will update to say that DS’s June ACT scores were not as high as he had hoped, and we don’t yet have the result of the Sept ACT, which he felt went better. He is trying the SAT (with almost no prep) on Saturday because he can’t take the Oct ACT due to back to back marching band competitions that day. His scores may not be good enough for two schools on his list unless his Sept scores are better (he is below their middle 50% on test scores, though his GPA is solid) but neither one is among in his top 5 choices anyway, so I’m not sure he cares that much. His scores should be fine for his “safeties,” especially with the strong GPA.
On the other hand, I know of a musician with great test scores who got a full ride to Miami/Frost a few years ago, so for those musicians who are capable of getting top scores given some prep it can be worth the effort as long as it doesn’t cut into practice time too much.
My son also dropped APUSH before junior year even started after he looked at all he wanted to accomplish musically during junior year and realized how much practice time it would take to do those things. That turned out to be a wise decision as he accomplished all but one of his goals and even got some additional musical opportunities and awards he hadn’t expected. He also was much less stressed than his peers.
So I guess my long-winded summary based on personal experience as well as what I’ve read from lurking here for years is that the balance of test prep time and academic rigor vs. practice time and music opportunities depends on the kid, the schools/goals, and how critical academic merit is to the family’s ability to afford college.