<p>starting to make our plans for college visits for soprano D....it seems that many of these posts say that the most important factor in choosing a music school is the individual teachers....so, how would we be able to tell a decent vocal teacher from a good one from an excellent one??? Obviously all the bios sound terrific......and we aren't familiar with any of the names.....</p>
<p>And, when making arrangements for the 'sample lesson' during a college visit, how should we know whom to ask among the many teachers on faculty?</p>
<p>the following schools are on our radar:</p>
<p>U of Mich
Northwestern
Oberlin
Indiana
Case western/Cleveland
Cincinnati
Rice
Vanderbilt
Rochester
Ithaca
Bard
FSU</p>
<p>At Rice, Doctor King takes very few undergraduates, Kathy Kaun is retiring so the best one to take a sample from is Suzanne Mentzer, who is also excellent.</p>
<p>From what i’ve seen of doing this with both DS and DD, they will know. My son crossed names off of his list after one lesson. So did DD. Son put stars next to names and so did DD. Pretty simple process.</p>
<p>I agree with sagiter that the student will have a good sense if the instructor is someone that they want to work with for four years after the sample lesson. After my son’s sample lessons, there was one teacher that was a definite no, two that would have been good, and two that were in the excellent category. Those that made it into the excellent category for my son demonstrated a positive energy, seemed excited to be working with him, challenged him, and communicated their ideas very clearly. Their ideas for him embraced a variety of both technical and musical matters and a variety of immediate and long-term improvements.</p>
<p>Your other question (how to choose the original list of teachers to ask for trial lessons) is tougher. I agree with you that the oft-cited suggestion of reading bios is not terribly helpful; almost all good teachers have excellent sounding bios and I’m sure some terrible teachers also have excellent sounding bios! After all, the bios tend to focus on the performing credentials of the teacher, and performing credentials often do not translate into pedagogical skills.</p>
<p>My suggestion for narrowing the list: email total strangers! Use the acceptance lists here from the past four years or so to find vocalists that either went to or were accepted at schools that your daughter is interested in. Send private messages to these people asking for their recommendations. Even if they did not go to a school which accepted them, they will often have valuable information about the teachers at it (and often they loved a teacher at a school they chose not to go to, but either couldn’t go due to finances or chose not to go for other reasons). Everyone that I contacted from this forum was very helpful with their recommendations. </p>
<p>My son emailed friends who knew students at schools he was interested in and asked them to either give him email addresses or forward his request for information about teachers. He got some helpful information this way. Obviously everyone has their own opinion about a teacher, so we never made decisions on the basis of a single opinion. </p>
<p>We found that we could tell how reliable a student’s opinions were by how they backed them up and how they described them (i.e. we didn’t give tons of credence to the emails that went: “She’s awesome! He’s horrible blah blah.” but did give more credence to balanced descriptions that analysed a teacher’s strengths and weaknesses).</p>
<p>Something we did not try, but you may want to look into: you could contact the vocal departments and ask them if they could give you contact information for a current student so that you could get an insider’s view of the voice department. Besides asking about individual teacher’s strengths, you could ask about the vibe/climate of the department, the availability of performing opportunities and other factors.</p>
<p>D3 relied strongly on recommendations from her teacher and made sure to listen to suggestions from anybody in the field. She typically left a sample lesson with one of three results: (1) strongly enthusiastic, (2) pleasantly positive, (3) neutral. It had more to do with how she connected with the teacher than the specifics of technique or whatever being discussed in the lesson.</p>
<p>As usual, Violindad gives excellent advice - contact current students from past acceptance lists on CC. And don’t be shy about contacting multiple teachers at the same school. D always met with more than one teacher at each school. Not only could she identify the ones she “connected” with best but also gave her an idea of a backup plan in case her teacher was ill, on sabbatical, moved, etc. Very important to make detailed notes after each lesson so that they don’t start running together.</p>
<p>how do I find the acceptances from CC for the individual schools? And am I reading it right that there are suggestion to have multiple lessons on each visit? It does makes sense, but seems so tiring for a vocalist…</p>
<p>Do a search for acceptances from other years.</p>
<p>Yes, you are right that it can be a good thing to take a lesson from more than one instructor at a school. After investing all the time, money, and energy in getting to the school, it is worthwhile to get a lesson from two people. Sometimes, the second choice is surprisingly good (or the first choice not as good as anticipated or hoped for).</p>
<p>We had one particular experience during visits where D sang with head of dept and a teacher suggested by her vocal teacher at home. Neither was the right choice. There was a third teacher that, in retrospect, we should have met with. I heard lots of great comments from her students while we were there. Make the most of your time at each school. Visit classes, too.</p>
<p>OK…took me a bit to figure out going to the last page for the most complete list by names & by schools, but I got the names of many Ds who were accepted at many of the schools we will be looking at. So, thanks for the info…I guess I will start to contact some and see if they have any recommendations for teachers…</p>
<p>This site is so very informative! And exceedingly helpful…thanks</p>
<p>Just wanted to add a note about sample lessons. We are currently in the midst of audition season and we did set up sample lessons with most of the schools for which my son is auditioning. However, the first two auditions he did were at schools that we hadn’t scheduled a sample lesson. Surprisingly (to us) both studio teachers asked him if he could stay around and take a lesson with him that day after the auditions were over. I don’t know if this is standard practice but it was incredibly convenient and my son has now moved both studios up higher on his list. So don’t stress if you can’t squeeze in sample lessons with everyone before the auditions.</p>
<p>I do not think that is standard practice and it may be cause for cautious optimism if the teacher suggested the sample lesson after hearing the audition. After all, why suggest a sample lesson at that point if admission were not at least a possibility? If the suggestion was made before the teacher heard the audition, then you can’t really tell.</p>