Long story, sorry!
My son is scheduled for an audition at a large state school on Feb. 16th. The cello professor there is supposed to be great according to people here on College Confidential. My son reached out to him back in September, sharing a solo performance he did, and he received positive feedback from the professor.
Problem: The professor is very hard to get in touch with and doesn’t respond to many emails. My son signed up for the audition a long while ago, and my son had reached out several times to try and schedule a trial lesson. He finally heard back from the professor in mid-December who said, “Yes, let’s have a trial lesson around the time of your audition, but I’ll be on tour during your audition, so can you come on XX or XX dates?” This school is 6 hours away, so we have to plan to get a hotel, etc. etc.
The problem is, all my son’s audition had already been scheduled by then, so no, he could not do either date for a trial lesson. So, he emailed the professor back and suggested another date for the trial lesson and audition, but he never heard back. Meanwhile, the school music dept. called, and my son told them about the situation, so they penciled in the possible new audition date. Now he’ll need to call them on Monday (because that date was to next Saturday) and tell them that no, he never heard back from the professor so he needs to keep the original audition date.
So my question: Is it worth pursuing this school or should we just drop? The cello prof won’t even be there; my son’s never had a lesson with him; the school is financially out of reach unless he gets a big music scholarship. He’s been admitted to the school and people have said that this cello teacher is great, but I’m thinking, how can they determine scholarship if the cello professor isn’t even there when he auditions?
Should he just drop the school and move on? Should he audition and then try to have a trial lesson in March, or is that too late to determine scholarship?
Advice is welcome!
Depends upon how much he wants to attend that school and what alternatives he has.
We won’t know what’s affordable until he’s done with auditions and scholarships have been offered (which I presume will be in late March/early April).
It’s next to where his brother lives, so that’s a bonus because he’s close to his brother, but he hasn’t met the teacher and hasn’t visited, so he has no way of knowing if he likes the school or not.
At this point, he’s only met three teachers. He’s been admitted to 7 schools, but without the financial packages/scholarships, we know nothing.
If I had to rank based on what he knows (location and cello teachers), this school probably ranks 6th or 7th out of 13 schools that he’s applied to. His least favorites are the ones that are farther away that he won’t be visiting unless the money is very compelling.
He could go through with the audition if he likes the school for the general quality of the music department. If accepted, he can then have a lesson before making a final decision. The cello prof will likely be more available and accommodating to an accepted student. If the money isn’t enough, it can be negotiated after acceptances, especially if a peer school has offered him more and/or the cello prof really wants him.
How does he feel about the overall quality of the entire music department? Has he evaluated the orchestra and chamber music program for appropriate opportunities for growth? What is the quality of peers in the cello department and other strings? Good student colleagues to grow with? An individual teacher such as the cello prof can always leave, retire or die during your son’s tenure. It happened to me as an undergrad and one of my kids at major conservatories. You want to make sure he likes other aspects of the school in case the worst happens.
I would also consider it a fair question to ask of the admissions department about the situation with scholarship awards if the cello prof will not be listening to your S’s audition. I wouldn’t hesitate to ask the question as a parent, but others on this board may feel your son should make all the contacts with admissions. Personally, as I said, I would call anonymously! No one will be keeping track of calls like this, but you may get a work study student who can’t really help you out.
In my experience, this situation where a panel not including the preferred teacher hears an audition.occurs at other schools also Often auditioners are ranked in some manner which indicates the possible level of award the student is “eligible” for vis a vis other auditioners.
I’d tend to keep that net as wide as possible if you can. It’s very hard to predict how the scholarship situation will shake out. And even if he decides that he does not want to attend that school, if he gets a large merit award you might be able to present it in an appeal to another program.
These are all good things to think about. We talked last night and he’s not so quick to dismiss the school simply because, as you all stated above, he wants to keep options open.
He’s never visited so he has no way of knowing any of that. I took a tour because I was visiting my eldest son who lives next to the school, but my cellist was taking care of the house while we were out of town because he couldn’t get away.
He has to contact the music school today or tomorrow since he’s obviously not coming for an audition this weekend, so I think he should ask them about the situation. I might just call or email the person that I took the tour with since she did say I could contact her anytime with questions.
I called and sounds like they are trying to find a solution. They asked me to forward the emails that my son sent that went unanswered. It might be that my son will have to submit a video audition. I spoke with the person who gave me the tour so she knew me/my son right away. We shall see what happens.
Some professors are just really, really bad at email. When my daughter was auditioning 8 years ago there was a prof who only communicated via fax. Even then, fax was completely outdated. It was as if were sending messages by carrier pigeon or something. And then a funny thing happened: when he accepted her to his studio she got an email via his wife’s account. I always wondered, if she had gone on to study with him, how would they have communicated.
Probably through the professor’s son’s Snapchat account… 
Joke aside, this issue is very real…
All summer long my daughter tried to arrange a trial lesson with a particular professor and never received a reply. She politely follow-ed up couple times with the suitable gap of few weeks in between and eventually gave up. We met the said professor coincidentally in a totally unintended way but it was past the application deadline and my daughter did not pursue that particular school in the end.
No, we didn’t tell him about it when we met him and yes he was actually a very nice person as we met him and my daughter felt a little bad for skipping that school / professor…
I have an even weirder story: when my daughter was looking for potential undergrad teachers several people recommended a retired, but still teaching violinist who had been in a famous quartet. She was told the way to reach him was to put a handwritten letter into his mailbox at the conservatory. She had this on good authority: his son, also a famous violinist in another quartet was her precollege coach. She never heard back. A full year later she was asleep in her dorm room at [redacted] that very conservatory where she was happily studying with a different teacher. It was the elderly violinist, who had just collected his mail. What ensued was a completely confusing conversation for both of them because her letter to him was dated “November xx, 20XX” and now it was one year and one week later…He thought he was promptly answering and she was completely thrown to hear from him more than a year later…