DD is midway through her auditions. She is an instrumentalist, not a vocalist or MT. She is a very strong candidate for any of the schools she is auditioning for and all of her auditions went very well (relief!!!).
At each of them, she also had a lesson with the professors while she was there (on a different day, usually). She previously knows each of these teachers and had already had at least one lesson (whether live or Skype) with them before audition time. They all emailed her same/next day to follow up on their lesson/audition.
They have told her essentially the same thing:
They gave her their very highest ranking.
They will be working with admissions to get her the highest scholarship they have to offer.
They want her to notify them immediately of other scholarship offers she receives, as this will give them even more bargaining power with admissions.
They believe that they will be able to get her cost of attendance down to a very tiny $#, or possibly zero with the scholarships they will be able to offer.
They each said they would “fight for her” with admissions/dean/whoever for $$.
They all like the other professors and know one another and feel that she will do well in any of the programs she is applying to, but they all want her in their program.
At two of the programs, DD is already in place to interview/eligible for competitive, full-ride academic scholarships. Possibly a third, as well (it’s a conservatory, but apparently they have a small # of generous academic scholarships for priority music students who qualify). So, if she receives one of those enormous academic scholarships, obviously, we don’t have to worry about how much power a music professor has over their scholarship dollars…
But…
In your experience - if/when a professor has said such strong words to a student, do they tend to follow through? Or are they blowing smoke? We just aren’t sure how seriously we should take what they are saying (or are they just flattering her, kwim?)?
(Money is the priority for her consideration and they each know this. She, personally, isn’t willing to go into debt for a music degree. If the music schools don’t have enough $ to offer, she will switch gears for a different degree and continue private studies for music.)
@fivethirtyfive. In our experience, they DO mean it. There were profs at 4 or 5 schools that basically said the same thing - they wanted the kid, and they pushed for the scholarship, and they came in the mail - 40-80% of tuition. At the school S joined finally, the prof basically said that the studio was super hard to get into, a different prof was likely, but for this studio because of the demand the scholarship wouldn’t be as high. S made the cut and joined up, coz it was love at first sight - we’re lucky we put some money away to help for the rest.
Generally, I think professors are honest because doing otherwise is bad for their short- and long-term reputations. My son got honest but generally non-committal feedback from most of the professors with whom he interacted and at his auditions. When he did get unquestionably positive feedback, it correlated to offers from those schools.
That said, there is one glaring exception worth mentioning . . .
We had the leading professor on my son’s instrument at one of the Top 10 jazz programs in the country (at a university that is East of the Mississippi) send this email to him after his live audition:
"Congratulations on been one of the top finalists from our audition evaluation.
I’m very excited to have you join our program at [school redacted]. I’m sure you will have a great time learning from our faculty teachers, but also connecting and playing together with the very high level of students we have at school.
Please, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
You can either reply to me on this email, or reach me at my #: [redacted]
Three weeks letter, my son got a generic rejection letter from the university. Needless to say, we were all shocked given the effusive email above. He reached out to the professor who sent it for more info to find out why he didn’t get accepted. Instead of getting an answer from him, a different professor from the school replied giving a disappointingly generic explanation. We were confused and disappointed, but we moved on.
There’s a happy ending to this: A couple weeks later, my son ended up getting accepted by a school higher on his priority list in addition to some other great offers from other schools on the list. He is thrilled where he ended up, so the email above ended up not mattering. But at the time, it was traumatizing and still confuses the hell out of us.