Stats for Music conservatories

<p>It occurred to me, as a parent of one conventional academic-track kid (DS) and one music major kid (DD) that the acceptance rates and yield rates and all the other lovely statistical information, which is updated yearly for academic institutions, is not quite there or readily available for conservatories. There it is particularly poignant to note that over-all admit rate can be wildly different depending on the instrument, and to music majors everything does depend on the instrument. Even the strength of the program. It makes quite a difference, just as an example, if you apply to NEC for strings or for piano. Juilliard, as another example, is far more competitive for some instruments than others.</p>

<p>As this is the shine-the-light and get-the-scoop chat board bar none, (for all things upper-education) wouldn't it be good to find out and put it out? Or maybe such information is already accessible. Does anyone know?</p>

<p>Just thought I'd put it out there. I prefer it stays on this forum not only because of the vast collective knowledge and helpful supportiveness here, but because the "Music major" forum doesn't seem to bring out the nastiness I've spotted in some other corners of CC, where someone is always there ready to tell an OP that their question shouldn't exist... (Mercifully, I haven't experienced it personally yet.)</p>

<p>

You seem to know a lot more than I do! On what instruments is it far easier to get into Juilliard, and is it easier to get into NEC for strings or piano? </p>

<p>My <em>limited</em> feedback, from faculty and a few students, is that NEC is much more selective for strings than piano at the moment. (DD didn’t apply there for reasons that had to do with teacher preference, so this is not personal.) Juilliard is the inverse, albeit with violin coming very close, but other instruments (strings and brass and the esoteric ones) having a higher chance of admission. By quite a bit- so this is not nit-picky. We just don’t have good factual stats from conservatories like we do from universities.
CW for all conservatories is that the hardest are violin, piano, and most especially soprano (voice)-

  • I have no idea if this is true,* hence my post.</p>

<p>Most schools will furnish the applicant with how many openings are available in their instrument in the year they are applying and how many candidates will be heard. It’s not published since it changes yearly. Beyond that, statistics are meaningless. Statistics are quantifiable and auditions are not. The audition is the ultimate variable… If you are not up to snuff, or if you have a bad audition, no amount of stats can throw light on the situation. So stats, in the arts, are meaningless. </p>

<p>AND…that’s why we don’t find a lot of “chance me” posts in the music forum. </p>

<p>" “Music major” forum doesn’t seem to bring out the nastiness I’ve spotted in some other corners of CC, where someone is always there ready to tell an OP that their question shouldn’t exist… (Mercifully, I haven’t experienced it personally yet.) " (Quoting self, the OP.)</p>

<p>Oh, dear. I guess I was asking for it.</p>

<p>Of course stats are but a small part of the equation. The experience of musicians I have known (quite a few by now, but still anecdotal) is that even a weak audition at a school with a relatively high acceptance rate in their instrument has resulted in admission. Stats and competitions and all the rest are not art, but they are part of the reality of art schools.
Not that I’m happy about it. Some things just are.</p>

<p>More to the point, what sort of stats are you looking for? How do you quantify a strong vs weak audition?</p>

<p>Stats like other colleges: 2013 (or whatever year is current) admission rate for __%. It’s not too complicated.
I’m interested in the sort of information most in the process are, not in quibbling. There is a reason universities put these out, and no one knows precisely which part in the application made THE difference, or what the admissions persons who read it thought, and so on.
I do not believe these stats from music schools are put out publically. About this changing every year, so do the universities.Like all colleges, they can be (and should be) updated every cycle.
Again, a confession: performers have a sense of how they fit in the process; far more so than their clueless parents, (that would be me) and admissions are neither random nor bizarre in most cases.</p>

<p>I do remember sitting through some orientation sessions where the music depts shared some stats. The Hartt school admitted about 40% of its overall pool of applicants. They did not break it down by instrument. At Ithaca, the bass studio teacher said he had 4 openings and 36 basses auditioning. SUNY Potsdam (Crane), also, admitted about 40% of the overall music applicants. I am guessing that it is so difficult to get numbers because the pool of applicants will change each year in both numbers and quality.
Also, auditions are subjective. Son recently worked with one prof to see what he looked for in auditions so son would keep it in mind for graduate school. What I found interesting is that the prof remembered those applicants who had taken a sample lesson with him. Besides the audition itself, he factored into his acceptances whether or not the student was attentive and open to changing technique during those sessions.</p>

<p>The general admission stats are out there, of how many people who applied, how many are admitted, with Juilliard it was under 7% , with NEC it is a lot higher (somewhere around 25%). However, those numbers represent the overall, and it doesn’t do you much good when applying because every instrument is different. For example, that 6% number tells you it is a hard admit, but if you are playing flute and that year there is 1 opening between grad and undergrad, it doesn’t tell you a lot, given that the odds of getting admitted on flute is probably way less than 6%. It also boils down to the studio teachers you pick, if on violin and applying to Juilliard trying to get Jimmy Lin or Perlman is going to be way more difficult than some other teachers (and this is not a knock on the other teachers, it is because a)both of those gentleman are world renowned performers and b)they take very few students). As a result, those two teachers get a lot of applications from all over the world by music students who because they have heard of them want them (plus those driven by prestige, too), so they may have 1 or 2 slots, and have some ridiculous number of kids applying for slots, where a really great teacher might have a lot less applying…</p>

<p>And yes, it does depend on the instrument. Piano and Violin in most programs, but especially the ‘big programs’ (define that as you wish), is uber competitive because they are solo instruments and as such are valued by many as being ‘ultimate’ instruments (and note the quotes, I make no such claims), so the competition level is absurd, whereas for let’s say a brass instrument it is merely insane. Too, it also depends on the level of students applying, from everything I can tell application years tend to have ebb and flow on instruments, kind of like the NFL draft, one year violin is particularly strong and let’s say brass is not so strong, the next year, they see freakishly high caliber kids on brass. </p>

<p>Keep in mind it is hard to judge yields of difficulty because of other factors. For example, you could make an argument that orchestral instruments (not primarily solo instruments), because they don’t have the ‘prestige’ factor, tend to draw less students overall studying them,but on the other hand schools don’t admit much each year, either. You play trumpet, they admit maybe a small handful of students, so even though less kids probably audition on trumpet in a given year than violin, they also admit a lot less, so the yield might not be all that much different. The other thing is that relative levels between instruments makes no sense, because what matters is how well you play against your fellow auditioners. Put it this way, in terms of technical ability, by the time college auditions come around, string players and pianists in terms of playing ability tend to be better technically (and remember this is all relative) than woodwinds or brass players, further advanced. Does that mean brass and woodwind students are worse students, less driven? Nope, it reflects the fact that a)you cannot start those instruments that early, 7 or 8 is pretty early, and older is not uncommon (many school programs only offer limited instruments that young, for example), which reflects the physical, whereas with piano and violin they are getting ready for prenatal lessons (okay, I am exagerrating). Plus, as I know only too well, on brass or woodwinds you cannot practice as many hours, playing violin for 3,4,5 or more hours, or piano, is doable, do that on woodwind or brass you will hurt yourself.
So because of the sheer number of hours, there is likely to be a deficit…but on the other hand, if you are a trumpet player, other players have the same limitations, so comparing it to violin or piano makes little sense. </p>

<p>Looking at yields is tempting in judging how good schools are, but there are holes in that. Firstly, as I pointed out, the overall acceptance rate may or may not have relevance to your situation on your instrument, the flautist auditioning for 1 slot may look at 6% and say “I wish it were that easy”. The other big factor is that the acceptance rate may not reflect badly on schools with higher acceptance rates, and here is why. Take for example NEC or CIM, both really good schools, with good faculty and such, whose acceptance rate is much higher than Juilliard, and think “hmm, Juilliard must be so much better, the students must be better”. What you have to be careful of is that a lot of music students have heard of Juilliard and because of that, their parents and they assume it is the only place to go, that it is the ‘best’ and so forth, so they get a ton of applications, a lot of whom quite frankly are nowhere near the level. Whereas places like CIM and NEC are not household names to many, so they may very well get less kids applying, but it could be that the 25% they admit are as good as the 6% that Juilliard admits (I make no claims of total truth to this). For example, let’s say Juilliard has 1000 kids auditioning, and in the end, they admit 60. NEC or CIM that same year might only audition 240, but admit 60, so their rate is 25%…but it could be those 60 kids are just as strong (and yes, this is a silly number, made up to not challenge my diminishing math skills, and non existent statistics skills)…just showing that the percent admitted may not mean much.</p>

<p>The real answer is what is said on here time and again, that statistics and numbers in the end mean little, it is often at the more micro level that decisions about schools are made. A violin student gets into Juilliard but gets into the study of teacher X and Teacher Y, when they wanted Z, but gets into CIM and gets into the studio of M, who they consider to be better by far than X or Y, whether CIM for example as a whole is as high a level might have little meaning, if they feel that M’s studio is better than anything that Juilliard offered on their instrument. When you get to the high level programs, there are so many variables the statistics mean little, while a school that admits the same percentage of students as let’s say NEC might not be very good, because they are admitting 25% percent but the overall pool auditioning there is much poorer than the pool at NEC.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t look at the admittance rate among the most competitive music schools, I would look at the teachers in the program and see what they are turning out, that kind of yield is much better:) </p>

<p>Beautifully informative, musicprmt. I was aware of all this, (including the massive applicant pool for known school, which my friends call “the Harvard phenomenon,” applying because it is _) But I still think releasing these figures (updated for instruments and year by year) would add transparency.</p>

<p>No one should make a decision based on these numbers. Neither where to apply nor where to attend. It’s a smallish part of the application process. But why not have it out?</p>

<p>Thank you for taking the time. Your post will serve many for years to come, as so many CC posts have done to those just beginning to navigate these waters. </p>

<p>.“No one should make a decision based on these numbers. Neither where to apply nor where to attend. It’s a smallish part of the application process. But why not have it out?”
In a word: Expense. It is expensive to compile statistics. Especially when they serve no purpose, as you mentioned above.</p>

<p>Wouldn’t it be nice if we could quantify things? But - and I’m pretty sure the OP would agree with me - the joy of the arts is that there’s that special “something” that defies statistics. It’s one thing to know that, say, Juilliard, has 7 openings for bagpipes this year (and very useful too!), but it’s something else entirely to judge those bagpipe performances. </p>

<p>Applicant A has bagpipe technique down perfectly. Applicant B could use a little work on their blowing technique, but their music makes the committee want to don kilts and do a jig. Applicant C has both technique and musicianship. Applicant D has flaws in both but there’s something about their performance that speaks to the wind whistling across the loch on a cold winter’s day. Applicant E has worked with the Bagpipe Professor at an important summer festival. Applicant F has won multiple international bagpipe competitions but happens to have a bad day at the audition. Who do you admit? (And who gets the scholarship?)</p>

<p>@‌ Stradmom-
None of the above, because all of the applicants died gruesome deaths when next door neighbors could finally no longer stand the strains of the instrument piercing the stillness of a summer night:)</p>

<p>I think Carnegie Mellon offers the only bagpipe major in the US.</p>

<p>It should be mentioned that there are years when even though there may be openings in a certain instrument or voice type, no one is admitted at “fill in the name of a top-tier conservatory”. While there are schools who are easier admits, the best schools don’t have to take anyone whom they don’t feel that is up to their standards.
Sometimes, undergrads may decide to stay on for a masters and/or higher levels stick around, so there may not be any open spots. All of these things can skew the numbers and I think that’s another reason why schools don’t bother to attempt to quantify admissions on paper.</p>

<p>The basic overall acceptance rate for at least some music schools is available from the US News college rankings site: <a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges&lt;/a&gt;. Just go to college search and type in the name. Curtis has the lowest at 6.76%, followed by Juilliard at 7.32%. By way of comparison, NEC is 33.06%, CIM is 37.85% and Berklee is 19.16%. But for all the reasons cited above, these overall acceptance rates are not particularly meaningful. </p>

<p>For example, Juilliard’s rate is skewed downward by the very low rate of admissions to the acting program, which itself is skewed because the program is less self-selecting. You can’t apply to audition in bagpipes unless you’ve studied bagpipes for years. But any of us can apply to audition for acting at Juilliard. It’s one of the top acting programs in the country and it’s super-selective, but anyone can throw a hat in that ring.</p>

<p>Also: I know several high-level instrumentalists who were accepted to Curtis, Juilliard, and other top programs but rejected from NEC. There are a lot of variables, including the studio you apply to, that don’t show up in the simple stats. </p>

<p>“I know several high-level instrumentalists who were accepted to Curtis, Juilliard, and other top programs but rejected from NEC. There are a lot of variables, including the studio you apply to, that don’t show up in the simple stats.”
glassharmonica, above^</p>

<p>A friend of DD’s last year was accepted to Harvard, but rejected by UC Berkeley. (Both good schools, but apropos your point that real-life stories do not conform to simple statistics.)
All true.
A mathematician explained to me long ago that the popular misconception about probability is that it is not , in any way, any sort of “predictor.” Also true.</p>

<p>But the world is still wedded to statistics. More so on CC than anywhere else I visit. I still think it would be good to have statistical information, by year, of admissions to various departments. It’s neither expensive nor difficult to tabulate, and schools, internally, do have them. </p>

<p>Thank you for posting the 2012 USNAWR stats. I knew these, but for anyone who may look at these boards in the future it’s a fine summary for overall admit rate that year. glassharminica is spot-on about the Juilliard admissions for actors, and the reasons for it. At the school, admissions told me it was about 1% for that program. They also said piano is never more than 5%, but that’s about as far as I got, and it was off-the-record. </p>

<p>Such should be on the record. if you are in the camp that does not care and finds this frivolous, pointless, and worse, no need to look at these facts. It’s not mandatory.</p>

<p>I always told my kids and their friends to do their best and try for what and where they want. These are the real rewards. But navigating the worldly aspects is left at these stages to us. They’ll have plenty of time to get knocked down.</p>

<p>I can think of one reason to give stats that is somewhat practical for both those auditioning and parents. Cost. Having just gone through the process with D and spending much less than other folks here did I can still say the cost of auditioning can definitely add up. Pre screens, application fees for school and program, plane tickets etc.Not to disagree that stats can never tell the full story either of course. But this info could be another helpful piece for those about to go through the process.</p>

<p>I think we should also consider acceptance with merit aid. I’d love for my son to go to juilliard or eastman but we can’t afford it half off. I don’t want to disappoint him by having him audition there. The acceptance rate doesn’t mean anything to me if they don’t award good scholarships to everyone.</p>