<p>So… Update on grad school auditions at U of Maryland. D is vocal performance, graduating this year from Oberlin. I flew her in on Monday for her 1:30 audition on Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, there was an email from admissions saying “standby because there could be a change in the Tuesday auditions and they would post on their website by 6 am Tuesday morning.” So they cancelled auditions, the school was closed. BTW, it didn’t start snowing until midday and D said it hardly amounted to any crisis. Of course, she is used to the snow at Oberlin and they never close the school. So she sent an email to admissions saying she would love to be able to sing on Wednesday, if possible, as opposed to having to fly back to Maryland on another date. They scheduled her at 9:30 Wednesday morning with her accompanist rehearsal at 8:45. So she gets up at 6 am to prepare. At 7 am, she checks the website and sees that the school is closed till 11 am and that anybody who was scheduled prior to that needs to call and find out when they are rescheduled. So she gets to the school, the doors are locked, she goes and gets coffee. Finds out she is rescheduled at 2:45. She finally sings at 3:30. She said it went great but she was worn out from the stress of it. One of the components of the audition is a monologue and she did a really funny one about a woman who decides her life calling is to be Miss Florida because it came to her in a dream. She said the faculty was cracking up and they said they really appreciated the comic relief after the long day. She gets up at 6 tomorrow morning because she is flying to Rice for her audition there on Friday afternoon. The good news is that she had a great friend with her the whole time and they are on the same audition schedule. FYI - the faculty also have a little Q&A session with the auditioners after they sing.</p>
<p>What an odyssey! Good luck to her.</p>
<p>Roll with the punches is definitely good advice. I would also add be early and check and double check everything. </p>
<p>At University of Miami, my son was assigned a certain audition time. He went early to the practice rooms, and checked to posted audition times times on the door of the room his audition was in, and it had been moved up by 20 minutes! This would have been a disaster if he was not early to the practice room!</p>
<p>Congrats to your D POTO mom. I think that sort of experience is a great healthy dose of reality and comes under the rubric: “that which does not kill us only makes us stronger” or better:" that which does not kill our last audition only makes the next one better". She will do great.</p>
<p>Funny thing is that I thought the wishy-washy nature of the communications would leave a bad taste in her mouth but she really enjoyed her audition and the faculty and said she could see herself doing well in that program. I think she had a lot of time to talk to existing students and also the faculty interview was interesting to her. Unfortunately, they cancelled all of the information sessions for the school and the reception, etc. so she didn’t get to take advantage of that. I will be interested to see what she says about Rice. She went there earlier this year for a lesson and it did not meet her expectations. I was a little surprised that she decided to follow thru with the audition. Just watched the news and they are calling for bad ice in Houston after it was 68 degrees yesterday. I guess it followed her.</p>
<p>Gertrude–my S is having the time of his life at Chapman. He loves the theater department and is getting a lot out of his classes in the Honors Department too. Being is sunny southern California is a bonus, as we live in the PNW.</p>
<p>POTO-- As your D probably knows… most of those information sessions revolve around undergrads and their parents. Though they are important for undergrads…for your experienced D (not so much) Good for her, I know that Maryland has a good program.</p>
<p>POTO- I gave up expecting order from that particular school and your D’s experience sealed it. Last year, they lost my D’s materials- but they then couldn’t decide exactly what parts they did and didn’t have. This was the pre-screen and application and we kept waiting to hear back from them, and her initial inquiry was met with a “We are getting to everyone, please be patient”. The result was that even though is was clearly their fault and they admitted that, they wouldn’t offer her an audition because “all of the slots were filled”. D elected to do all of the dealings herself and chalked it up to a place she woudn’t want to be if this was an example, but I really had a rough time not interfering and calling them myself!</p>
<p>Well, the good news is that we had the extra day built in at each of these places so she could attend any “meet the faculty” or information sessions with students. Turns out we needed it just for the audition. I am not used to dealing with big schools so I think the big problem was that the University decided to close, not just the School of Music at Maryland. While D was “in the air” today, I called Shepard to see if they were going to have any cancellations tomorrow since they are expecting severe ice. They said that D should consider taking her music theory test in the afternoon vs. her 10 am scheduled test. I really appreciated their concern for her traveling safety. </p>
<p>Mezzo’s Mama - you asked for a list of D’s auditions. Maryland, Rice, AVA, Curtis, MSM, and CCM. CCM is a no - she had the flu on Jan. 10 and we couldn’t reschedule because of these other auditions. It was low on her list anyway so she wasn’t upset. Curtis is 2/22 and MSM and AVA are in March.</p>
<p>I do think you can discover a lot about a school in the way they handle audition days - beyond the basics…are they pleasant? what kinds of events do they schedule (meet the students, meet the faculty, see a concert, group lunch), how many student volunteers are helping out, do they send you helpful info beforehand, do you get a parking ticket while visiting, etc.</p>
<p>POTO Mom - Glad everything worked out at Maryland. Is your daughter planning to drive a rental car in Houston or taking taxis, etc? Do tell her to be quite careful if she’s driving and they get the ice they are predicting. Our Houston office has already announced they will be closed tomorrow as a precaution. Houston is terrible in dealing with ice and the highway ramps and elevated road stretches are particularly awful. The afternoon test might be a good idea!</p>
<p>Will be watching the Houston weather–son is headed there on Tuesday. He’s planning on walking from the hotel to campus for a 9 am exam followed by audition–hopefully the ice will be gone!</p>
<p>Momof2TeenGirls - D is staying at a hotel 1.5 mi from Shepard. She took the Super Shuttle from airport and will use the hotel shuttle to go to Rice. She said the weather was already nasty this afternoon and they are expecting wintry mix in the morning. Clarimom, your son should be fine since it’s going to be 70 degrees on Sunday. YAY. He might check, though, and see if his hotel offers a free shuttle.</p>
<p>Just had a regional piano performance audition for the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The auditions were held at Schmitt Music in Minneapolis, MN. My father and I arrived to the audition early to practice and check-in. I had an a official practice time 20 minutes before my audition, but I was allowed to practice in the Steinway room of the music store prior to my warm-up. Not many people were there. They were auditioning an average of two prospective students per hour. It was a very relaxed and supportive environment.
My audition was recorded by Michael Manderen, a lecturer of guitar at the conservatory. Very helpful and supportive. He took a picture of me sitting at the piano and then asked me to state my name, age, teacher, and years of study for the video recorder. I then was asked to start with a piece of my choice. He would applaud to let me know when to stop playing. Here is the order of what I played.
- First 3 pages of the Copland Piano Variations.
- 4 pages of Chopin Etude in C Sharp Minor 0p. 10 No. 4
- Beethoven Sonata No. 13 in E Flat Major Op. 27 No. 1 Beginning of first and fourth movements
- First page of the Fugue from the Prelude and Fugue in D Major No. 5 WTC II
- The 1st page and the last 4 pages of the Chopin Fantasy in F minor Op. 49</p>
<p>Mr. Manderen then asked me to play Happy Birthday in the key of F major and A major, sightread a page of music, and name pitches, intervals, Aug. Dim. Major minor chords.
To end the audition he asked me if I’ve visited Oberlin and if I had sample lessons with any of the professors at the conservatory. </p>
<p>Overall, a very relaxed and positive experience.
Practice hard and have fun! Good luck to everyone auditioning!</p>
<p>POTO Mom- willl you be kind enough to go over to the VP Prescreen thread and post the schools that had pre-screens (I know that AVA does not, but the others do), the method of notification (MSM has a portal, right?), and the dates if you know them. I can them move them onto the complete list.
Best of luck to your D and everyone else auditioning this weekend- stay safe!</p>
<p>Rice is closed today but auditions will still happen. Times rescheduled. Good thing I didn’t book the 5:30 flight out today which was initially an oversight on my part. Better to be lucky than good.</p>
<p>Hscheck, lucky you: Michael Manderen is also the Director of Conservatory Admissions at Oberlin–you might have been more nervous if you knew that!</p>
<p>OK, audition #1 complete for S–all went smoothly with the cross-country travel. Weather fine in LA, which is one good thing I guess. 
He originally had an afternoon audition time, but was notified a week or so ago that it would be changed to betw 9 and 10 am. Turned out to be 9 am–the first one of the day. So he felt like they were still sort of getting things set up when he was in the room. For example, the room monitor wasn’t there yet, etc. Also doesn’t bode well when just when one is about to play, the professor says “now, who are you again?” You’d think they’d at least have the name and information in front of them and be a bit more welcoming. Then…strike two…the professor turned his back to S during the whole first piece and talked to students behind him, giving them directions for what needed to be done to set up the audition room I guess. He felt like nobody was really even listening. That piece went well, by the way. Strike three…apparently reeds that are wonderful on one side of the country change to mean ogres on the other side of the country–maybe going from a temperature in the teens to the 70’s with a six hour flight between could have something to do with it? So S did not feel great about the second piece–had some reed issues. Third piece, went fine. But, overall, S was not so happy. It’s tough to spend so much money (I think this audition cost us well over $1000) for all of 7 minutes or so. I guess it’s money well spent if an acceptance results. But you know as a parent when your child feels dejected you feel just as bad. I’m a little miffed as well because I feel that a little more courteous treatment might have made the whole audition seem better for him. At least being respectful enough to actually listen would be a good thing.</p>
<p>So d audition with oberlin for voice occurred in early jan at the colburn school in la. But here’s a synopsis of what happened. She was the 3rd auditioner of the day, 2nd vocalist. There were no snacks and parking at $18. For the first five minutes the moderator/director of admissions talked about the camera they use for recording (a zoom q2hd, which was the same device she used for prescreens). Afterwards he asked her why she applied to oberlin. She sang her two pieces using an accompanist we brought. To which he stated that those were goo choices for her voice. He asked her if she knew what a triad was to which she replied yes. He than asked her to sing it. Which than asked her to sing a triad. Confused she sang the 3 separate notes. He than asked if she could sing them at the same time. To which she sheepishly said “ah…no?”. Unfortunately she has not had the opportunity to take lessons with a Mongolian throat singers. He then looked at her confused. He then had her sight sing an olde English choir song. He played the bass part while she sang the soprano part. By this time she and her accompanist (a music director from a prestigious local state university) were completely confused and my poor daughter red with hives. The accompanist stated that he was asking music theory questions in instrumentalist terms and not as a vocalist is accustomed to. Quite an interesting audition and good one to get out of the way early. Have other vocalists experienced anything similar? D and accompanist are hoping that when the vocal performance group views the video, they will appreciate her vocalization, poise and smile throughout the process.</p>
<p>Audition day at USC Thornton</p>
<p>The Good: The process was very well organized with plenty of people around to help. Everything ran perfectly on time, the accompanist found us just when we expected. They had some fun “swag” for the auditioners - water bottles & a frisbee with the “circle of fifths” on it. Water, chips & granola bars were readily available for anyone who needed them. Lots of chairs placed around for people to sit while they waited. The weather was GORGEOUS. They provided a nice map showing nearby places to eat, which we made use of & had a great lunch. There were tours offered as well as sessions on admission and financial aid which we did not attend.</p>
<p>The Bad: the audition itself lasted well under 10 minutes - probably closer to 6 or 7. D felt good about her singing, but was very disappointed that she was not asked to sight sing, which is a real strength for her. There was very little chitchat or feedback & with one exception the judges spent most of their time typing on their laptops & not seeming to fully pay attention, though that may be a misperception as they may have been making detailed notes on her performance as she sang.</p>
<p>The Ugly - nothing. A beautiful day at a beautiful campus.</p>