Congratulations @NYsaxmom! That is amazing!
Great news @NYsaxmom ! Congratulations to you and your daughter!
Wow @NYsaxmom ! Fabulous!
You are right @BassTheatreMom , I am very glad my D was not around after the major hurricane hit. I have no words though to describe Oberlin’s outstanding support to my D and our family through the disaster. They were in constant communication with her and us and her vocal teacher is simply a tremendous human being. We were so fortunate to find her in our D’s musical mentorship path. D is ecstatic with her teacher and Oberlin. This is the first time since third grade elementary school that she scored straight A’s in a semester! Granted she is strictly taking her passion (music classes and languages) this semester, but I could not be more proud of her accomplishments this year. For those awaiting responses in Oberlin, I have nothing but great things to say about the school.
As far as us in PR, it has not been easy but we are managing. We are fortunate to have back our basic needs, but we feel lucky. There are still hundreds of thousands of people without power, the island depopulation rate is around 6% so you can imagine the economic impact we are struggling with right now in an already bankrupted island before the hurricane. It has been a living lesson to all of us to never take things for granted but I am sure it will make our family stronger in the future. God bless you for asking.
Huge congratulations @NYsaxmom !!! Come on…there just HAS to be some swag with that offer!
@NYsaxmom Congrats! Looks like Denver can be pretty darn generous…for the right talent.
AAAACK Congratulations @NYsaxmom!!! That’s amazing! A FULL RIDE!!! How can anyone possibly turn that down??? Fantastic news!
I’ve been reading this thread and others with interest since we have been checking out schools with my junior daughter. One topic I’ve not seen touched on much is selecting a professor for lessons. I’ve seen/heard conflicting information. One of the big name schools has on their website that they assign teachers for lessons in the fall. I’ve heard from a friend that their son had lined up lessons with one of their top teachers. It ended up falling through, due a change in grad students. This was all information to them before deciding on schools. Are schools all over the map on this? I saw in last years posts that some students were contacted by teachers offering a place.
Oh, and good luck to those senior parents and students.
No, the norm at most schools is that you chose your teacher prior to acceptance of the school if the desired teacher has a spot available at his/her studio. They understand the student/teacher match is an integral part of the equation prior to committing.
@thisismynameOH It also depends on the instrument. My son plays double bass, and several of the programs he looked at only had a single bass professor. The process for selection was different for those that had more than one prof. So the size of the studio could affect teacher selection.
Tangential to the question of selecting a primary teacher: Trial lessons before or during audition season are helpful (better before than during the busy season). It’s not always easy or financially feasible to do. My D worked with several before auditioning and so had an idea of whom she would like to work with. This influenced her final list. Some colleges asked her to list teacher preferences (and a few asked for ranking) on audition day. Some asked for her preferences after accepting her. Some colleges gave my D her requested prof and some did not. She was auditioning for VP, so instrumental will vary from this scenario.
@coloraturadad yes it is Lamont
@dramasopranomom no swag…can you believe that? I guess I could buy my own bumper sticker
@momzhood three of my kids had lessons with profs in junior year. That included the one we just heard from and it benefitted us in another way… she didn’t have to do a live audition. The prof said after her lesson last year, to just send a recording this year as her audtion. Ironically this mammoth offer from Denver was her only video audition. Coulda saved a whole lot of traveling (although she still wants to see the other results before deciding anything)
Thanks for the replies. We’ve been scheduling lessons (VP) whenever teachers were available, but it has not been possible at every visit. Guess that means more visits if things go well-a good problem to have I suppose.
Wow @NYsaxmom that is fantastic news!!
@NYsawmom I’ll take the money over swag any day!
@BassTheatreMom I think we all would!!!
Hi everyone – I am a longtime lurker/first time poster/mom of a juniorD (commercial music vocals). Congratulations on all of the exciting results I am reading about on this thread. Your kids are clearly awesome and they are also obviously backed by some amazing parents. I am inspired and trying not to stress out at this point. I wanted to ask a follow up question(s) about private lessons. Should these be happening now/this spring and summer? How does one set them up? And is it standard practice? what can D expect in a private lesson with a prof? I’ll admit this is something that has not occurred to me as we are limiting our tours – the necessity to fly to live auditions next year made it feel excessive to also fly out to tour this year as well. We are trying to keep an eye on our $ through this process and I hate to feel like Im giving D a disadvantage by not flying her out to campuses to tour and meet professors prior to applying and/or auditioning. Any advice would be welcome and thank you.
@NYsaxmom Fantastic News!
@GagasMom , you are right to be concerned about excessive travel, both in terms of cost and fatigue. We were able to set up sample lessons a day before auditions at many schools, but it is not always possible due to schedules.
@GagasMom We did not go to any lessons ahead of time. S did Skype lessons at two of his top three schools AFTER he had been admitted and wanted to get a better feel for the prof. We ended up making a second trip to the other top school after auditions so he could sit in on the studio and get a better feel for the dynamic of the prof and students (that’s the one he ultimately chose). But he had never visited any of the schools (except local ones for high school things) prior to his auditions. It worked out just fine for him.
In fact, from my perspective, we were already going to visit campuses for auditions, so it made no sense to make the typical junior summer visits to campuses. We approached it the same way with our D who is auditioning for musical theatre this year. However, MT does Unified auditions, so she still hasn’t visited most of the schools she applied to. We will be visiting those she’s been accepted to over the coming weeks so she can make a good decision.
Clearly we are a single datapoint, and you can’t generalize based on one person on one instrument (double bass). But honestly, if every kid who applied tried to do a lesson ahead of time, the profs would have no time to teach their own students.
I hope some voice, especially contemporary voice, folks will pipe in here and give you some advice about how that works.