pdxtigermom this year the forum is dominated by voice performance students, not sure why. It is wonderful to read about all their successes.
But it has not been like that in the past. I wonder if you could start your own thread. It would be nice for visitors to College Confidential to see that the forum is still for instrumentalists 
@SpiritManager you nailed it for us. Nothing is going to be easy Iâm afraid. Even with the generous offer at Frost and also D making the super short list for the CAM minor we are still waiting on the rest of the offers to come in. I had a long talk with her last night and she still doesnât feel like she knows the answer yet. Sigh. I think all we have been able to do at the moment is ârule outâ based on lack of knowledge of colleges or low offers (William Paterson for example) and she has her short list of her top 3. But among those she has limited knowledge of 2 of them. I think @GoForth was 100% accurate in his journal from last year about narrowing the list down to 4-5 top choices and focusing on those. At least for us anyway. I know for others having a deeper list of options is critical. Bit I think had we focused on 4-5 top choices we could have been more focused on visits to those schools. Right now Iâm feeling like we need to make one or two more trips to visit in April. And my wallet is screaming NOOOOOOO!!! 
It can be hard to choose. Prior to auditions, my D wondered aloud how she was going to make the choice. Of course, money has to be the first issue. For vocalists, I canât imagine going into much debt for the undergraduate program given so many may need to pursue graduate work and may need more financial support to launch. Then I think identifying a teacher and a place you can easily call home (order of these can be switched). My kid operates on a âfeelâ and then processes it independently. So, we had silence from her until an announcement of (1) this is where I want to go and (2) this is who I want as a teacher. While too many great options is a good burden to have (and beats the alternative), it still makes for a difficult choice.
@sandrafcove Khan Academy, use the scheduler, and practice practice practice. That can add 100-150 points to the score and solve the problem. That and over prepare for the audition. Like out of control preparation. Metronome, recording devices and feedback. Make an appointment for a lesson as soon as possible with a top teacher there. Those are the top things I can think of. (sorry if my grammar is bad, iâm just listing fast)
@NYsaxmom Iâve noticed that there are some weird outliers in acceptances (schools that werenât reaches rejecting, while reaches are accepting). Sometimes I can figure it out, sometimes I canât. But youâre not alone in that.
@SpartanDrew may meet you on a re-visit!!
@sandrafcove having had 2 kids now accepted to frost with giant scholarships, they both had decent but not stellar SATs (1310 and 1350), OK GPAs (3.1 and 3.8) but both had great auditions. Neither used Kahn academy (because they couldnât be bothered!!!) but I invested in a few private SAT/ACT tutoring sessions and it was worth it
D has a solidly decent GPA of just under a 3.6 UW but her SAT score was low. We invested in Sylvan to improve her abysmal score and It was wasted money for us. D is a terrible standardized test taker period. After spending $500 on Sylvan for a few weeks of quickie private tutoring D retook the SAT at the end of the summer after her Berklee 5 week (that was a mistake on timing) and actually did WORSE. I wanted her to take the ACT and she came home crying after a practice ACT showed she would score around the same as the SAT, which her best score was 1100. So I said, âForget it! We are running with what we have and will let the process work itself out.â Many people who had seen D perform or had seen her videos etc made the comment that I wholeheartedly agreed with, if a music school turns her away because of a low SAT score then itâs not the place for her. And I took @coloraturadadâs amazing advice that âaudition is kingâ and had her work hard on honing that audition to perfection and she did. She actually performed her bossa audition piece completely in Portuguese. I think that was likely impressive to some of the JV faculty. She has been studying with a JV adjunct faculty member at Western Michigan for 6 years so she knew how to get her ready and she was ready. So bottom line, I think it always helps to improve those scores BUT, Frost is far more interested in admitting kids with high talent as their priority and the rest is secondary.
I think the moral of this is every kid is different!! :)) :))
Hi everyone! Long-time reader here who just wanted to say I am excited to see where your children end up over the next month or so!
S18 admitted to USC-Thornton today for BM in Vocal Arts! We were not really considering this as a possibility, since they enroll 8-10 a year in this program. We are in shock but so excited for him!
Congratulations, Vistajayâs S! Sounds like he has some serious deciding to do.
@vistajay congrats!!
Congratulations, @vistajay!
@vistajay Congratulations!
Huge congrats @vistajay !!
Congrats all on the latest posts.
@vistajay wasnât it your son who got the early rejection from SMU? Remember those silly days? I remember looking at your prescreening passes and thinking ⊠heâll be fine. If you have a good number of passes for pre-screens you will get acceptances and decent scholarshipsâŠin almost all cases. Happens every yearâŠbut an early rejection (and rejections can be early) can sure be a drag.
A pre-screen pass at Thornton and a good number of other schools with a rejection at SMUâŠyea that was a shrugâŠif you werenât the party involved. There are surprises (good and bad) in this process but on average if you pass a good number of your prescreens, you are on your way to a few good acceptances and a few decent offersâŠand maybe more!
@bridgenail , yes those were scary early moments for us, a prescreen rejection at Vandy and denial from SMU music. Then came admits with scholarships to Furman, FSU, Miami and now USC.
Congratulations @vistajay USC is a great admit!
Vistajay! WowserâŠgreat stuff. You guys are scaring me though - with all these unpredictable results. I liked SpartanDrewâs observation that maybe just focusing on 5-6 would have made things stressful - but what if you focus on the wrong ones? Oh boy. This is not for faint of heart. Congrats SpartanDrew to your daughter on the Frost admit and Presidentâs scholarship. I still have this dream (LOL) that our Junior daughter gets into Berklee this summer, loves it, auditions at the end of the summer and gets one of those end of the summer scholarships for college - so no auditions. A mom has to dream, right??? :))