<p>Nonmusicdad had a great idea for a thread. I know I was in this position three years ago and many on this forum came to the rescue. So I thought this would be a great time to start up NMdad's thread! Please also post what you have learned through this audition cycle as I have noticed changes over the past three years since D applied (non-music major).
This thread would be extremely helpful to those even looking at the upcoming fall audition cycle.</p>
<p>I will start: I came to this forum looking for a reference to hire a “music” college counselor. I was told by multiple people that it could be done without one by following this forum, searching and asking questions. I would say that we had a much better than expected outcome by following those suggestions. So the first is use this forum!! Use the search tools and subscribe! Use the pm features and get to know this community. We ended up putting the money we would have spent on a college counselor into the audition recordings/sample lessons which paid off well.</p>
<p>This might help, from a few years back:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/897086-things-we-learned-music-application-process.html?highlight=things+we+learned[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/897086-things-we-learned-music-application-process.html?highlight=things+we+learned</a></p>
<p>Here are a few things we learned, in no particular order:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Some schools require electronic uploads of audition materials through ArtsApp. Do not wait for the last minute to do this. During late November, the website was very bogged down and finally crashed because of all the December 1 deadlines. It took a few days for son to get everything uploaded. Fortunately, he had a few days to spare. This would be true for the application itself, as well. If everyone is on the website November 30 at 11:30PM trying to submit their applications online, it is possible for something to go wrong.</p></li>
<li><p>Check in with schools to make sure that all documents/audition materials have been received. We had administrative issues with a number of son’s applications, including a lost portfolio of compositions. </p></li>
<li><p>Every school on the list should ideally be a school your musician wants to attend. Early in the process, son had a pretty good list of schools that represented a fairly wide range. I didn’t really press him on each school, as in “if this is the only school you get into, will you be happy to go there”. Looking back, I think he/we targeted what would be the right number of schools. But, I don’t think he would have been happy with every school on the list. There is no sure thing, so each school should be given serious consideration, whether they are reaches, matches or safeties. (I know there is no real safety with an audition based program, but there is a continuum of selectivity.) I think this generally applies for all college applicants. Safeties should not be treated casually.</p></li>
<li><p>Make a spreadsheet with all of the prescreen and audition requirements, deadlines, audition dates, etc. It will be your best friend.</p></li>
<li><p>For composers, the audition process varies widely from school to school. Some require instrument auditions, some require an interview. When you put your list together, be sure to check for audition requirements. Son plays classical and jazz guitar. Not every school that required an instrumental audition had guitar as an option, making it impossible for him to apply. You don’t want to go too far down the road with the wrong school. </p></li>
<li><p>I am convinced that one of the things son got really right was showing strong interest. This was not done just because it was the right thing to do; he was very sincere in expressing his interest. He visited twice, arranged for a lesson, asked questions, and mentioned details of his visits in his essay. </p></li>
<li><p>Music applications are a lot of work. Start early.</p></li>
<li><p>Look at the details of the course catalog. You can learn a lot.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I was grateful that our son’s private teacher was our guide through this process. Here are some things he told us early on:
1: Don’t rush to make that audition tape in September. Young musicians are maturing and changing all the time. Your child will be playing much better in November than they are playing in September. I am glad we waited because he was right, our son did improve a lot in the fall.
2: Making a spreadsheet helps.<br>
3: When preparing for auditions consider the school you are applying to. Berklee is going to want to hear something very different than what NEC is going to want to hear. Be sensitive to that.
4: Remind your child that academics count</p>
<p>Here is something I (the parent ) wish I had known:
5: If your child has any issues with anxiety or getting nervous before auditions, address it. There are a lot of books and suggestions for coping with this. I do think that one reason my son did well was that he approached the auditions like they were just a job and did not get all twisted out of shape about them.
6: Read carefully what each school wants. We were scrambling at the last minute because our son did not plan on the fact that some schools wanted a video rather than just a recording.<br>
7: Different colleges do the auditions differently. Learn about what they are like so you are prepared for the time commitment that each will require IE: Eastman was a whole day affair. NEC was 10 minutes playing in front of a panel. Berklee had an alumni interview as part of the audition. NYU just did a group audition. I wish we had known that NYU’s audition would take all afternoon meaning that we would be leaving Manhattan on a cold rainy day during rush hour.
8: Finally remember that college is a starting point, not an end point. And it doesn’t matter if your child gets into their dream school or ends up at their safety school, if they are committed they will find a path to where they want to go.</p>
<p>My best piece of advice is (and maybe this is just for jazz, an improvisational medium!): Prepare for the format the college/conservatory says will be provided, and then be prepared for the audition to not be anything like they say. The music will definitely be what you should prepare, but if they tell you that there will be a rhythm section, there may not be. If they say there will be three adjudicators, there might not be. Don’t let any of this throw you–your audition will be fine but, in our case, out of 8-10 auditions, only ONE (New School) went as published.</p>
<p>Your kid will have a completely different experience from his or her peers who are applying to regular college majors. Chances are your kid will not be able to use the common app for many of the schools. Our son applied to six school, and could only use the common app for half of them. Your kid will have to write multiple essays. </p>
<p>Your kid will not have a big lag period between submitting applications and hearing form colleges. Instead, submitting the application is only the beginning of the process for your child. We had auditions from December until the beginning of March. </p>
<p>You need to start looking at schools in the spring of your kid’s junior year, and have a pretty focused list of schools you are going to apply to by October or November of senior year. Definitely doing a spreadsheet or calendar of deadlines and requirements is extremely important. Do this as early as possible. We used a four month calendar white board posted in a highly visible place so my son could see the deadlines. </p>
<p>Do not worry if you are micro-managing the process compared to your friends whose kids are applying to regular schools. </p>
<p>Check and double check with the admissions people to make sure they have all of your kid’s application materials. We had this issue at a couple of schools. They do not notify you if stuff is missing. </p>
<p>Choose at least one financial/academic safety school that your kid will be happy attending.</p>
<p>Along with the spreadsheet to organize everything we are planning a few mock auditions this fall for my kid.</p>
<p>My only other advice is that if you are going to need to send in audio / video recordings for pre-screen start to get your S or D comfortable by making recordings as early on as possible.</p>
<p>Lastly do as many assessment lessons as possible at the colleges being considered and spend at least half a day on each campus outside of audition season.</p>
<p>VMT’s list is great since I also come from a composition pov. The only thing I would add is if your child has a strong interest in a couple of schools before senior year, see if those schools have summer programs that will introduce your child to the school. My son did that with Oberlin and CIM for composition. Oberlin became his favorite while he felt CIM was a better choice as a graduate program and so did not apply for undergraduate.</p>
<p>If the audition is with a collaborative pianist, practice the audition with a collaborative pianist. Learn how to communicate with a pianist. Learn audition etiquette and protocol.</p>
<p>If your kid is in a summer program, and has performances associated with it, record those, since they may come in handy for submissions to colleges.</p>
<p>I’ll throw a couple of points from what others have said who went through the process and also what we are facing going forward (next fall is my S’s time):</p>
<p>-You should try and have your audition repertoire finalized by the late spring of junior year and already be at a high level on it, so you can spend the time between then and auditions tweaking it and perfecting it.</p>
<p>Why so early? Among other things, it can never be too polished, and there is what an old teacher of my S’s, who was really good at nailing auditions, told him, and that is the 80% rule, that in general, most people tend to play at roughly 80-85% of their peak achieved just before the audition, and usually that was the level they played at 5 or 6 months before the audition. Obviously everyone is different, but I think she was correct, that nerves and pressure of an audition can in effect regress playing, so if you are almost ready 6 months before it is likely you will be playing near that level on the audition</p>
<p>-Once you have chosen schools you want to audition for put together a spreadsheet of the audition requirements (do this as early as possible!) and from there figure out what you need to prepare. For example, at Curtis violin requires a complete bach solo Sonata or Partita, whereas other schools might want 1 section or contrasting sections, so if you have the Curtis requirement done you prob have the rest nailed. A particular program might want a 20th century piece, so you might choose a Prokofiev sonata that also might fulfill a requirement for a sonata at another school. The idea is to look at the requirements and come up with a repertoire that fulfills the requirements with the minimum number of pieces to prepare by taking advantage of overlap.</p>
<p>-One suggestion I thought was good was put together a kind of Matrix on a spreadsheet, with the weighting factors in terms of level of teachers, facilities, location, networking abilities, cost/ability to pay, etc are all laid out. After you get your acceptances and aid and such, you can use the spreadsheet to put in front of you quickly and easily how the schools stack up. A school high on your list for teaching and other factors might get its total score lowered because the cost of going would be very high, whereas a program that weighs less heavily for its teaching and such might be bouyed up based on the aid package and other factors. In a perfect world the school the student really wants to get into would be the one that really wants him/her and gives a great aid package, but that doesn’t always happen. It could be that family finances can be stretched to allow the student to go to the ‘wonderful’ school they had their heart set on but if not you have alternatives laid out in front of you to help make a decision if the dream school looks undoable.</p>
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<p>One thing I did differently this year with D4, who applied to auditioned programs (although not in music, but it was still pretty complex) was to use a Google spreadsheet instead of an Excel doc, as we did with D3. That way, the document was accessible to either of us, at any computer, instead of having a single copy to pass back and forth, and risk having the wrong version.</p>
<p>Since the title of this thread is “Things I wished I knew Three Years Ago,” I’ll go way back.</p>
<p>Summer programs are very important in the college selection process because if you choose well, you can work with college professors. That will help you in two ways: you can narrow down the schools to visit based on your experience with a professor and the professor can get to know you and give you an advantage during the audition.</p>
<p>Don’t rely on your private teacher to be up on all of the deadlines for summer programs, especially if he or she is occupied with helping older students with college auditions. Do the research yourself and be proactive planning repertoire and raising the plan with your teacher. We didn’t know enough three years ago to figure this out, so my D was not prepared to record audition CDs by the time we found out they were due. </p>
<p>Schedule visits every chance you get, especially if the student is in marching band. The marching band schedule pretty much eliminates visits from August through the middle of November- and that’s if you don’t have a good football team! My daughter’s teacher advised her to wait until the fall of her senior year to do sample lessons with professors because then she could be as ready as possible to impress them. Unfortunately, between marching band and the recording sessions we had to do for prescreening, we ran out of time for visits. </p>
<p>Load up on academics early in high school, so that you can go lighter your senior year. When making the senior year schedule, keep in mind that you will be missing a lot of school in January and February! Academics do matter - two of my D’s friends were accepted to a music school, but were waitlisted for the university because they were “B” average students.</p>
<p>Finally, start saving now for all of the expenses you will have senior year with applications, recording, and traveling!!</p>
<p>Mater - yes! on the advice to get academics out of the way early. S was able to take 2 music classes 10th-12th by doing this and still keep the AP’s that he wanted in his schedule. He did have to take PE Waivers by participating in outside sports but it could easily be done at his school.</p>
<p>Also - He took the spreadsheet and transferred the info onto a poster-board that he hung in his bedroom. He referred to it often and it was a reminder of deadlines and what tunes where going where in addition to audition info/dates and repertoire for each school.</p>
<p>*side note: there has been discussion of “helicopter” parenting periodically - not just here but in other forums. I personally know 3 kids (non music) who did not get into schools they should have because no one guided them - they were all TOP students at their schools. By guiding - I mean really looking at the list of schools they apply to and explaining the competitiveness today and how best to present themselves in addition to having a good range of schools. This should fall to the counselors at their schools, but many are too overwhelmed to do more than get all the paperwork in. In that case, I feel it is up to the parent to educate and guide their child. When you add into the mix the audition process, there is no question that kids need some help sorting it all out. Just my 2 cents!</p>
<p>When high school musicians finally get to college, don’t be surprised if they experience some “course selection envy.” Unless they are students at stand-alone conservatories, college music students will live and work next to friends who are having a great time choosing from a smorgasbord of courses while they can only fit in one liberal arts course. The music students are out of sync with their peers, who will have the same course limitations starting junior year, when regular college students have chosen their majors. Usually, music students gain more freedom in course selection later on in their college years. It’s just something to acknowledge, if it comes up.</p>
<p>wundone1 makes a good point. It’s even more dramatic if the student is pursuing a Double Degree. There is often very little wiggle room for electives which don’t serve either the majors or the general requirements.</p>
<p>Great idea for a thread.</p>
<p>One thing we learned was that if your child is not fully committed to a conservatory program and wants the flexibility of a school where he/she can double major or eventually come to a decision about music or non-music major, you may have difficulty finding a school that satisfies all needs.</p>
<p>We found that at schools with conservatory-level music programs, such as Carnegie Mellon, Rochester/Eastman, Johns Hopkins/Peabody, U. Maryland, etc., it is very difficult for a student to double major. It is particularly difficult to be in any higher level music ensembles AND take science lab classes, because the afternoon schedules usually conflict. If you are not a music major, you may not be permitted to take certain classes or participate in certain ensembles, or even take lessons. Many of these schools have fabulous music AND academic programs. My son was not able to really consider most of them because he would not have been able to successfully combine academics and music.</p>
<p>If you have a nagging feeling that you (or your kid) should switch teachers, do it. Never easy. For our D a switch was made after school visits (w/lessons) during her senior year. She had a good teacher, but it was clear from the lessons she received on the road that some things needed to be fixed. She was with teacher 1 for far too long…</p>
<p>Perform your rep as much as possible in public.</p>
<p>Take piano lessons. My son’s piano teacher became his piano accompanist during his senior year. He hasn’t played piano in a piano lesson since his junior year. Being able to run through rep each week with a pianist was very helpful. He was also able to play trumpet on all of his teacher piano recitals. If possible, find a piano teacher that does a lot of accompanying.</p>
<p>If you have any other “big deal” teachers or players in town, try to get a lesson or two from them. Always good to hear from someone else.</p>
<p>Find hotels that are as close to the audition as possible. This relieved a lot of stress. Also, book hotels asap. At schools where we had to list preferred audition dates, I booked hotels right away for multiple dates and then cancelled when we got confirmation.</p>
<p>If flying with medium-sized instruments, book travel on full size planes. Kayak, and probably some others, will let you eliminate regional jets – which may not be able to accommodate your instrument --from your search,. My son’s quad trumpet case will not fit on a small jet. Gate checking = scary.</p>
<p>Check and double check the rep you are playing. Don’t be surprised at auditions.</p>
<p>My S made copies of ALL of his audition music for each school. We took it to Office Max and had a spiral binding put on it. It was helpful to have all of the music in one place.</p>
<p>@wundone1 Interesting point and a relief to hear that “course selection envy” hits a number of music students their first year. It hit our S like a ton of bricks this past fall when he and (non-music major) high school friends going to school back east got together for Thanksgiving. He realized what a different experience he was having from them and it caused some anxiety and doubt. I don’t think we were prepared to deal with him questioning his decision so soon in his college experience. He is happy now with his decision, but it was a difficult time for him.</p>