<p>Grades matter, but you still have to be careful to save enough time for practice. It is a real balancing act that requires different solutions for different students. Those who can pull it off will have an advantage over those who cannot.</p>
<p>sopranomom - bananas help with nervousness and shaking hands…probably not whatever you were thinking! (One of the profs told D they were a placebo, but she still found the ritual of eating them before auditions helpful.)</p>
<p>And I remember getting to tell Allmusic that she was RIGHT: Everything DID turn out okay, was one of MY favorite moments! She helped me through the process, and I know there are many of us trying to pay that kind of generosity forward!</p>
<p>In the end…it will all work out…one way or another.</p>
<p>I agree that ten auditions is a lot. Our kid did 7 and two were before Christmas. Even with only five left after that, the scheduling was a nightmare. And he missed over 20 days of school his senior year due to auditions, music festivals and the like. His school understood…some don’t.</p>
<p>My biggest piece of free advice…plan to get to the audition venue the day before the audition if at all possible.</p>
<p>I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is demeanor during auditions. I know of one applicant who was rejected at two of the tippy top conservatories because they thought the applicant’s playing was “offensive” - now, knowing this applicant well, I can only surmise that the real reason was less performance ability strictly speaking (this applicant now has management and has been touring) - than arrogance and sense of privilege (parental legacy, in particular).<br>
And grades can matter particularly at places like Northwestern and USC, where the conservatories are part of universities - at USC, if you are a national merit winner, you can get 1/2 tuition (I haven’t checked recently, but that was the case in the recent past). At Oberlin, in the double degree program, you might end up with merit money at both the College and Conservatory (unless you max out in one or the other), so again, grades can count. And of course for the rare avis who can get into Juilliard-Columbia or Harvard-NEC, grades count in spades, along with talent, of course.</p>
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<p>It’s important this conversation be had. And shared. That’s the beauty of this little part of CC. Pass on what you’ve gleaned and learned to the next group coming through. We “fixtures” don’t need to do all the pontificating.:D</p>
<p>Here’s some of the past thoughts.<br>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/309522-auditions-there-magic-number.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/309522-auditions-there-magic-number.html?highlight=auditions</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/248498-since-hindsight-20-20-what-would-you-have-done-differently.html?highlight=hindsight[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/248498-since-hindsight-20-20-what-would-you-have-done-differently.html?highlight=hindsight</a></p>
<p>Thanks to all for their responses on grades and music programs, I always learn new things on here. It would make sense that bad grades can nix an admission or that good ones could help decide, but that is what I hadn’t been hearing up until this point. </p>
<p>Allmusic, in terms of getting an assessment I agree, it is important to know where you stand before going out and auditioning. One of the advantages of attending or even seeing the kids in high caliber programs for a prospective music student is in benchmarking where they are, because many of the kids at the high end music programs, prep programs, youth orchestras and so forth are going to be the ones they will be auditioning against at various programs. (Though there are also problems with that method, because a student can see some 12 year old prodigy and assume they are cooked comparatively, whereas the 12 year old prodigy is probably on the fast track to obscurity…). </p>
<p>Likewise, assesments are valuable, but they also rely on the judgement of the person involved, and knowing which teachers know the reality is important, because many don’t, even those who are in music at a relatively high level may not know what it takes to get into conservatories and such these days…so it would be possible to get an assessment from someone who thinks the kid is the cat’s meow and then find out they are clueless. </p>
<p>That said, given the difficulty of going into music as a profession, not to mention to get into a decent or high level program, a student constantly needs to benchmark themselves and see where they stand as realistically as possible. Even if all the kids who clearly aren’t at a certain level are eliminated,the crapshoot still applies,where with one panel said student gets rejected and with a different one, gets in…</p>
<p>Stradmom, chocolate does help. Sad thing is, I didn’t eat it because an audition was always around the corner. Looking back, I really should have eaten more chocolate regardless…:)</p>
<p>After every audition DD and I went to dinner where she had a hamburger, ice tea and something choloclate. All things she cannot eat when she is getting ready to sing. The one splurge helped released the tension from the day and put it behind her. Which brings up one more lesson learned. After the audition let it go. What will be will be. Set your sights on the next thing and move forward positively. </p>
<p>Agree on an early rolling admission. That eary acceptance helped tensions a lot. It was a safety but one she was happy with and it was the one that came through with the most money, music and academic. Also agree that from November to April things change. DD is happily at the school where she only auditioned there because I found it here. Was not number 1 until April.</p>
<p>Just yesterday, I said to my wife: “I wish we had a second kid pointing towards a performance program 'cause I think I’m just now beginning to figure a few things out.” Underlying a lot of the recs here is the state of knowledge of the parents and potential student: Knowledge about the student’s true ability levels; knowledge about the various programs; knowledge of the “fit” between the student and these various programs. If you’ve been involved in the upper echelons of music performance for an extended period of time you will have acquired a lot of this knowledge as a matter of course. My son, however, was kind of “late to the game” (more of a possibility as a vocalist). He only decided that he really wanted to pursue vocal performance at the next level in the summer prior to his senior year. His parents were also complete neophytes. Lacking years of training and experience in high-level competitions and camps also meant (1) his technical skills were not as advanced and (2) his audition performances were more variable. And, unlike many of the talented kids described on this board, he’s not ranked at the top of his class nor does he score at the 99th percentile on standardized tests. These factors – uncertainty on both the music side and the academic side – led us to apply to a fairly large number of schools. Throughout this process I’ve learned a lot about both my son and the various programs that are available. If I could take a “mulligan” and do it all over again, I think we would have probably eliminated some schools from his set and included some others. I also would have acted upon the advice to get sample lessons, develop relationships with faculty, etc., etc., etc. It certainly has been an interesting and educational experience!</p>
<p>Well Tenordad, from his current choices, it looks like you did SOMETHING right. I am really interested in how your son liked Kansas. D knows a very fine tenor from southern California who chose Kansas for his MM over several other VERY good schools.</p>
<p>Like TenorDad’s S, I also started relatively late (didn’t start consistently studying privately until the beginning of my junior year). I’d just like to echo what a lot of other people have said about taking “skill assessment” lessons before applying to college and then taking sample lessons with teachers at the school you’re applying for.
At the end of my Jr. year, my choir went on a trip to a major city and I convinced my parents to let me stay for a few more days to take sample lessons with a few of the well known teachers in that town. I emailed 12 teachers and ended up with 4 lessons. They all had more or less the same thing to say: "you have a good voice and learn really quickly, but you need to find a new teacher. " The two of those (one who is supposed to be famous for being harsh and uncaring, but I couldn’t disagree more) whom I had really connected with proceeded to help me look for a new teacher in my relatively small town. A few days after I finished meeting with each of them, both had sent me short lists of teachers in my area they felt would be a good match for me and help me prepare myself for college auditions. The first choice on both of those lists turned out to be the same person, and she is now my teacher. I can’t imagine how terrible this March and April might have been if I’d never taken those lessons.
In regards to taking lessons at school you are applying to, for me, I think it was vital not only for me to choose a teacher, but also to have a teacher “choose me.” Because I’ve only been studying with my “good teacher” for less than a year, like TenorDad’s son, my technique is less polished and consistent than many of my peers’. In taking lessons, teachers were able to see how quickly I learn, which, I think, allowed them to forgive the fact that I am not yet quite as accomplished as my “competition.” My acceptances reinforced this idea: I applied to 6 schools, was rejected at the two where I did not have any personal interaction with a teacher and accepted at the four where I had had lessons or meetings.
One last thing I would add would be to apply to a safety school. I didn’t, and it made the waiting process a lot more unpleasant (especially after a number of parents at auditions, after talking to me about where I was applying, asked where my safety school was; and I had no response for them).
Oh! Actually there’s one more thing. If you go to your auditions alone (like I did) avoid parents, especially before your audition. Many will be really kind and want to be surrogate mother to you, which is nice but unnecessary; but, in my experience, being the a lone child also tends to attract the crazy and competitive parents. It ended up not causing any problems for me (you can’t get much more cutthroat than a math competition), but, I think, if some of the comments these parents made had come at different times, it might have psyched me out.
Thanks for all of the help on this forum! It has proven invaluable during this crazy process.</p>
<p>Sopramo:</p>
<p>Let me start out by saying that you are a very thoughtful and mature young lady. In terms of “lessons learned”, I really do regret my S not having taken sample lessons with faculty at schools in which he was interested. As indicated in your post, I have to believe that these prove helpful when it comes to both admission and scholarship decisions. Talent matters, but so do relationships. This is true in the context of getting a good job and salary with a good company and also must play a role in getting an admission offer with a nice scholarship with a good program. I don’t know exactly how the process works, but I imagine that while the audition “scores” are very important, having a faculty advocate certainly would not hurt.</p>
<p>musicamusica:</p>
<p>In the “things we have learned during this process” category, one takeaway is that folks should expect a re-ordering of rankings. One example for us is the U of Kansas. As our state school, this started out as our safety/backup. However, as we have learned about other programs – and learned more about the voice program at Kansas – it has become a very viable option for us. Kansas has some solid faculty and although they have a significant graduate program, undergraduates also receive ample opportunities. S received a modest academic scholarship and a small music/merit scholarship. But, coupled with our in-state tuition, the cost-benefit ratio of attending Kansas is pretty favorable. As part of this analysis: If he really enjoys and is successful in vocal performance, there’s a good chance he will go to a graduate program. On the other hand, if he decides to “go in a different direction” and move away from music, there’s also a good chance he will attend graduate school. Either way, he may have graduate school somewhere down the road. This is also part of the calculus in deciding upon undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>A year ago, my D had a very successful application process, but I often reflect on how lucky we were that, as a result of some odd circumstances, she began studying with a new teacher about 6 months before the auditions - which gave her time to correct all the bad techniques she had learned from the previous teacher. . There are good teachers and bad teachers, but even bad teachers can convince a student and the family that she/he is the best teacher on the planet. It’s the responsibility of the student and the family to put their emotional investment (in the teacher) aside and get an honest evaluation from a highly regarded university teacher - and by this I mean take a lesson that you pay for. (I think that during visits to see a school, or to audition, that the teachers are in recruiting mode and are not being paid, so they might not be frank with you. It’s important to do the sample lessons in connection with your application, but I wouldn’t rely on them for a full assessment, and by then it will be too late anyway) So if you’re a high school junior now, please consider yanking yourself out of your comfort zone with your current teacher, and go find out if you need a new teacher to get ready for the extremely competitive audition process.</p>
<p>That is a very interesting point. I have to chime in that I was worried about the exact opposite problem. My D, at the end of her junior year, said she felt she had outgrown her private teacher after 4+ years and would like to move on. However, I needed the teacher recommendation forms done (by October) and my D would be off to summer camps, so no new teacher over the summer. So we stuck with the “old teacher” sporadically through this year. D has a new public school teacher who has been a great support and is extremely talented in her own right. D got in the schools she wanted so I guess we didn’t screw up too badly.</p>
<p>Aside from one disastrous audition at UCLA where he had accompaniment problems, the only schools my son auditioned for where he was not accepted? His two absolute “safeties,” one our local state school program, the other, an arts school that told him they took only 2 guitarists this year. So it’s true: there are NO safeties in music!</p>
<p>And here’s what my son learned from UCLA. Do NOT count off the backup band until you’ve really taken a moment to hear the tempo in your head. My son had chosen for his first song a difficult jazz piece that is traditionally played very fast, and had truly mastered it at the proper tempo (clearly all the other schools liked it!). Well, he’s not sure what happened. Either he counted off too slowly (more likely) or the backup band didn’t believe he could actually play it at the normal tempo and came in way too slow. </p>
<p>Either way, when I heard it outside the door, it was so unrecognizable, I thought “what song is playing?” When I realized it was the same song, I knew something was terribly wrong. Of course the entire performance, he was in misery, wondering if he should stop and start over, trying to figure out what had happened, etc. In retrospect, starting over WOULD have been better, as his performance suffered terribly and it affected his second song (which was already slow). Luckily, this school was way down the list, so thank God it happened here and not elsewhere. He came out fuming, and relayed that the head of the program suggested he take up classical guitar! (Although I don’t think it was meant as an insult!)</p>
<p>So make sure you count off properly. And if something is blatantly wrong, politely start again.</p>
<p>Lessons learned? [The question mark is deliberate because I am a slow learner and I’m not sure that I have learned what I will state below! In fact, I’m certain that I have not fully learned the stuff below.]</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Enjoy the whole process. Things will go wrong. Life will happen and one needs to enjoy it when it happens! Don’t sweat the small stuff and ultimately it is all small stuff (yeah, that line is borrowed). Audition trips may be the last time you will ever have as a parent to spend a few days alone with your child. A few of the things I can remember off the top of my head from S’s auditions in the last couple of months:<br>
a) three missed connecting flights due to airline delays; result: what was supposed to be a 4 pm hotel room arrival became a 12:30 am arrival with a scheduled 8:30 am arrival at the music school for warmup and early morning audition;
b) taking a wrong turn out of the car rental place just after arriving in Cleveland and very quickly ending up in one of those urban neighbourhoods that we squeaky clean Canadians from Podunk have only seen in the movies: people huddled around burning barrels, drug addicts forcing you to stop as they stumble across the street in front of your car while someone else bangs on your rental vehicle and you can’t get away from them because you’ll run someone else over; good story to tell at home after getting SAFELY home;
c) a cancelled flight (got a 6 am phone call and simultaneous email to tell me about the cancellation on the day the flight was scheduled for); this worked out just fine after an hour on the phone with the airline: my wife and S had 6 fewer hours in NYC, but got 6 extra in Minneapolis, so wife took shuttle to Mall of Americas and son called a friend who had moved to Minneapolis: friend was actually on her way to the airport to pick up her dad, so she ditched her dad and spent a couple of hours with S;
d) snowstorms; no detail here: many of you have much more interesting experiences with this phenomena;
e) lost hotel reservation (and the confirmation number wasn’t enough to convince the hotel that we had a genuine reservation: had to email the hotel the email it had sent to us); room only had one bed, so wife ended up on an uncomfortable cot, but the hotel was beautiful and very convenient;
f) an airline supervisor that didn’t know her own airline’s well-published rules about instruments as carry-ons (but then she also didn’t know that the second busiest airport in her country was actually in her country! For the record, this was in Canada and we’re Canadian.); we did get to take the violin onboard with us;
g) school sending wrong audition time which meant there was no rehearsal time with the accompanist on a major and difficult concerto (fortunately, S was already well-warmed up and the accompanist did a masterful job);
h) a series of emails from one school sent over several weeks that were later found to be missing their last two or more paragraphs;
i) at another school, the warm-up was reduced to the time it took for the helper to say, “The previous candidate didn’t show, so get that violin out of its case and run in to the audition room”; and
j) arriving home from an audition trip at 3:30 am instead of 11 pm (which meant I’d been travelling for 19.5 hours and I had to get up for work at 7 am–actually had one of my most enjoyable days at work after the 3 hours of sleep that followed my 19 hours of irritation); k) two memory lapses in two minutes at one audition (fortunately these were in an unknown 20th century work and possibly indiscernable to the auditioning panel: in any case, S got the largest scholarship offered at that particular school; possibly the faculty’s prior knowledge of S helped them get past the lapses–it was the only school where any of the faculty knew S).
So, yes things will go wrong (and the worst two are too personal to go into on a public board), but ultimately almost everything works out in the end (as I believe the OP said). It is better to focus on the things that go right (so why didn’t I write an extensive list of things that went right? yeah, this clearly is a lesson I need to work on.) I was far too stressed about everything. S got acceptances at all six schools and merit money at the 5 we have gotten financial info from so far. </p></li>
<li><p>Relax. The thousands of hours that your child has practiced are far more consequential than the 15 minutes in the audition. Rarely does an audition go as well as one would hope, but the ears listening to the audition are very talented ones and they can hear through the mistakes to discern skill and talent. S made mistakes at all 6 auditions and still got in at all 6 schools including Juilliard and other name-brand places. If you have prepared well, then the difference between your best performance and your worst is not nearly as great as the difference between you and most of the other auditioners.</p></li>
<li><p>Go prepared to talk to people. Have a list of questions. Ultimately life and performing are more about relationships and communication than about notes on a page or in the air. You will make better choices if you have the information that you can only glean from people (teachers, students at the schools, other parents). </p></li>
<li><p>Love music. How well you played at auditions, which schools you got into, and how much money you got at schools are inconsequential if you truly love music. No one can take away your enjoyment of music. Being able to express beauty and truth through music is a huge gift. Celebrate that gift if you have it. If your music allows you to speak from your soul then you are far more blessed than the person who got into all their dream schools with full scholarship but who doesn’t love hearing and making music.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’d say don’t do anything late late : don’t apply late to schools and make sure they get your recording in time because then they won’t have any scholarship money left for you and you’ll feel sorry, and don’t start your pieces late because having to practice 4 hours the morning of your audition to get your last piece ready isn’t fun.</p>
<p>And also if you are a bassist and take the plane, put some paper or even unbleached paper around your brige, head and fingerboard because having your soundpost and fingerboard falling two days before your Juilliard audition isn’t fun either (
though now when I think about it, it was) !!</p>
<p>Also no matter your instrument try to find an instrument reparer, bow maker, ect… before getting to the audition place, just in case.</p>
<p>Well, I guess I’ll share my story.</p>
<p>I started taking private lessons in December of my junior year. Marimba was my strongest instrument, which was sad because the only thing I knew how to play was the Super Mario Bros theme (I just really sucked at snare and had never learned how to play timpani). There was this four-mallet piece I wanted to play, so I worked my butt off for two months and learned it just in time for solo and ensemble. At this time I announced that I couldn’t imagine not having a career in music and wanted to pursue it in college, but I was countered with “This is the real world, you’ll get a real job.” So I basically stopped practicing for about 6 months. Then when I started learning a new piece in August, I decided that I would go the music route, with or without support. </p>
<p>So I practiced daily until I had to ice my wrists and spent hours researching colleges with good neuroscience and percussion departments within 4 hours of where I live (I was surprised to find how many there were- oh and thank you CC community!).</p>
<p>There were many times over the past 6 or 7 stressful months when I thought about just dropping the music thing because I was so late getting into it. However, I stuck to it and ended up getting into my top choice school.</p>
<p>So I guess the big lesson I learned is this: It really sucks to do everything so late (so start as early as possible), but there isn’t really such thing as TOO late. It becomes more stressful, but not impossible.</p>