I am starting to plan campus visits for my son (a junior) and am about to send out e-mails to prospective teachers regarding trial lessons. I have several questions
How fair in advance do you usually send e-mails (one school said 6 months before, others seem to say 6 weeks)?.
Do I indicate anything about him in the e-mail (i.e. pieces studied, how long he has studied, teachers. . .) ?
Do I indicate that we are willing to pay for lessons?
For some schools we know little or nothing about the teachers in his instrument. Is it considered tacky (or otherwise inadvisable to take lesson with all of the teachers who are available during the visit (could be as many as six)?
I would have the email come from your son. You can certainly advise/write/monitor, but it’s probably best that he does the “official” contacting. The teachers will be dealing with him as the prospective student although they are aware that parents are most likely to make the actual travel arrangements.
1, 6 months in advance seems extreme unless perhaps the Admissions Dept coordinates things closer to the actual date. Think of your own professional schedule, would you know what you doing 6 months in advance or be able to commit to a meeting? (Rhetorical question - no personal slight intended!) 6 weeks seems more reasonable. Check your S’s school schedule and compare to the conservatories. A good time for a visit may be his fall break, spring, etc when the conservatories are in full session.
Briefly mention teachers (especially if they are recognizable names), impressive competition wins, etc. Mention teachers who have specifically recommended the teacher you are contacting if they are likely to be known by the conservatory/university instructor. If none of the above (example, jewel of a teacher not widely known outside local area), just indicate interest in the school and perhaps most recent repertoire. You want to attract some attention in the email, but it's not necessary to send a resume - the college teacher knows what to listen for.
You can (I would say should) ask what the fee for the lesson is.
Very tricky. Yes, some teachers' noses are bent out of shape if a potential student is seen to be "shopping". Best to try to collect intelligence - do you know students at such places currently who can advise, can you find a friendly voice in Admissions and ask, maybe recent CC parents will chime in with their experiences through PMs if you give a bit more info - instrument, school, etc - recognizing your desire for privacy as well.
Have your son write the email. Build it around “visits.” Hi I will be touring X school on the X day and was hoping I could meet with you and possibly take a lesson…Let me know if this is possible and what you charge for lessons. I would say since he is a junior go on some local tours and then do more intense meetings in the spring.
My son just mentioned that he plays jazz guitar and is interested in the programs offered. No mention of pieces, teachers, etc. He has had three lessons so far and they were all very good. He is a senior.
Also,I would assume you and your S are discussing these visits with his current instructor. Current teacher may be helpful with names to focus on. Also, current teacher may have definite ideas as to what your S should bring to play for a university/conservatory instructor in a trial lesson.
@PAPDAD, I will gladly share our experiences and thoughts on this issue. We just went through the experience with my D last year (she is a freshman at Oberlin). These are only opinions but it worked for us (my D is a classical vocalist).
6 to 8 weeks worked for us.
Yes, but be brief. Don't send a resume unless the teacher requests it on his/her response.
We never mentioned willingness of paying for classes in our first email. The teacher will let you know in subsequent emails his/her fee if any. Our experience, if the teacher sees you at the school during regular hours, he/she will not charge you. Usually, the teacher will charge a fee if he/she sees you away from the school (private studio) during his/her time. There are always exceptions.
I don't think it's inadvisable. In general, these teachers are professionals and they understand your desire in looking for a teacher/student match. I think though that it will be a logistics nightmare to get a trial lesson with all the teachers in your visit. I agree with @Momofadult to "collect intelligence" to chose the teachers for the trial lessons. Look also into the possibility of sitting in classes of the other teachers. If your son is very interested in a specific school that has numerous studio teachers, find out if they have a summer program. My D did this with Oberlin and took classes and master classes with five of the six faculty members. This helped a lot in her studio teacher decision making.
Lastly, try to schedule the trial lessons during the summer and fall during our son’s senior year. This will help in various ways. The teachers will have a fresher mind of him, will receive immeasurable feedback on the things he needs to work on prior to the auditions and will get good advice on which pieces of his repertoire to use for the audition.
I agree with all that was said, except for a couple minor tweaks on some suggestions based on our experience.
I think everyone charged for lessons, not matter when they occurred. So be prepared to pay, sometimes a couple hundred dollars. It seems like a lot, but what my S got out of them (both technically and personality match) was worth every penny.
I would consider setting up the meetings junior year as well. We were able to rule out and rule in several schools based on the lessons (and attending class was a bonus).
I second all of @coloraturadad 's advice! Also, it is perfectly reasonable to help your child craft the email that can be tweaked just a little to send to each teacher. This is an excellent opportunity to get some experience crafting a good, professional email. Make sure your child has a decent email address for all his college communications and later (I.e. “hisname@x.com” instead of “pokemonforever@x.com”, or similar, lol), and create the email in Google Docs…sometimes when you copy and paste from another email, fonts can be mixed up, etc., and things end up looking a little shabby (this is a good time to help your kiddo begin learning about professional standards).
Teachers should be very used to these trial lesson requests, but it is important to do as much research ahead of time as possible. Teachers also want good fit in terms of the students they accept into their studios. Coloroturadad’s advice to do these lessons in the Senior year is excellent, in my opinion! A LOT of growth can happen in a few months during the high school years, and you want the teachers and audition committee members remembering your child’s current ability levels! Best of luck on this exciting adventure!
I agree with most of the advice above, especially about having your son contact the profs. I gave my son a short list of things I wanted to be sure he included in the emails in order to be sure we got the info we needed and we also collaborated on a very short summary of his accomplishments/experience for him to include. S is naturally very polite and respectful in emails so I knew he would do fine writing the emails himself. I did proofread the emails right before they were sent to make sure there weren’t any typos or that he hadn’t cut and pasted from a previous email and included the wrong prof/school name by mistake. At some schools the music admissions dept preferred to coordinate sample lessons, but the majority told S to contact the prof directly.
I think my S sent these emails shortly before we started making our travel plans. For us I think it was approx. 6-8 weeks in advance for schools that were farther away and/or where we needed to find a date during the spring break window, more like 3-4 weeks for schools that were within a 2 hr radius so we were more flexible on date. If the prof is very busy with performing, travel, etc. or if you are aiming for specific travel dates, a longer lead time may be necessary, and if you are trying to get lessons from more than one prof in the same visit that also could require planning farther in advance. Once the lesson was secured, we arranged a music school visit and campus tour for the same day. If you can manage to visit on the day of a studio class on your S's instrument, your S can see the prof in action with his or her current students. My S found those studio day visits even more valuable than the sample lessons because he got a sense of how the studio members interact and how they sound.
I agree with the above on #2. In S's case, we were mostly visiting schools with profs who knew my S's teacher or who had previously accepted his former students into the studio, so S started by introducing himself as one of "Mr. X"'s students. In some cases that was all that was needed.
On the lesson fee question, S just asked about the sample lesson in the first email, and once that was set he replied back confirming the date and time and he asked if there would be a fee for the lesson in that reply if the prof hadn't already said anything about a fee.
I have no advice on that one since on my son's instrument there was rarely more than one prof.
Good luck! We really enjoyed most of our college visits. Depending on your kid, it can be good if the first sample lesson is an “easier” ones, either because the school is easier to get into or your S has some exposure to the prof already or if your S’s teacher knows and recommends that prof or something. It can take the pressure off. My S got a little flustered at his first sample lesson, but fortunately he already had decided based on the tour that the school wasn’t a good fit and he decided not to apply there. The rest of the sample lessons went fine.
I’m not sure if our experience is typical, but I think S got more out of the few lessons he paid for. They were more like “real” lessons in length and structure and amount of useful feedback. At the free ones, most of the profs listened to him play for a while (sometimes just ~15-20 min), enough to figure out that he was a competitive candidate for the studio, and then they shifted into talking about the program and school and answering his questions. Those sessions were definitely long enough for S to get a good idea of the prof’s personality and manner and whether that was a good fit, but it wasn’t always long enough to get a true sense of whether the prof would be a good teacher/student fit. We only visited profs that S’s private teacher (who is well connected) held in high regard as teachers, so we weren’t worried that any of them were bad teachers or anything. A few of them offered to have him back for a “real” lesson once decisions were out, and we would have done that if those programs were near the top of the list. Still, S got a much better sense of the profs with whom he studied for a week or more at various summer programs, and he is now in the studio of one of those profs. If you don’t already have plans for summer programs before senior year, try to find out if some of your S’s top target profs teach at summer festivals.