@amidalas : I assume your childs journey is well under way, and you’re probably prepping for auditions. I only got onto CollegeConf this year after my S went to music school - I wish I’d found this sooner. Good Luck !!
My S applied to and got into his dream college, and was accepted by his dream professor. However, it came after a tantalizing wait, a couple of days before acceptance deadline - the initial assignments were based on preference lists that were provided in the app - and in our experience with NEC, if you didn’t get into your 1st choices class, you don’t get in at all (remember that the 2nd choice or 3rd choice teacher is the 1st choice for other candidates). A close friend of his with a similar talent level got an assignment with a different 1st choice prof at NEC. So be very careful in listing the professors. Some schools however, claim that the teacher preference list is optional. At USC Thornton, the panel knows your preference of teacher, and goes out of their way to accommodate students that make it past the audition into a studio, which may not even have been on the list.
@violinmomaz : our experience with CIM was similar - they assigned my S his first choice professor. He didn’t apply to Juilliard. With IU, no assignment to a studio - and the only prof he contacted was too busy for a trial lesson. He wasn’t too interested in IU because of the large size of the program and the non-assignment of a studio. I’m so jealous of you having had a trusted mentor for your D. With my S, his private teacher at high school was a relatively recent European immigrant, an exceptional violinist, but with minimal exposure to the US college system, and he was her first student going on to a undergrad education in violin perf. So he didn’t get much help in that quarter. So having guidance there must have been a huge comfort. There was one point, when the stress got to my son, and he felt so alone, and unsupported since both dad and mom were engineers and of no help in giving him anything more than very general feedback. Luckily he had the sense (!!) to seek out other teachers at conservatories and travel to lessons (or Skype them) to get feedback on auditions (and repertoire).