<p>DD is a junior and I am thinking this spring would be a good time for college visits. Is this too early? Is it too soon to have her meet with the professor for a lesson? In my research I have found that these lessons can be rediculously expensive! One of them is $160.00! Do they ever consider that the parents may not be able to afford it?</p>
<p>Not too early, IMO. If they are going into music, they have an extra layer to coordinate - auditions - that other students don’t have.</p>
<p>Jeeper52, you have to look at it from the professors’ point of view. They are inundated with constant requests for lessons from prospective students. Of course they charge their hourly rate (actually some don’t, but they have a perfect right to if they choose do.) We paid between $0 and $250/lesson, and that was 4 years ago.</p>
<p>Spring is a perfect time for school visits. Music applicants really need to have a pretty firm list of schools they are applying to by early fall due to frontloaded deadlines for pre-screens and the like. Your kid will probably have the bulk of his or her applications completed by December 1 next year. </p>
<p>We did a tour of several schools during spring break of my son’s junior year. My son did not do any lessons on that tour, but at various schools he met professors, sat in on classes and saw a big band performance.</p>
<p>Generally, the students will be on campus, so your kid can get an impression of what the student body is like. </p>
<p>We did not do any lessons until he had been accepted and was trying to make a final decision. I would consider a trip this April to be exploratory, and I would not worry about sample lessons until your list is pretty firm.</p>
<p>We started visiting colleges during spring break of junior year, and finished over the summer. D did do lessons at each school (except one where professor was not there over summer) because she wanted to get a feel for what it would be like to study with certain faculty. We visited 7 schools.
D found the lessons very helpful both in experiencing their style of teaching and in getting input on her playing. In several cases she also met with the faculty member’s students or attended a student recital. As she now prepares for auditions, she is a little less nervous because she knows some of the faculty and she has taken their input into account. Most of her lessons were $100 for an hour, and only a couple were free. D handled all the arrangements to contact the professors and arrange the lessons - most were very up front on their fees, but D always asked if they didn’t bring it up so we would make sure to have appropriate cash on hand (yep, most took only cash).</p>
<p>MomOf2TeenGirls OR anyone… How do the kids contact the professors? Do you get the email address or phone number from the school’s website or call the department or admissions? How much does the prospective student tell about themselves?
Thanks for any info!</p>
<p>Jeeper, if you don’t do it this spring, when would you you do it? Summer isn’t a good time to get a feel for a campus, and applications start in the fall! Now’s the time!</p>
<p>One thing we always did while traveling when the kids were little was to drive through campuses. We sometimes would park and walk around, but usually just drove through. It was a good way to get discussions going when the kids were little, and to get them excited about college, because they would see the rec building or horticulture building or whatever and want to know all about it. I think when we started the actual college visits with them, they were more excited and had in their heads what they liked.</p>
<p>Barfly, I think even visiting campuses for schools that they aren’t interested in gives kids a better sense of the type of college environment they find most appealing. We were at the music college fair at Eastman in October, and my daughter ruled it out. Not her thing.</p>
<p>Definitely start sooner rather than later if you can. We were only able to visit three schools in advance of my son’s auditions and these visits were invaluable. Good luck!</p>
<p>Symphonyart - My D contacted professors primarily by email, a few by phone. She started by looking at the music department websites where some have faculty contact info posted. If they did not have contact info, she sent an email to more generic contacts for the music department and/or admissions telling them of her interest and asking for contact info.
When she reached out to the faculty, she included a brief paragraph of introduction (years of study, youth and community orchestra affiliations, etc. - just a couple sentences with highlights) but did not attach her music resume or repertoire list. None of the professors asked for more background info, and most were very prompt and helpful in their responses. Several even squeezed in lessons at odd times (like 8 pm) to accommodate our out-of-state visit while managing around their other commitments. Occasionally the process was more tricky (non-responsive professor, e.g.) and I thought about stepping in, but D managed through everything with just a bit of parental coaching from the sidelines. This approach gave her yet another perspective on the faculty as she saw their differences in accessibility, responsiveness, etc. in addition to experiencing their teaching styles in the lessons.
Does that help?</p>
<p>Irish, I agree. At 17, they may not really know what they want. I know I had my head set on a small private school but one visit to a Big Ten campus and I was sold. It is nice, if possible, to visit the schools the kids want to visit as well as a few suggested by parents, and get a good mix of big, small, private, public, reach, safety. We never could fit in that many schools though, so I was glad we had been “visiting” campuses their whole lives. We had driven through Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice, UT, A&M, Texas Tech, UH, Texas State, North Texas, Purdue, Illinois, Drake, Iowa, Georgetown, Cal Poly, UCLA, USC, Colorado State, and others - all before they hit high school, and all 3 were consistently not excited about the smaller campuses. It’s kind of a family joke, though, that Mom loves EVERY campus (yep, I do). Anyway, back to the original question, the sooner the better to visit colleges. Spring semester of junior year is a great time because it is very real to the students at this time in their lives - they can see the end of the high school tunnel and get very interested in what’s next.</p>
<p>Visiting early provides another advantage we did not anticipate - many schools ask for a “Why Are You Interested in Us?” essay that tries to gauge if you are really interested in that school or perhaps using them as a safety. Having visited campuses & seen rehearsals, met with students and professors, etc. gave my daughter so much to write about in these essays and they came across as very genuine.</p>
<p>We are visiting Susquehanna in April, if she ends up going there, just for visiting you get a $1000 renewable scholarship for the 4 years.</p>
<p>Hi MomOf2TeenGirls ~ Thank you so much for responding! Your info is very reassuring, as that is basically how I was going to advise my D on how to proceed. You also make a good point about adding another perspective by seeing how the professor responds.</p>
<p>Do your visits in the spring of your junior year if they are interested in visiting conservatories. Most of the conservatories are closed for summer and the faculty are away performing. Also, consider a summer program at the colleges you are interested in. My D did summer camps at 2 schools and was able to form relationships with a few faculty members. That has proved very helpful this year as we are navigating the application and audition process. We had an issue where Admissions said the application was incomplete. I had all the documents that showed it was complete. My D contacted the faculty member she worked with in the summer, they checked with admissions and everything was resolved.</p>
<p>IMHO…never too early to start for music majors. For DS2 currently a freshman music major, we started Sept of junior year. With DS3 a HS junior we are starting tomorrow! If you are going, take the lesson. If it’s not a good match it can save you time money and headaches. You don’t want to go through the hassle of an audition if they don’t gel with the teacher. With DS2 he dropped what he initially thought would be his favorite school after a session with the prof. Cull the herd :)</p>
<p>We visited or drove through many universities when we could, while on vacation or otherwise. Daughter attendeda number of summer music programs beginning in 8th grade. She started having (free) lessons with her favorite professor beginning in her sophomore year. We did pay for one private lesson; daughter knew all the other professors by audition time. </p>