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I agree pretty much what Jazzmom said about the passion. We live in a mid-sized midwestern city that has a huge arts climate. So we are fortunate to have available private teachers who could really teach my S properly (we didn't start him wih private lessons untill HS) so we were able to get some feedback from them to help him decide if he should pursue this in college.
I think that pre college and/or summer programs are probably one of the most valuable things a student can do, getting some advanced training and seeing how you stack up with the "talent pool". My S did not do a summer program, I didn't even know they existed untill I started coming to CC.
Which brings me to HS GCs. At his HS, they knew he was a performing kid, no one ever suggested he look into a summer program. As far as help with college search and what it takes to prepare for auditions, etc. Not much. Basically I talked with a few other parents, who were mostly as confused as I was, but got a little information here and there and began to research on the internet, which is where I found CC (just in time!).
As far as how did we know if he was "good enough" we didn't. We thought he was pretty good, but on a national level, we really didn't know for sure, how can most of us really know?(although he did particapate in the NFAA program and did well), For all we knew it was a crap shoot. Even now that he's in a good program, how do we know if he'll have a career? We don't. We know that most of the students in these programs will never see a major stage, will he? Who knows. But he is receiving a good education. How many people have degrees in things like history or english that aren't historians or english experts, most of these people work in other fields, I think the same thing can happen with a music degree. I think alot of families go through the same thing.
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