| SusanM - a few words about Rice. My son auditioned there a couple of years ago. It is an absolutely beautiful school in a very nice part of the city. The campus is completely self contained and there are no city streets that run through it at all. It is next to the museum district and a very nice park. Shepard School is very difficult to get into, mainly because their undergraduate program is pretty small. They have 120 undergrads on all instruments and voice. So ultimately there will only be 30 or so freshman who end up enrolling in Shepard. Since this encompasses everything, they can only admit a few students on each instrument. Also, once admitted to the music school, students then must be admitted academically to the University, also not a particularly easy task.
I don't anything about the trumpet faculty at Rice, but the orchestra conductor is fabulous. Rice was my son's first choice but he was waitlisted and accepted admission elsewhere. |