Musical word of the interval: Thumb position - this refers to a technique used when playing very high notes on cello and bass. The thumb of the left hand is taken off the neck of the instrument and used together with the fingertips to press the string down to the fingerboard.
You may think that the last audition marks the end of the process, but there is still much to be done as we learn in
Installment #9, Endgame
After auditions are over, the month of March stretches on forever. You will swear that entire years have passed in less time than March of senior year. Instead of a weekly trip to a dynamic, new city where your son or daughter meets fascinating people exactly their age who share their most deeply-held interests, they are now stuck at home with the same boring crew in a place they can't wait to leave with too much missed schoolwork to make up. With the initial excitement of auditions long past and all of the pressure suddenly off, the high point of the day is now the arrival of the mail. The low point occurs 15 seconds later when they realize that another day has passed without the arrival of THE LETTER. Slowly, one by one, the rejections, waitlistings and prized acceptances finally start to dribble in. Inevitably, the most important one shows up last.
With that last notification in hand, everything changes. Suddenly a lot of decisions must be made that have profound consequences on the future. The month of April moves very quickly and there is much to do by May 1, the date deposits are due. Depending on the number and circumstances of the acceptances, they may either feel that they have wasted years of their lives on a dead end, or that the possibilities are so open-ended that it is impossible to choose among them.
If the worst has happened and they were accepted nowhere, there are some very difficult choices ahead. First, get them to find out the reason they were not accepted. Some schools hold auditions even when there are no openings, just in case they get someone who is so phenomenal that they are impossible to turn away. Sometimes, spots are reserved for a teacher's private student or the offspring of the main donor for the new music center. Your child needs to find out whether they are running into unusual situations like these, or whether their audition simply did not measure up. They should send a polite note or email to the audition judges asking for feedback. In particular, ask if they feel it is worth your time and theirs to prepare an audition for the follwing year. There are several possible next steps.
Even as late as April and May, some colleges are still looking for students. Shortly after May 1 each year, NACAC (
http://www.nacacnet.org) posts a list of colleges who still have openings. At least some of them are likely to have music departments that are perfectly fine for things like first year music theory and music history, a writing course, secondary keyboard skills and the like. You could attend one of these with the intention of transferring the following year if the audition feedback was favorable. If you have decided to pack it in and study something else, the NACAC list can still be a helpful starting point. A gap year spent on private lessons and intensive preparation for the next set of auditions might also be a possibility.
If you were accepted by just one school, then the most pressing decision has been made for you but there are other considerations. Can you afford to go given the financial aid package they have offered? Is this a safety school and, if so, do you plan on graduating from it or transferring elsewhere after a year or two?
If you have been accepted by more than one school, congratulations. The roles have been officially been reversed and it is time for them to compete for your attention.
If money is an issue, you will need to compare financial aid offers very carefully. Make sure you are comparing apples with apples. Some schools include line items that others do not when calculating costs, while some may have artificially low numbers for things other than tuition, standard fees, room and board. Make sure to differentiate between gift aid (scholarships and grants) that you do not have to pay back, loans that you do have to pay back and work study. Where loans are involved, know the full cost including origination fees and interest over the life of the loan. Just about all schools say that they will not negotiate aid awards based on financial aid offers from other schools, but most of them are willing to "recalculate" their offer based on new information. Rather than direct dickering, if you call with some other question and just happen to let slip that a competitor has made a better offer, document that offer and then provide some piece of financial information about yourself that they did not previously have, a school may be willing to sweeten the deal. I have never heard of any school rescinding an acceptance based on a circumspect inquiry of this type and if you do not ask you most assuredly will not get a better offer. Look at the decision both from an overall cost and from a cash flow basis and, if any loans are involved, try to estimate how much will be owed upon graduation bearing in mind that most starting salaries for musicians are not all that high.
Some schools will ask for a deposit before assigning a student to a specific teacher's studio. Unless you are perfectly happy to accept any teacher they have or may hire over the summer, you should try to pin them down before sending in that acceptance card. The school likely wants to maintain as much scheduling flexibility as possible until they know precisely how many new and returning students they will have for each instrument and voice. They are counting on the fact that some of their acceptees will be so happy to get in that they will not press the issue. If they try to pull this on you, go back and read the part of Installment 7 concerning teacher selection and remeber that you have far more negotiating power before sending in you deposit than you do afterwards.
Finally, go back to Installment 6 and decide how important each of the items in that list happens to be in your particular case. Add in any others that I may have missed. If you still need more information, contact the school and ask as many questions as you need to. If you can afford it, go and have another look at the place - it may ssem a little different with the knowledge that they have accepted you. Some schools have even been known to pay the airfare for such a trip in cases where they really want a student who has demonstrated some financial need. If you have still not been able to come to a decision, take the advice of my daughter's guidance counsellor and "apply with your head, choose with your heart." Go with your instincts and don't look back.
For discussion: What were some things that happened after the auditions that helped your son or daughter make a decision?