A few questions about college auditions/schools! (Flute)

violindad
Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:45:27 +0000

Most conservatories accept considerably fewer flutes than Ithaca. For example, Curtis accepts only as many flutes as it needs for its orchestra and probably has years in which it does not need any. Numbers will vary from year to year.
Since you specifically mentioned Peabody: my understanding is that for acceptance at Peabody, you do not need to meet the JHU academic standards. Peabody has been fairly transparent about what they require academically: they have a baseline that students need to meet in order to be successful in their theory/music history courses. I believe you exceed that baseline by a comfortable margin. For conservatories like Eastman and NEC, your academics are also probably fine. For university programs, you should check with the individual program. Given that you do have considerable room to improve your SAT, I would consider retaking it. Even for schools that claim it is a small factor, a score of 1950 would create an overall more favourable impression than a score of 1770.
As violadad mentions, include a couple of safeties that you would be happy attending. In music, a safety does not have to be an inferior program: some programs that are easier to get into, can have phenomenal flute instructors and other great opportunities (these less competitive programs, usually just do not have strong peer groups across all the instruments).
Remember that with the prescreening DVD, the sound quality is more important than the visual quality. While many schools insist that the DVD does not need to be professional quality, I would be reluctant to submit something that had bad sound, especially on an instrument as competitive as flute. Given the thousands you will likely spend on application fees, flights, gas, hotels, accompanists, etc., a couple extra hundred on a good DVD is probably money well spent–use the DVD as a Christmas gift for grandparents!
Many schools have choices of dates that involve both weekends and weekdays. The top conservatories tend to have most of their dates on weekdays (they do tons of auditions and there are 5 weekdays and only 2 weekend days). For some schools, dates are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, so it helps to make your request early. At some schools the date request is part of the application. In other schools, the date request is a separate form.


You asked for other suggestions: Given the geography of your choices, I would also suggest considering Cleveland Institute of Music. It is a first rate school (as good as or better than any of the others on your list) and is located on/next to the Case Western campus giving its students opportunities to take advantage of CWU’s excellent and varied academic offerings. I believe that CWU and CIM have a reciprocal agreement. If you are visiting Oberlin, you will probably go through Cleveland anyways.