Academic requirements for European conservatories

LaurainNYC
Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:44:01 +0000

Thanks for your replies, everyone! Of course I am in the process of making a list of schools and writing to them, and had started some of this before I posted. I am e-mailing the schools because of the time difference (some have very limited hours for the offices involved, so that I’d have to call at 3 a.m.), and in some cases, there was a substantial language barrier so writing was better than calling.

But my preliminary results were quite confusing, so I simultaneously started looking for anecdotal evidence from and American perspective here and elsewhere. Perhaps one problem was that I started with Italy, because I was traveling there anyway and know some Italian. Not enough, apparently! And the people I spoke to really had no answer for my question other than to take their exam.

And of course, there’s that issue with 12 or 13 years of high school, which causes some schools to want the American applicant to show a year’s worth of college credit upon application.

So, what I’m getting from you guys and elsewhere is that perhaps European schools in countries other than Italy are willing to take other sorts of proofs of graduation than their own country’s exam. That’s encouraging, at least, and I’ll keep looking into it.