The “If Game”
I have a chance to start this again with my middle son, a singer who will graduate high school 2022. He is not as ambitious as my oldest son (says that he wants to be a house painter or work at 7/11, which ever is less work for him–and he really means this), so our plan will be different. But, generally speaking, here is my “if list”:
– I do agree with @BenniesMom1 that general college fairs are a waste of time.
–Focus on small, performing arts fairs. We are lucky enough in NYC to have performing arts college fairs, which are great, not so much for gathering information, but for being “seen” and showing interest. My oldest kid got a lot of offers for trial lessons just by chatting up the music dead of admissions, which was at most of the tables at these fairs. So we’d concentrate on those.
–The SAT. My middle son doesn’t have the grades that my older one does, so we will need to approach things a bit differently. But for my oldest I wish he had taken the SAT one more time. He took the free one and did “good” but not “stellar.”
–I would have also had him audition for school shows for his CV. I think ultimately his resume was fine because he has a church singing job, but the only thing he had at school was his chorus. If I were a school, I would want kids who were excited about being part of school activities. It strengthens the school. My kid is not that kid! And his resume shows it. I have been told that consistent involvement in school music activities could have helped with possible merit aid. This may or may not be true.
–Audition regionally. We originally had a ton of schools on his list and whittled it down to a small number. We were told that it was “essential” to visit the school and audition on campus to show interest, so we removed any school that we didn’t want to spend money travelling to or that we could not fit into our schedule rather than auditioning regionally. I know now, that auditioning regionally can be absolutely good, because at the last minute we added Lawrence, which we auditioned regionally for. He was accepted there, got an enormous merit package, and is still getting offers to audition/apply for additional Lawrence merit scholarships. Plus, they send the nicest hand-written cards and letters. We’ll go see the school on their accepted student day next month.
—Go to the financial aid sessions at the auditions. I admit that I skipped most of these because I got chatting with people I knew. Sigh. The one I did attend (at Oberlin) was super helpful.
–Start earlier with the rep. Because his voice was changing right up until auditions, the rep was a nightmare. I believed him when he said everything was fine in that area and because this is his rodeo, not mine, I had no reason to think anything was amiss. I don’t know if it was fear or laziness (I think it may have been the latter), but he simply did not want to learn new rep. But was terrified to sing the rep he had because it was too high for him. So we had this situation where he had all these songs he knew really well, but were not appropriate for him. His teachers kept saying that he’d be fine and that he just needed more practice. But for some reason, more practice wasn’t helping. So he switched rep a couple weeks before prescreens were made. That was incredibly stressful, especially because it was a heavy exam period at his school.
–Not take his attitude. All the “get into college” experts will tell you that kids are stressed during this time and are testy and mean. They say kids will say incredibly entitled, victimy, disrespectful downright hurtful things, and that you should ignore it because they are under stress. I agree they are under stress, but how you do one thing is how you do everything, and to allow a kid to be disrespectful to you (especially in front of their younger siblings, who then think it’s okay to be that way) is not helpful. My kid got mean. At some points, really mean. I’m the PTA pres at my kid’s school and there were more than one time that I was crying when my PTA VP or a treasurer called to ask for something. Most of them were going through something similar with their seniors, so we did check in on each other. Which was really helpful. But I wish I had handled this better and that I had gotten my husband more on board with the need for respect as we all work together to help this kid (as he helps himself). Toward the end of all this, my kid did apologize and did express gratitude, but for those few really hard months, all my kids got mean because it became the new normal in my home. One kid’s meanness affects the way the entire family behaves.
–Talk more about money. Right now we are waiting for a few more conservatory acceptances, have one more audition left, and have three in-the-hand acceptances. His first choice school is one of those acceptances BUT they don’t make the financial package known until April. It is notoriously not affordable. But he has fallen in love and now that they are sending him nice notes, and the music teacher emails him every couple of weeks, he can’t see going anywhere else. We did have a very strong money conversation early in the school search process, in which we told him what we could afford, and what would happen if no school came in at that number (he’d have to take a job or a loan or a gap year or find another school). So he knows were we stand, but I am gently reminding him of the finances. Still, he’s a boy in love…
