Just posting to say that I have spent some time in Cleveland over the past 2 years due to its proximity to Oberlin and I find it to be a delightful city with things to do and decent, interesting restaurants.
Heard. I feel you. Both of mine are very much the same, and in short-no-the screens are not expected to be perfect. They should reflect who he is and also his energy or “vibe” and in theory there will be some really good playing in there at parts, too. It’s ONE TAKE of a song and that is tough for anyone to do. One tactic I found to work for my son was to “hire” a director for the shoot – someone he trusts that will ideally work the camera and help calm the nerves. (I have also found that the kids are much less ^@(# when there are friends around.) I did give his friend a thank you note with a gift card and treated them both to lunch afterwards. Good luck!
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That is a great idea! Thanks
Our teacher expects perfection. 
Live auditions are much preferred to this recording process for sure.
Do any schools do live prescreens? All we encountered were recorded
There are some that don’t do prescreens. Indiana for example.
But no, all prescreens are recorded. Live is audition. I guess I should say auditions here are much preferred to prescreens.
This is exactly what my son has said. He would much prefer a live audition to recording. UC Denver and Berklee only require an audition.
Do any of you know if USC and U Miami evaluate your academic application at the same time as your prescreen? So if you pass prescreen you have passed at least a lower bar for academics?
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UMiami prescreen then invite to on campus audition then final decision with both academic and audition considerations. Hope this helps! My son did EA and found out acceptance last week of January. He was no academic superstar lol…I feel like it was heavily weighted on audition
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Just giving my impression from what I have heard from my son and the other musicians he knows. CIM has faced some pretty rough waters, with the mess with William Preucil and other allegations of misconduct, plus they have had administrative issues, they brought in Joel Smirnoff to run the place, that ran into problems.
That said CIM is still a good school of music for performance, and they do have great faculty from what I hear. My son and his group have done some masterclasses there (teaching) with chamber groups, and he said there were some really talented kids there. last I checked they had cleveland symphony people teaching there, who are not slouches. Obviously it very much depends on the instrument and the specific faculty, I just wanted to add that CIM is not a bad place to go. All music schools run into stuff, Curtiss ran into ugly allegations of teacher abuse of female students (and handled it very poorly IMO), similar things have happened elsewhere, including other premiere schools. I wouldn’t let that change your view of going there if you otherwise feel there is a great teacher there and you otherwise would be happy there.
Yeah, well, that is music teachers. My son’s teacher in high school’s idea of praise was “that was adequate”, while otherwise ripping him to shreds bc she felt you don’t praise students (and to be honest, it also wasn’t healthy for our S, it took him a lot of years to realize he was fine, that it was her personality that had some problems with it). She studied with one of these eastern European legends on the violin, and my son ran into someone once who was in the same studio. When my son described who he studied with, she kind of half smiled and said “well, if you study with her, you are studying with the old ***** too” (you can insert any 4 or 5 letter anglo saxon curse word there you want, the woman used 5 or 6 of them after old…).
Funny story: over the years since it came out, he has heard music teachers talk about the movie Whiplash and the teacher and he swears that half of them, including his own teacher, thought he wasn’t too bad or was too easy, and the other half swear no music teacher is like that, when many of them aren’t too far removed from the way that guy was in the movie lol.
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Prescreens reflect the programs. Places like Juilliard and I think Curtis went to pre screens early on because they get so many applications from kids who have 0 chance of getting in there, because of the name. It was just impractical to audition that many kids (which is why when you hear that Juilliard admits 6% of the kids who apply, it is a bit of an exagerration, they count how many appied versus how many get admitted, lot of those don’t make it through pre screen). Indiana has a relatively huge music program , they admit a wider range of students, and they also don’t get the sheer crazy volume that places like Juilliard get, so they aren’t as worried about kids applying who aren’t good enough, they can handle it because the audition process expects a lot of kids auditioning from what I hear.
Lacking a pre screen doesn’t mean the school isn’t good or competitive, it just means they can handle the volume they get in auditions.
I have IU listed as a school that does prescreens. Maybe it’s just for some instruments but not all? Just checking to make sure I’m not looking at incorrect information!
IU does prescreens for many instruments. However there are some where it is not required. My D had a prescreen there.
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Jacobs has prescreens for most instruments and voice, but not all. And in voice, instate students do not have to prescreen–that is a recent change, my first daughter had to prescreen–8 years ago, my second didn’t–last year.
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I am not sure if it is done at the same time at USC, but the academic bar is not the same for music students as it is for the rest. My understanding though they want to make sure that if they admit someone, they will be successful in both music and academic classes.
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Academic bar at USC isn’t high and even lower for music. I wouldn’t worry. We are in CA where our high school sends kids there every year.
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USC is a very competitive school academically, they had about a 10% admit rate and the stats are not low, like a 3.9 GPA and SAT roughly in the 1500 range. With music students they aren’t as stringent with the stats because obviously most of the admit is how well they play on the audition, but they do what the kids to be able to handle the academic classes they take.
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My take on UMiami/Frost as well
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USC and Miami are both academically very selective. My question was more if anyone knows if the prescreen acts similarly to an athletic pre-read, where if you get through that and the music department wants you after the audition, regular admissions won’t turn you down at that point. I hope this makes sense
That was never disclosed to us. Mine got through the prescreen, and after audition got his acceptance. He was also offered a lot of $. All I can add is that he would not have been accepted to UMiami for any other major. Friends with way higher stats were deferred and rejected. Maybe someone else has inside info as to what goes on behind the scenes…I would think that would have to come from a professor or admissions officer. We did joke that the guitar professor must have begged someone in admissions. I’m not sure this helps you. He also has a friend at USC with similar stats to him who is a gifted musician and got in there as well. I think your presumption is correct. If they want you they speak to admissions.
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