@bass2020 I think that quote from old_music_prnt was taken out of context a little and there may actually be agreement. In our experience, for music schools inside a university, the academic side can support or reject a student regardless of the audition, and an audition quality may also conceivably support a student on the academic side. If you are referring to a freestanding conservatory, that is a different matter and I would be interested to hear if academics affected admission at one of those schools.
Did your kid do separate applications to an academic side and the audition-based music side? Would the academic side have given the “nod,” based on academics, and communicated that to the music side?
At his school, you have to both get into the broader university and the music school. The music school is audition and interview based. But, at least in our case at this school, the music school was cognizant of his academic stats. Just wanted to share in case it was a helpful nugget for someone.
Thank you to all that have contributed their knowledge and encouragement to this thread. I am checking in as the parent of a violinist applying to both conservatories and universities with music performance for the class of 2030. She’s also applying to several Ivies for “fun”.
So far she has passed pre-screens for RD at: Northwestern, Oberlin, IU (Jacob), Vanderbilt, NEC and Glenn Gould. She did NOT pass the pre-screen at Rice. Still waiting on Juilliard, and the Ivies which obviously did not have prescreens. We’ve visited most of these schools so happy to try to answer questions that some might have, although this is our first rodeo for music colleges.
We do not know much about Glenn Gould and are in the process of deciding whether to attend that audition, given the extra complexity the travel poses for us. If anyone has any experience there we would be appreciative of hearing about it.
We have two friends currently at Glenn Gould and they love it. We are strongly considering having my daughter apply next year. Here are some of the things we learned over break about it:
It is a very small school, more like Colburn or Curtis in terms of size. They have one orchestra worth of students between undergrads and grads. It is not quite as selective as the tippy top US conservatories, but it is still pretty selective.
Most students receive full tuition scholarships, and those who do not still receive substantial merit aid. The friend we talked to said most kids pay nothing and those who do pay less than $10,000 in tuition per year.
The environment is very nurturing and collaborative.
Faculty, with one exception, is considered excellent, though some are “fly-in” only – there just once or twice a month.
There are weekly masterclasses.
Lessons are longer and often more frequent than in US conservatories.
Biggest downside is they do not offer (or pay for) housing or meals. There is the ability to get housing through the University of Toronto (and a meal plan) that is not terribly expensive, comparatively. There are also other options that are student-oriented housing. Neither person we know there had much trouble with housing.
Another downside of Glenn Gould is that, because it is not on the list of international schools that participate in the US Federal Student Aid program (unlike, say, McGill), you cannot use 529 plan tax-free withdrawals to pay for tuition, housing, or meals.
Please also note the asterisk attached to the BM Performance (Honours) program on their webpage. It seems to indicate that this is not a permanently accredited educational institution. This may be related to RCM’s break-up with the University of Toronto some years ago.
I’ll tread carefully here because I obviously don’t know of every music school in the country that exists in a university. With stand alone conservatories, academics can only be a negative, you can have a stellar academic background and it won’t matter if your audition is borderline.
With music schools in universities, with the ones I have any knowledge of, the academics will not make up for the audition, basically they will judge admissions based on the quality of the audition. Could it be if there is a tie, some schools may use academics as a tie breaker? It is possible. Obviously in a school like Northwestern, as a music student going for a bm you would need pretty solid academics, because of needing to get admitted to the university. That said, if you had a choice between stellar academics with all the APs and the rest and a stellar audition with solid academics because of the effort in the playing, I would do the latter.
Again, I cannot speak to every music school out there, far too many of them, but the quality of playing has to be number 1 IMO and with the competition at the best music schools of any kind, that is going to determine getting in a lot more than academics even if they look at it. Again with academics in the music school I suspect it would be more a tie breaker rather than taking a kid whose audition was rated lower than another student but would get in because of great academics versus the other kid, unless the other kids academics were pretty poor. As with all of this, in other words, YMMV
We were actually told by a professor at UM Frost as well as a professor at Michigan State that it’s WAY easier for them to convince the Admissions team to accept a student if they have good grades. It doesn’t have to be stellar but someone with C’s will be a much harder sell for them. Obviously they’d only fight for someone that had a great audition and that they really wanted.
ED may also play a part, particularly at the top academic institutions. If you know you need an oboe player or two, and a pretty good oboe player with top stats (meaning, you are confident they will get into the university) pops up in ED, maybe you go for that person rather than risk waiting for RD for a better player but one who may not have good enough academics to get into the school.
Peabody notified on December 19, after a message earlier that week saying they would notify before the break. If you haven’t heard, I would call or email.
For those that have travelled to Northwestern or will be going there….what hotel do you recommend? I know they sent a list out but just curious what others tend to gravitate towards.
My son auditioned there three years ago. We stayed in the nearest hotel. The name is Graduate. I think they have since been bought by Hilton. The biggest advantage was the short distance to Bienen. The biggest disadvantage was the room size - very very small. My son plays viola. There’s barely space in the room for him to practice.
There is a Holiday Inn a little further south from Graduate. The rooms there are bigger; however, it’s very close to one of the train lines and the trains can be heard quite clearly. Depends on the sleep habit, this may or may not be trouble.
There are two Hiltons. The nearest one was recommended to us but there was no room available when we went. The one farther to the west is newer and sometimes has NU discount but not when we went.
That is a different story. That is the people at the music school convincing the academic admissions the kid is eligible on that side, that makes sense. My point was that high grades will have little to no meaning on the music school side, there it will be the audition (and a professor wanting to teach the student; and yes, if a teacher likes a student, they can often get them admitted even if the rest of the panel isn’t so sure). This is strictly on the music school side of things.
This might be irrelevant now but I remember you asking about the red x in the portal next to kid’s 2024 w-2 and fed tax return requests for Oberlin. I finally sat and submitted those forms yesterday and my kid also would have red x as he had neither but in the Oberlin Dependent Verification Form on the 2nd page there was the spot where we checked that he didn’t work or earn enough to have those items. I submitted everything mid afternoon and today it turned to green checks next to everything and grey “Waived” checks next to the kid forms. I’m assuming this worked for you as well but if not check the Dependent Verification Form.
