And pack warm layers for your trip up here for the Berklee audition; we’ve been hitting below freezing temps nightly, and with the sun setting at 4:30pm it gets pretty chilly by 7pm.
Will do! We are coming from South Florida so this will be a HUGE wake up call for my son. Several of his schools are up north and he doesn’t know what cold really is lol
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Hey all you piano performance majors,
Where are you applying to? Who are the great professors you are interested in studying with?
With the violin it is going to be competitive at any music school considered “high caliber” or above, because there are simply so many kids who want to go there (juilliard, Curtis, NEC, etc etc etc). The actual level of competition depends on how many kids are applying and how many open spots they have and that varies year to year, including the ratio of undergrad to grad students admitted.
In terms of where to apply, it really comes down to your level of playing and who you really want to study with. Casting a wide net sounds like an insurance policy, but if you apply to let’s say a teacher at a public university, because you think you might have an easier time getting admitted there, you might in fact get in but can the teacher really help you? (and folks, this is not a knock on public university music programs, there are some darn good ones out there, some good teachers at otherwise less competitive schools). The fit with the teacher is important, it isn’t just about getting into a program so you can get an MM, to be honest an MM by itself doesn’t really mean anything, it is all about perfecting your playing. My son UG and grad didn’t apply to a lot of places, he felt like these were programs with teachers who could help him up his game. He said basically that there really weren’t teachers at other programs that he felt could help him, and getting in there wouldn’t do what he thought needed to be done. Plus to be honest he always felt like he did better when he was surrounded by other top notch players, that played a role. He said if he didn’t get in, he would rather take a gap year, work on his technique, then apply again. That was him of course, just wanted to share some thoughts. Trying to guess competition is likely not very useful for the same reason, if you have places with teachers you think could help you,likely you won’t get much yield trying to guess competition levels.
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Happy Thanksgiving to fellow music parents who are trapped like me while my kid finishes his prescreening recordings! Can’t wait for 12/2 over here. 
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We’ve been using a Blue Yeti and were able to get a cord that plugs directly into an iphone. It works very nicely. It’s bulky and big and needs a mic stand, but very easy for figure out and use.
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Forgot to update on Berklee…..We LOVED Boston. We did a tour of Berklee the day we flew in. His Audition was the next morning. Honestly it was super organized and you can tell they’ve done this a thousand times. The whole sitting in a room waiting for your name and chair # to pop up on the screen to sitting in said chair and then being taken to your warm up room, then the audition room, then waiting for your interview. Now we wait until the end of January for those results.
This coming Saturday is his audition with UM (Frost). We booked our flight to Detroit for his audition at the end of January with Michigan State. Tonight he will press submit for his Juilliard application and then the waiting game on who invites him next happens. It’ll be a crazy long December that’s for sure!
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Wishing luck to all the fellow music parents on here. After months of work on essays and prescreens, we hit SUBMIT on a whole bunch of applications last night.
Nothing left to do now but wait… and PRACTICE!
Y’all take a deep breath and go grab another cup of coffee!
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Sounds like your musician’s journey is going well!
And sending thoughts of support to all who are finalizing prescreens and uploading as I assume many deadlines are today.
Crazy crunch time and then the joy of waiting for results.
You got this!
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Progress! Five went in over the weekend, to make six submitted so far. One more to go (Curtis), plus NYO also in the mix this week.
For the 12/1 deadlines, when do they typically start hearing if they are invited for a live audition?
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I feel like we had all results before schools went on their winter breaks. So hopefully folks have some good news in these next few weeks. 
It was still a challenging turnaround to play travel Tetris and make all of those auditions fit in just a couple of months.
Also, keep in mind that many schools release invites by studio, so not all at once. Don’t panic if a violinist you know gets results back and you as a clarinetist have not heard anything yet.
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Same….I think maybe Eastman was later?
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Oh wow. I hadn’t figured on knowing all of this before winter break, but that would be amazing if it does happen. Thank you for the intel!
UCLA specifically said results would come by their last day in the office. I really wish I remember which day that was, but it is before the 24th! I’m totally working off the assumption that everyone will work that way, but I have absolutely no evidence to base that on.
Patience is not a very strong virtue in this household 
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All applications are finally submitted. 14 in total which is still insane to me but I also never had to deal with prescreens and auditions and all of that. I was happy applying to my 3 schools back in the day lol
I’m looking forward to scheduling live auditions. Not sure if this would help anyone but what we did is I have calendars printed from Canva for January through March and I looked up every school’s in-person audition dates and put the school name on the calendar for those dates. That allows me to see where there are conflicts ahead of time so that we can better decide which audition date works better (that’s if we’ll even have a choice at this point).
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S22 applied to 3 music schools for undergrad (no stand alone conservatories) for voice and the only one that released prescreen results after the holiday break was Carnegie Mellon. The others were before the break.
Thinking good thoughts for all of you and your students! Mine clicked submit on grad school apps the day before Thanksgiving. PHEW!
Let’s go!!
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Hello fellow over-planner! 
I had to laugh at your audition calendar. I have one made that has all the audition dates for all the schools penciled in so we can be proactive around planning. I already have a few ‘preferred dates’ in mind to help make things easier if they’re available when we get to request. Also, a few refundable hotel bookings set.
The travel… ugh.
haha I’m so glad I’m not the only one lol great idea on the hotel bookings lol I have that for NYC “just in case” We also have a few preferred dates as well. Once I saw all of the conflicts I knew I had to be strategic with this.
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I know for violin we had three before the holiday break and two (Juilliard and Curtis) after. Juilliard is very hit or miss by instrument – some come out way earlier than others. I think violin tends to be later because of the large number of applicants. Curtis is always after break to my knowledge because of the later application due date.
For those applying to Curtis, the prescreen results tend to come out approximately 1 month before the audition date(s). At least this has been true the past few years. So don’t worry if you don’t hear results. It will seem very late.
When my kid applied, there were no prescreen submissions for his instrument. Anyone who wanted to show up to audition could do so. I believe that was true for voice as well. Kind of wild when you think about it.
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