Determining Safety/Match/Reach for specific instrument

bass2022
Sun, 21 Feb 2021 22:08:45 +0000

I am new to the college application process as a parent, but I have been reading in this forum to get more educated. My kid plays the double bass (classical) and very much wants to continue in college. He has not decided on whether a LAC with a strong music department or a BM is the way to go. He is looking into both. (We have read the dual degree essay). To complicate things a little, although my son is very passionate about music, I know very little about this world first-hand.

He is putting together his college list, and wants to have a reasonable range of safeties, matches and reaches. While it seems fairly straight-forward to determine that for academics, I am unclear how to determine that for the music side of the coin for a specific instrument.

Other than getting input from the private teacher on where a kid stands in terms of his/her craft, how do people determine how competitive a particular music program is for a given instrument?

How does one know how many flute/oboe/tuba/bass players the school is looking for that given year?

On one of the threads, a poster advised another poster to consult with someone who specializes in applying to music schools. If that does indeed make sense, is there a resource on here for locating those kinds of people?

Thank you in advance for any input! This forum has already been very useful.