That really makes no sense that you would get that level of scholarship for your audition, and then told your audition wasn’t good enough. I’m betting something went awry in the communication channels here.
With that scholarship there’s something wrong. On the edge of my seat!!
No sense. It has to be a mistake. D received the same award, exactly the same name and amount for a BM.
Man that’s a pretty stressful mistake by them…nobody needs that during this process!
@GoForth, ugh. I hope this is a mistake. But this happens fairly often in the Vocal Performance (especially MT) world. It most often happens due to studio space, so that is the first thing I would ask about! Sometimes a private studio teacher has only, say, 2 openings next year…hence, the two highest scoring auditioners get spots and everyone else is “redirected” to a BA (and a second tier of teachers). Check on this. It’s very important. This happened to my D this year, and there were tears and lots of disappointment. Your S has some amazing choices, and perhaps this will help inform his decision. Or maybe it’s a mistake! I’m still hoping for a big mistake!
I would definitely call the school about this, or have your S do it, something isn’t right. I agree, if your S got a 30k award then the playing level had to be high, so the BA stuff makes no sense to me. Unless that 30k was FA and not merit, there is a huge disconnect. I wouldn’t be surprised if they confused your S with someone else, either that merit award was a fluke and your S’s playing wasn’t as good as thought, or someone transposed something or another.
Sadly mistakes happen. One college mis-filed my daughters application so at one point she was sent an email saying they had none of her required paperwork. This is especially true if you have a common last name or a last name that is easily confused with another name. In my daughter’s case there was a girl with almost the exact same name with the exception of a few letters.
Finally, All numbers from Wave 1 (initial offers) are in. Cost over 4 years, using college-supplied tuition, room, board, books, and expenses, minus scholarships:
WP = 72,472
Michigan, Ann Arbor = 79,136
UNT = 80,832
SUNY Purchase = 121,000
Miami-Frost = 137,224
Did you sort out the confusion with Frost? Hoping for the best and looking forward to seeing where he lands!
@GoForth I forsee some negotiations! Best of luck! Crossing everything for your S and a stellar package at his #1 school!
We are not sure if/how/when we want to negotiate with whom. I asked S to ask his instructor what his ideas would be. I believe it can be daid that thete are certain front runners, but their identity will be secret until all is settled.
On the Frost topic, S sent off a note, but no reply as of yet. A new piece of info - S had written to professor mentioning that the cost would be cause for S to pass on the offer. I did not check the timing of that event with the receipt of the Frost letter (though it seemed like a very narrow window at best), but it is possible that S signaled a no-go, and they moved an open BM slot over to someone else (?). Anyway, we feel like it is a fantastic school and that this time around, the market just did not indicate a deal.
This is such a great thread! @GoForth (and other bass parents) : How did your son miss all that school for the big audition drive?? My son is a sophomore double bassist (classical), and we also intend to drive to all auditions. We might have to forgo Rice, Miami, and Colburn because of that. Unless i drive over myself and my son flies in for one-two days. What a nice mother i would be to do that!!! My son is in a very high octane school where each class meets for two hours- even missing one day can set him back irrevocably. Help!!
Are you including work study? Loans?
For the east coast schools, we hope the auditions will be grouped close together. But if they are on subsequent weekends, would my son fly back home for school during the week? This seems impossible unless he takes a month off of school. We also plan to take a big drive during spring break or Junior year so he can visit some places, take sample lessons, and narrow down the list.
When we showed up at Frost, the professor was surprised we drove. He said we could have borrowed his bass, as is commonly done.
We skipped a visit to SUNY Purchase due to road wear and costs. I imagine it contributed to a very mild scholarship (I really don’t have comparative data), and I can understand that, and it is very fair.
S did miss a whole week plus a day or two of school. We made sure to have a very light senior year to facilitate these trips and audition prep. He may have done some homework on the road - I don’t recall. S had a pretty high-pressure junior year with APUSH, AP Chem, and the other stuff. It was terrible. In the senior year, he skipped physics altogether to take a study hall instead. He is taking AP Calc AB, but that is pretty straightforward for him, and then Spanish 4, a 4th year of combined English/Humanities, a teacher aid slot (no homework there), a required easy/basic resource management course, and PE. Actually, it is very nice that he will have some APs going into college. He got all 5’s so far, so whichever place he goes will be able to average 2 or 3 fewer credit hours per semester because of it. His senior year workload is so light, we called it sort of a gap year, like a “half gap” year.
@ClarinetDad16 - I have only included the primary, school-granted scholarship, where they say “Hey, here’s $xxxx for you.” I don’t believe anything financial-aid based is involved - there are no loans or work study components. So, that is to say it is only university merit scholarship money computed in.
@Music2023 - consider that you might ask to audition at a different time that the standard audition day. At least for jazz, where there is sometimes just one person making the call. When we were at Miami for a week, the professor moved the actual audition from Friday to Wednesday, just to spread out his audition workload a bit.
@Music2023 audition visits are yet another reason to make sure the senior year course load isn’t too rigorous! though it can be hard to strike the right balance if aiming for the tougher academic admits. We drove to all but one audition, and S only had to miss a total of 3 school days plus two half days. Most were on weekends, for Friday auditions we often managed to miss just the afternoon the day before and there were some well timed teacher work days during audition season that helped, too. GoForth makes a good point about some professors being flexible about dates.
Make a list of this year’s audition dates and days of the week and next year’s at target schools and you’ll have a pretty good idea of when your son’s senior year audition dates will be (though one or two of my son’s schools changed a bit or added an early date). See which schools might be able to be grouped on the same weekend or on the same trip. Sometimes geographically proximate schools seem to have audition dates one day apart, knowing that many will want to audition at both places.
In our case there were a whole bunch of schools that had the same 3 or 4 dates, two of which were reserved for in state safeties, so it was tough, but sample lessons/visits allowed us to create a manageable list. In the end you may decide to do one or more recorded auditions or a regional audition if that’s the only way it can work, but for the preferred schools try to do those in person. Some schools have an early audition date in December. If you can do one of those (my S did an in state safety) that helps with scheduling, too.
@music2023 My son is also a classical double bass player (though he applied to two popular music programs).
We traveled to five auditions by air, we drove about 4 hours to UTexas, and we live in the Dallas area so SMU and UNT were weekend morning events. He recorded for Miami because we simply couldn’t make their available dates work.
For all of that, S only missed two days of school. All of the auditions but one were either on a weekend, on the Monday of a holiday weekend, and one was on our spring break. My son plays soccer and it also happened to be soccer season so we rushed back every time to make games and practice. I really wish that we had been able to arrive on a Friday or stay over on a Monday to spend a little more time on campus while school was happening. Because of our in and out schedule for auditons, we will be returning to at least one campus and we are also going to go see Miami since his audition was recorded.
A couple of pieces of advice. Southwest Airlines charges $75 each way for the bass. That’s the best price we’ve seen, and according to S’s teacher, they generally do the best job handling the instrument.
The hard trunk for air travel is a very expensive piece of equipment. Start early in senior year reaching out to teachers and professionals in your area to see if there is one you can use for any air trips you make.
Feel free to message me any time to chat. 