<p>My son is hoping to apply to a few music departments for Music Education. I’d say they are average to above average schools. No conservatories, no major name schools. Anyone know approximately what percentage of students audition and are accepted at “regular” schools. He would love to know about his future as soon as possible and ideally before Xmas. He is an excellent student 3.8 unweighted GPA 1250 SAT. He has been 1st chair trombone since his Sophomore year and always has done well in Sole Ensemble competitions and All Region Tryouts. Isn’t quite all State material (TX). Any info would be appreciated</p>
<p>At “regular” schools, acceptance rates for music ed can vary from around 20% to around 80%, but for the schools that I know best the rates are usually above 50%. It is generally harder to get into music ed than almost any other education major. For music ed, the school will be looking for strong playing skills as demonstrated in the audition and for a serious commitment to teaching music. </p>
<p>If your son does not have a good private teacher already, he should get one in order to help prepare him for auditions. While usually the audition bar is somewhat lower for music ed applicants than it is for music performance applicants, I have heard of many fine students who would make excellent teachers being denied admission because their playing skills, while very good, are not good enough.</p>
<p>Schools usually try to weed out students that like music but are going into music ed as a backup plan (I’m not suggesting that this is your son’s case at all). Most schools will use an interview and possibly also a resume to make a determination about this. Your son should participate in as broad a range of musical activities as he can while in high school. Taking piano lessons and getting a background in music theory can not only help prepare him for music in college but can also help demonstrate that seriousness of commitment to being a music teacher.</p>
<p>It may be worthwhile to arrange a sample lesson with a couple of trombone instructors at nearby schools that your son is interested in for music ed. The instructors can give your son an idea as to whether he is in the ballpark for admission to the music ed program at their school and can also tell him what he needs to work on to perform his best at the audition.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I think we are on the right track. He is taking lessons from the trombone professor at the local University and he always has positive comments. We are going to try to set up lessons with the prospective schools. He has a very “good looking” resume of music events so I think he should be in pretty good shape</p>
<p>As violindad correctly states acceptance rates are from 20-80% for music ed, just remember that number will vary within the individual schools by studio. So a popular teacher could have a much lower rate. Son auditioned this year at a school with a 30% acceptance rate overall but for his instrument the acceptance rate was 12%. You or your son can ask the studio teachers what the acceptance rate is for the particular studio.
And be sure to include any activities that your son has done with children on his resume even if they are not music related such as camps, tutoring, outreach programs, Sunday School, etc. The music schools like to see evidence that the students know what they are getting into and that they are passionate about teaching music.</p>
<p>I think your on the right track also. As violindad suggested, he may want to go ahead and start taking private piano lessons as piano is required for a music ed degree (either in college or out of college). The college that my son will be attending has a piano exemption audition at the end of each semester - it would be great if he could exempt out of the begginer piano classes.</p>
<p>My son, whos GPA and SAT weren’t quite as good as your son’s was accepted at all three “standard” state universities that he applied at, plus at a much more prestegious private college (where the averge sat was 300 points than my sons and the average unweighted gpa is something like a 3.97). At the private college, if he was applying for anything other than a music major, I doubt he would have gotten in. Even at the “better” of the three state universities, I think he just barely snuck in academically as several of his friends with similar gpa’s and test scores were accepted but only for the spring semester. He actually got a “heads up” email from the school of music at that university telling him that they “took care of his issue with admisions”.</p>
<p>I guess what I am suggesting is that your son will have no issues academically getting into most colleges. At this point, his only issue may be the audition. He really has to “knock’em dead” at the audition. The up side to being a music ed major may be that he may not be expected to be quite as good of a musician as someone who is intending on being a performance major. The most important thing that he can be doing right now is working on his audition pieces.</p>
<p>By the way, my son was a late starter on his primary instrument, didn’t start until the 9th grade, and although he made Region band in the 10th and 11th grade, he didn’t make Allstate until his senior year. Allstate would look great on his application and/or music resume, but it is not absolutely essential for a less than top level music school. My son plays trumpet, in my state there are only 14 senior level all-state trumpet players and some of those would be 11th graders, so maybe only 10 high school seniors make allstate. Then not all of those allstate level performers will decide to be music majors. We have 10 colleges in my state that have music schools, and they likely average enrolling maybe 5 trumpet music majors each, each year, so maybe there will be 50 in my state. Obviously there is not enough allstate level performers to fill all those spots - only about 1 out of 5 at the most.</p>
<p>I would bet that assuming your son has good auditions, he would likely be accepted at most all music programs, with the exception of maybe the top 20-30 (and he might even make one of those!).</p>
<p>Thanks for the help everyone. This sure can get to be a long, stress-filled process, haven’t even begun to think about the scholarship process yet, that’s gonna mean more gray hairs</p>
<p>I have a question that’s sort of related, but that I can’t quite comprehend for some reason. Maybe just my lack of knowledge with college music school terms. =) I apologize in advance if it sounds like a dumb question.</p>
<p>So, I asked a faculty member of a certain university that’s my #1 choice how many open spots they plan on having for percussionists, percussion being my primary instrument. He said “there will be 11 spots open for the percussion studio.” I plan on going into Music Ed. So are those 11 spots for any of the auditioning percussionists in all the music majors (of Music Ed, Performance, Therapy, and Theory/Composition)? I guess I’m just confused on the meaning of a studio. =)</p>
<p>Oh, and I just had one more side question: I know it sort of just depends on how many others audition on percussion and such, but on average, is accepting 11 auditioners a large number (as in better chances)? Thanks for any and all advice. =)</p>
<p>Randomact, in my son’s case, yes, those 11 spots would be for everyone: music ed and performance. One exception, was at the Hartt school where the Jazz bassists auditioned for a different studio than the music ed and/or performance bass students. I think some of the larger programs and conservatories break out the music ed majors and place them in a different studio from the performance majors but we didn’t find that to be the case at the 6 schools where my son auditioned. He only auditioned at schools that were known for music ed and were part of a liberal arts college so he could have options should music not turn out to be his calling.</p>
<p>11 is a nice number but you can ask the teacher how many usually audition each year for those spots. Obviously the higher the number who audition the more difficult it will be to be accepted.</p>
<p>somekidsdad,</p>
<p>Interesting question about open slots and acceptance based on music major.
I wonder if it is possible to know for each school.</p>
<p>Our son auditioned as a performance major initially out of HS. Accepted into 3 of 6 schools I think. So I guess for those schools for his instrument for that particular year, he met their standard for acceptance for a performance major. At second year, he decided to switch to music education. He mentioned to me that he then had to interview with a dept head at this school for acceptance into the ed program. (His performance acceptances had been based on his audition and music resume only).
He said that they did quiz him on his commitment to teaching vs performance.
So at least at his school, they did want to see education majors that truly wanted to teach. He graduated magna cum laude undergrad, music education.</p>
<p>This May he completed a music performance masters. He does want to have/do it all!
He is searching for a public school teaching job. Tough to find these days but he is not deterred. Meanwhile he is performing in several local professional groups as well.</p>
<p>Best to your son.</p>
<p>Momofbassist: Thank you very much for the information. That definitely answers my question. I’ll consider contacting the percussion guy at the college to ask him how many usually audition each year, although, I don’t want to be a bother.</p>
<p>RandomAct,
I’m sure Dr. Smith sees at least 60-70 auditions. Here on the east coast Ithaca, Eastman and the others see an average of 60 auditions. Ithaca accepts I believe 12 and gets an average of 5-6 to attend and Eastman accepts 4. Make sure your mallet chops are together 2 and 4 mallet. Professor Burritt at Eastman said in a clinic “when you audition for me you have 10-12 seconds to catch my attention and show me you have a voice on the instrument.” Go in with that in mind thinking I have to make him remember my playing. Make sure your mallet audition is strong. Go Practice!!!</p>
<p>bigdjp: 60-70? That’s a lot! I’ll definitely keep all of that in mind when practicing, so thank you for that information! =) I agree mallets are one of the more important parts about a percussion audition.</p>
<p>So far I’ve only been doing two mallet stuff, but my instructor said we would get to four mallets eventually. My instructor is happy how I’ve already greatly improved with only two lessons dealing with mallet percussion (I wasn’t bad before, but I wasn’t amazing haha). My instructor says I put in a lot of diligent practice, and that it shows.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing quite a bit of piano piece sight-reading this summer, and I can say my sight-reading has improved greatly! I find practicing reading piano music (treble + bass clef) makes sight-reading mallet music much easier. I hope I didn’t rant on too much…=)</p>
<p>Again, I appreciate your continual advice, bigdjp. =)</p>