<p>Thank You so much for all your ideas. I really appreciate them. </p>
<p>First off, thanks for confirming to us what we suspected - that a four year program was the way to go. We have been only pursuing that since we felt that it was the only way to show that you were truly committed. </p>
<p>Unfortunately for us financial concerns are high for us - hence my question. Hubby has been out of work for over 2 years and we have been living off what we had saved for colleges. UMiami would only be possible with very generous aid. We have been reluctant to pursue the Cal State system for the reasons you mention, but Dominguez Hills has an excellent program and is affordable for us. It’s not too far from us, albeit in a horrible area, which will make it possible for him to come home weekends. The (paid) sound guy at church has told him he will be able to put anything he’d like into practice when he’s there, but to go where he needs to.</p>
<p>Kudos to you for covering so much ground in so little time. Did you end up visiting some of these schools in the summer? I just don’t know how we will fit in visits during the school year.</p>
<p>One more question about the audition…Did they make him site read? My son felt he could, without problem, learn all of those audition pieces and memorize them, but he plays a lot by ear, which is good and bad. His piano teacher was trying to get him to be better at site-reading and rely less on “by-ear” but I don’t think they got far. Typically he got a piece of music and played poorly until he “heard” it in his head, then was fine. That of course works poorly for playing it once…</p>
<p>We did check out the audition page and they do not mention site-reading for piano but do mention it for drums.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your time :)</p>