Are you talking about the ASTA sheet music difficulty scale?
ASTA also has ASTACAP which has 10 levels, I believe: ASTA
I’ve only seen this used for younger / beginner students, though.
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Yes. But for my kid…for both undergrad and masters, the applied teacher in his instrument and the strength of the ensembles was a key ingredient. When we visited, he tried to schedule so he could at least see an ensemble rehearsal. In both cases, my kid had already established a relationship during summer programs.
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Any recommendations on “safeties”? When I’ve tried to find them before I keep running into programs that cost more. Essentially, we have a large family and some savings, but apparently only enough for schools that have deep pockets and generous donors (which also then seems to be the top tier schools). I was thinking St Olaf would possibly qualify as a “safety”. His teacher is pretty confident on University of Ottawa, so that could also be considered a “safety” - maybe?
My cellist would like to focus on chamber music. This (and some various information I’ve found, as well as cost) is what has gone into the making of the list so far.
I have a “typical” student graduating this year who is still trying to decide where go and what to do, and I realized music would be even more tricky to get figured out, so here we are…
My son identified his “safeties” from a music and money standpoint with his private teacher. I realize that not everyone has the option of this process.
But for mine, a safety was a program that he would be happy to attend (good teacher, opportunities, etc) where he had a high probability of ranking highly in the audition for admission and where the school had a history of offering good financial assistance. These were not necessarily the top tier programs but rather the ones where we guessed he would be the most valuable/recruited. My son participated in a number of summer programs and master classes in HS where he met conservatory professors ahead of time. He also had a private teacher who had great knowledge as to the levels required for admission to different studios.
Again I know not everyone has this amount of expertise in their corner.
Really the best person to advise is your son’s private teacher or any faculty he can work with in the summer. They will know his level and hopefully where he would be most competitive, not only for admission but merit money.
Edited to add: My advice is to not worry too much about being the big fish in a small pond. The fit of the program is hard to determine ahead of time, but is usually apparent by the time the audition journey reaches a destination.
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My opinion…your private teacher can give you suggestions which have a stronger likelihood, but really, for auditioned programs, there is no such thing as a “safety”. The strength of your student’s audition will be compared to others doing auditions on the same instrument. There is absolutely no way to predict the strength of the audition pool from one year to the next.
Our kid’s private teacher knew faculty at a lot of the places where our kid applied. He also knew the level of consistent playing our kid did. Our kid applied to 7 schools, a mix of conservatories and colleges with strong music departments. He was accepted to 6. The 7th…the applied teacher wrote our kid a letter before he heard from admissions. This was an OOS public with a very strong program and a particularly great teacher on our kid’s instrument. That year, he had exactly ONE opening for that instrument and was told it had to go to an instate student. The letter basically said our kid was a very strong applicant, and the teacher wished he had had more space to accept…but with one opening, he couldn’t accept our kid. This is the type of thing that is hard to tease out.
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I would agree with others that no school is a true safety when it comes to music when everything depends on that one specific audition day. My son identified some schools he considered as safeties that were more local to us and he knew the professors from camps and festivals. He was able to schedule those auditions later in the season thinking if he got accepted to other schools first, he would withdraw his application from the safeties. Things actually worked out that way, he had two acceptances to conservatories before he even had to go for his safety auditions. He withdrew and was honest with those professors and they were all understanding and wished him well. He especially did not want to take away from merit that could go to other students were who were more interested in those schools.
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I would just point out that “top tier” really varies by instrument as well. For example, there is an amazing cello professor at Glenn Gould School – most people here would not even consider that school due to its location.
I tend to know violin/viola better than cello, but there are some schools that are universally regarded as top tier. I tend to put Curtis, Colburn, Juilliard, and NEC at the top of the pyramid, followed by Rice (because Texas) and CIM (because admin is a mess). Then you get programs like Indiana (working its way back up), Oberlin, Eastman, Northwestern, Peabody, USC, San Fran, etc. After that would be solid local programs (DePaul, St. Olaf, etc.) and flagship state schools.
There are a number of tuition free music programs – and they aren’t all top tier. Besides Curtis and Colburn, you also have places like Lynn University and McDuffie Center for Strings. Music is also a great way to get a scholarship to a non-music university, especially state schools or medium-range private colleges. There is a ton of merit aid out there for musicians if you find the school that is the right fit for your kid.
I would disagree with others about there being no safeties for string players. Schools always take at least a few of each instrument, so there are virtually always available spots. There is a book out there called College Prep for Musicians that has a nice scheme about rating your kid and then suggesting how many of each level program they should apply to. For example, if your kid is a Tier 1 player, they suggest 4 Tier 1 schools, 1 Tier 2 school, 1 Tier 3, and 1 Tier 4. For a Tier 3 player, they suggest 1 Tier 1 school, 2 Tier 2 schools, 3 Tier 3, and 1 Tier 4 school. It’s not perfect, but it gives you an idea of how to think about it. (Though my tier 1 player applied to just 5 Tier 1 schools, so I guess we didn’t really follow this.)
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What about the location of the Glenn Gould School is a problem? Bad part of town or just the fact it’s in Canada?
I appreciate the mentions of specific schools and will look into them. Thank you.
Just that it is in Canada – I’ve also heard that they don’t offer housing.
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Toronto housing is very expensive too. Hmm…
We are in Canada, so our private teacher sends kids to Canadian schools. He has sent students to Curtis and Colburn, but I doubt many others because most students aren’t American so the cost of other institutions for undergraduate study are disproportionately expensive. He suggests US for grad school or Europe for undergrad or grad as well. I got him a list of the cello faculty at the US schools we have on our list so far and he’s going to chat with his colleagues about it and get back to us. He knew some of the names, not all, and doesn’t know which schools tend to have professors who are actually there teaching and which ones have travelling professors who are good but aren’t available as much.
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I have a question for you about ranking the schools - I read the College Prep for Musicians book, and I understand we need to figure out the size and need of each cello studio to rank the schools. Does one just email the music department head to find out? I haven’t been able to find the information online.
I personally wouldn’t do that. Just because I suspect a lot of those emails are intercepted by student workers and music departments are in the throes of a really weird admission season right now. We stopped emailing over minor questions just it was so hit or miss and info wasn’t always accurate if we’d later ask. You might note direct questions you want to ask during a sample lesson or audition day.
I would use number of teaching faculty as a proxy for department size. Digging that up can give you a chance to research bios too. The other thing you can do is reserach ensembles and sizes of those ensembles and rough breakdown. Many will stream/post performances.
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Some programs (ie Curtis) announce their graduating class on their website, you can use that to estimate the number of cellists graduating annually. Others post announcements of senior or graduate recitals which can help with a ballpark number of upcoming openings.
We opted to not pay too much attention to number of openings when my son applied. Especially for winds it can be very intimidating. My son had the attitude that “if I am at the right level and a good fit for a studio it doesn’t matter how many openings there are, I have a good chance.”
It calmed him to focus on what he could control (his audition) and let go of what he could not (the competition) Happy to say it worked out well for him.
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My D found that during trial lessons some teachers would just tell her.
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I don’t think you need to be that meticulous about calculating spots when it comes to cello. There will almost always be at least two, even at the tiniest schools, and often many more than that. I think it is more important to look at the overall selectiveness of the school and use that as a general gauge. You will also get a good sense of ranking by talking to other cellists, or look at which cellists are winning competitions and see where they are going to college.
To get an idea of playing level of the top US student musicians, youtube and instagram are two sources I’ve seen my students use. They would look up the finalists in some competitions (such as youngarts) then go on these two platforms to search for more of their playing. On youtube it’s more likely to find clips of playing under real names. On instagram it’s more likely their “practice accounts” that has little to nothing to do with the musicians’ real names and I don’t know how the kids figure out but somehow they do.
Firsthand experience with GGS here, DD attends (selected over some of the very schools on the list above, mostly for teacher, but other factors as well). The Royal Conservatory (GGS) has the best location in town, right at UofT in the Yorkville area. Transportation, food, activities are all first-rate. There’s no dorm at GGS, but there’s dorms in the area (like St. Vlad’s) that offer excellent student housing and meals. There are also a lot of rentals in the area, including high-rise condos that many students use. GGS has a housing board available to students to locate units and match with roommates. The financial aid is great for students, full ride for many if not most. Don’t let Canada scare you off, Americans!
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The housing/dorm potential and support is very good to hear. Do you know the ballpark rent? Can you find it under $1500/month?