Please demystify the "Sample lesson" situation

mtpaper
Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:56:29 +0000

@OP - are you talking about schools with a BM or BA? The school with the BA didn’t know what we were talking about at all.

Summer before senior year, when we contacted schools, it took us a while to get hold of the right people for setting up the sample lessons. It came down to reaching the teacher directly in most cases, and some are better at responding to email than others. Sometimes, we had to be persistent to get a response.

As others have said, it’s crucial; if you can do the lesson prior to applying, you may decide not to apply there.

Initially, we didn’t understand the importance, but, we kept reading about it here. So we did a few local ones, immediately saw the value, and scheduled as many others as we could (based on distance). For the far-away schools, she decided to apply without having met the teacher, and had a lesson during the audition visit, just prior to the lesson.