I would agree about not putting too much weight on administration or admissions, in a perfect world it would be great if admissions eagerly helped all with anything, did everything right, but the reality is that admissions can be a hectic place and often is staffed with work study students, so it may not reflect much on the school experience (I don’t know how it is today, but if you depended on going to NYU based on their administration being responsive, no one would go…
And yes, it is about fit, music instruction is not learning calculus, one size does not fit all for sure, it is more like apprentice and master,and it is very, very individualized. There are some ‘great teachers’ out there on violin I personally wouldn’t want my son or anyone else to study with, yet others would kill to work with them. Schools are a combination of things, compatibility with the teacher is huge, but if the teacher is great and the rest is pure misery, the kid may not do so well. There are always tradeoffs, and I think that teacher compatibility has to be the major concern, but if it is between a great teacher at a school where the student would otherwise be miserable (city kid in the country, country kid in the city, etc), and there is another school where the match with the teacher wasn’t quite as strong, but seemed to be good enough to move the kid forward, and the environment was more to their liking, that might be a better fit. On the other hand, going to the school that has the beautiful campus, nice practice rooms, a starbucks in the dorm, etc, etc, and the teacher is ‘nice’ might not be a great idea, either. It is also important to look at how the rankings were done, if it is something like USNWR and the like, I would immediately use the rankings as bird cage liner, if it was based on information filled out by music students and music professionals, I might give it a lot higher weight.