My attitude about the administration may seem unreasonable but I actually feel pretty strongly about it. Again, putting on that “customer” hat; for $35K per year, I expect more than a self-service checkout. My son’s in jazz studies, and the departments tend to be small with its own administration staff and chair who are perhaps more accessible. For us, the meetings have made a difference. We came away better understanding the department’s philosophies, what they feel their responsibilities are as jazz educators and what their expectations are of the students as well as the faculty. It may be that classical music education is more established/standardized, so that these points don’t need to be explicitly expressed by the school but, for jazz studies, it seems to vary a lot. One thing’s for certain, the meetings have made a much bigger impact on my son’s opinion about the school than the tours, facilities, campus, etc.
And I’m happy to report that despite my crazy parent demands, of the six schools we’ve visited, he really liked three of them, including three teachers that he’d love to study with.