School list for violin performance

College Majors Music Majors
1

My son is a high school junior and plans on majoring in violin performance. I am struggling to both narrow down his list a little and add some safety/target schools to apply to next year. He has a good deal of reach schools on his list: Juilliard, MSM, NEC, Eastman, Oberlin, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Michigan, BU, CMU, Jacobs, possibly Peabody.

What are some universities/conservatories that could be considered target schools? We live in NY State, so some of his safety schools may be SUNY schools like Purchase, Fredonia, Potsdam and also Ithaca, maybe Bard.

How many schools does it make sense to apply and send prescreens to?

2

SUNY-Purchase is a great choice.

If you’re trying to narrow it down, focus on the campus and the faculty. Has he worked with any faculty before, including summer programs, masterclasses, trial lessons, etc.?

Have you both been to any of the campuses to check them out in person? There’s a mix here of University vs. conservatory, big/little, city/rural, etc., so it may depend on the experience he’s looking for as well.

2 Likes
3

Bard is not a safety school, their admissions are pretty competitive on the scale of things. Good program, but it is not a safety as such.

2 Likes
4

This thread may be informative.

2 Likes
5

Yes. And on the thread above, the post by @TooManyViolinists which is post 18 may be particularly helpful as you have a violinist as well.
I do think there are some unique factors when looking at classical instrumental as compared to jazz or vocal performance.

2 Likes
6

Lot of good schools on the list of reaches. They are at varying levels with Violin performance within that group in terms of competition with admissions, but they are all in the competitive to highly competitive range.The problem with a big list is that you will have to audition live at a lot of them, and that isn’t easy.

The first things is teachers, which is the hard part. Has your son started looking into teachers at the programs, who might be a fit? Has he had exposure to any of them? Programs can be great and their violin faculty may not be at that level. Also teachers are not generically good, one teacher may be great with a certain kind of student and not another. If his current teacher has knowledge of at least some of the programs that is huge, because he knows your son and may know about the teachers. Music is not like calculus, it is more like an apprentice/master relationship and it has to work both ways. A school hypothetically can have teachers who are strong only with certain kinds of students (for example, taking a grad student/ad student and polishing them) and wouldn’t work with a typical incoming freshman. Teachers are one way to narrow down the list, if none of them seem a match, then that would eliminate the program (keep in mind, too, that if one teacher looks great there, you may not even get into his studio. Schools at auditions ask the student to list several choices in order, if the 1st one can’t take them, they try number 2 on the list). A couple of things that may help narrow down teachers (and programs):

-Talk to your teacher about the playing level your son is at (your son should talk to him/her) and about the expectations. A program like Juilliard probably gets hundreds and hundreds of kids applying and sending a prescreen, if not close to a thousand (I really don’t know how many applications they get a year, but it is a lot from all over the world, such is their reputation). I use Juilliard but this applies to other schools as well. Being realistic is important, I don’t want to discourage anyone, but if money and time constraints for going to auditions is limited, then it might not make sense to apply to a lot of reach schools. Obviously if you can afford to go to a lot of auditions and you are okay with working out conflicts in scheduling then it doesn’t hurt to apply.

-Try using the web to see who teachers have taught and what the students have done. This isn’t necessarily a be all and end all, because like I said, it could be the teacher is someone who is great at polishing already talented students, but not a younger student (you can kind of tell that, if you look at the bio of the student, you might see if they studied with them as UG or grad/ad level).

Also look at who the teacher studied with, that gives something of an idea of how they will teach.

-Beware of the star performer teacher, which is quite common. It doesn’t mean all star performers are not great teachers,there are a lot who are good teachers (and conversely, there are a lot of good teachers who are just that, who never had great performing careers, Delay comes to mind as one example), but look at what they have done teaching, how long as well ,as a prime thing.

-Obviously if you or the teacher know people who are violinists, in that world, they also know the reputations.

-As someone else said, where the school is located is part of this. Juilliard, MSM, NEC, Eastman, Peabody, Northwestern,BU,CMU urban, Oberlin is rural, Michigan is college town (though Anne Arbor is pretty big), Jacobs college town (again, not small). Not all the cities are the same of course and the school experience is different with stand alone music schools (MSM, Juilliard, NEC) vs in a university setting wherre there is a campus. My son went to NEC undergrad , which basically has Boston as a campus, Went to Rice grad and found he enjoyed being in a campus setting. Your son should think of that, where does he want to be?

-Jacobs is a big school, they are the largest of any of the music programs, and while being at U mich (with 100k students) you are in a big school, jacobs as a music school itself is large, they admit a lot of students, and that can be overwhelming for some students.

-Does your son have the idea of dual degree, ie a BM in music performance and a BA/BS in something else? That would possibly eliminate at least some of the stand alones.

-Take a look at the cost. Unfortunately music schools are not values in education $$$s and pretty much all the schools are going to be expensive to “omg”. Financial aid can be a big factor as well as merit aid. There are threads on CC about aid, you might be able to see what typical merit aid looks like. And be careful, that “well, I got 30k out of x” might seem like a lot, but when the total cost is approaching 80-90k at some schools, it may not matter.

In terms of NY state schools, I would add Stony Brook, they have some really good violin faculty last time I looked, I know some really good violinists who went there because it was affordable and liked the teaching (I don’t know purchase with Violin).

Okay, so how many should you apply to? Again, the key is going to be auditions, this isn’t like academic admits, where through the common app you can blitz schools. Most schools require live auditions and even 10 schools can be a lot of planning, because you end up with conflicts between schools, you can end up where you have an audition in California and the next day one in Boston (that one is from experience, my son auditioned at Colburn then had to fly on the red eye to Boston to have an audition at like 10am). And most will require pre screens and that is stressful too. I would say keep it to 10 and under (and keep in mind it is very possible that some of the pre screens will fail, so you might apply to 10 and get auditions at 8, depending). It can get really out of control with auditions (obviously, places that have regional or allow remote audition might be okay, but there still will be dates with doing that that could conflict with a live one).

I wish this was easier, with my son for whatever reasons he only applied to like 5 schools and got into most of them (then agonized over his decision, the fun never ends with the process:). Now that I have made this more difficult, take a deep breath and realize that when it comes to decisions, none of what I said is cut in stone or the absolute truth, in the end hopefully it helps with the decision process, that is the goal. It is very easy reading posts on here or what people to say that there is a golden path, things you have to do, and what I have found is that there are very few fatal errors, it isn’t like eating gas station sushi or Aunt Kate’s Chrismas cake, if your son is serious about music, it will happen, even if the final path is not what he thought originally, tell him to trust his instincts and go with it.

5 Likes
7

I feel like I should start getting paid for the number of times I have recommended this book, but I highly recommend College Prep for Musicians by Don Greene et al. There is a chapter in there that goes through exactly what you are asking. It has students identify (with the help of their teacher/program) what tier they likely fall into and then makes recommendations on how many programs to apply for in that tier as well as all the others. I think their general recommendation is 7 schools with a tailored blend of reach, match, and safety depending on level.

The schools you listed actually span quite a wide range from what I would call Tier 1 (Juilliard, NEC), to a bunch of Tier 2. Some of these, like BU and Peabody, are borderline Tier 3. Not knowing your child’s level, it is challenging for me to assess exactly what schools to recommend. But common ones for the next tier down would include places like Fredonia, Lynn Conservatory, DePaul and Roosevelt in Chicago, and flagship state schools in most states. I don’t know how you feel about Texas, but there are a number there that also fit into this level. I’m most familiar with the ones in the midwest.

The most important thing to do at this point is to figure out where your child is in terms of tier of playing. Your teacher/program should then be able to advise what schools match that tier.

4 Likes
8

Well put, didn’t know about that book. There is another thing I didn’t mention, and that is expectations for what you wish to do for music and what you consider a safety. A tier 2 program, to use TMV criteria, are strong schools that still attract very high level students (using their list, MSM or Peabody might fit it) that for whatever reasons didn’t get into Juilliard et all at the first level. They are still good enough that if their goal is to get into something like a top level orchestra, go into chamber music at a high level, etc, it can work, esp since they likely would go onto grad level work.

The problem with a safety is let’s say you don’t get into a tier 1 or tier 2 school, what are your musical expectations going there? Of course there can be really good teachers at the lower tier schools , and it could be they can bring a student up to where they could go on to bigger things, but this comes down to realism. Music is so darn competitive, and it gets only moreso as you move out into the real world, and if you end up at a safety is your skill level high enough to move and/or is the program good enough to do that? Safety is also a relative term because it often is based on perceptions of relative “goodness”, the school could have some really get teachers but they don’t have the cache out there. My son’s ex high school teacher teaches at a state flagship school and my son has done master classes there for the kids, and he said there were a few that had some hope of higher level playing, but he said most of them if they thought they were going to be high level musicians didn’t have a chance. That doesn’t mean they couldn 't find their way in music in some way, they could end up teaching privately and doing gig work and other things like that. Obviously some really good students get into tier 1 and tier 2 schools and then for financial or other reasons can’t go, and there are lower tier schools that they could do well at, but these are kids who are at the level of higher tier schools.And like I said in this thread, there are some schools I know of many would consider a safety, that have some pretty good teachers on violin there.

2 Likes
9

I would just caution against too many schools! NEC is a good choice for top tier for violin.

Is Mannes being considered?

Bard requires double degrees from Conservatory students as you probably know.

2 Likes
10

Thank you! We have that book! Yes,the hard part seems to be figuring out both where he lands in terms of tier and then also what tier the schools actually fall into. He has a friend who plays at about his level that got into Carnegie Mellon for violin, so that makes us hopeful! He has been to the summer string festival at Fredonia for a few summers and he is now sort of past that level. Right now he is working on Mendelssohn and some Bach. He recently just performed Saint-Saëns. He plays in all-state and all-county orchestras and has won a few local scholarship competitions. His private teacher is some help, but was professionally trained outside of the US, so isn’t completely familiar with all of the schools. Obviously, Juilliard is a huge reach. He mostly has his sights right now on Oberlin, Eastman, Carnegie Mellon, and Michigan. These also seem like reach schools to me, but maybe not? He has applied to a few summer programs, which may also help figure out where he stands, but we are waiting to hear about acceptance.

11

The very best thing your musician can do is discuss options with his private violin teacher. Many of them know the programs out there…and they know your son and his playing abilities and where he might best apply.

It’s extremely hard to chance music performance majors anywhere. The strength of your son’s audition relative to others doing violin auditions will determine if he gets accepted…or not. It’s not possible to predict the application pool from one year to the next anywhere.

When our musician son was crafting his audition list, he consulted heavily with his private teacher (who was also on the faculty at one college where DS applied), his youth orchestra director (who played the same instrument), and his HS band director who had known him for 6 years. Each person has ideas of applied instrument teachers who they thought our kid would do well with. There was a LOT of overlap in the suggestions. Those were the places where DS applied. And they were spot on.

So please…ask the folks who are most familiar with your son and his violin playing. They will be great and helpful.

12

Thanks, we have definitely consulted with his music teachers and conductors. We are just trying to get some input from others that have been through this experience.

13

You really cannot tell unless you hear a kid play, which makes it hard on a board like this. One kid’s Mendelssohn could be good enough for Juilliard and another not even good enough to get into a state college.

Seeing what kinds of summer programs he gets into will help a lot, especially if you can then take a look at kids who attended that summer program and where they ended up for college.

2 Likes
14

Yes, true! Thanks for all of your feedback.