Senior year for kids applying for music

College Majors Music Majors
1

S26 is planning to audition for music therapy or music education. He plans to apply within about a six hour radius of home. He’s not sure how many schools to apply to.

From looking at websites, and audition information, it seems as though each school is going to require at least one visit, maybe two if he wants to do trial lessons. In addition, it seems like each school’s audition will require different pieces

How did all of that work for your kid? Did they drop any weekend extracurriculars to allow for travel? Did they take a less demanding course load to allow more time to work on auditions? My kid plays a couple school sports, and coaches a few special olympics teams. He thought he had another year to enjoy those things, but is now wondering if that’s going to be realistic next year.

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I can sort of highlight my sons experience as we just went through this. You will probably be in better shape than us since hes limiting his choices to within 6 hours of home.

  1. number of schools - My son applied at 9, got through pre-screen on 8 and accepted to 7
  2. We did not visit all of these schools prior to application - My son did do a visit and lesson at 3 or 4 of the schools he was really interested in we did these in both his sophomore and junior years.
  3. Auditions are generally in the month of Feb for regular decision - My son traveled to 6 states in 4 weeks including 2 plane rides and 2 10+ hour drives one way…audition month was brutal and very $$$$
  4. My son did not drop any activities to account for this, its basically one month of auditions and we did not want him to miss out on a full years activities just due to that, his senior year course load was very light though. None of his activities were really weekend based though, we were gone all 4 weekends in Feb so just take that into account.

General advice:
We got the best offer from the school where my son built the strongest personal relationship with his studio professor, all the schools were he never reached out to the professor/had a lesson were the worst offers.

Depending on the type of school get all your financial paperwork ready to submit, taxes(multiple years)/assets/everything under the sun, I feel like I had to submit more financial information for this then when I bought my house. This would apply more to conservatory type schools, state schools are almost all on common app.

The month between audition month and offers is the WORST…a month of waiting was terrible.

Good luck!

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My kid applied to 8 schools, got auditions at 4. The auditions are in Feb and Mar. She was pretty active in HS and was allowed travel days for auditions. She also took many AP classes so I don’t think she dropped any activities to prepare. She did trial lessons at 5 during the summer so we just tried to travel close to some of the schools to minimize driving. For most music programs you have to record your pre-screens in the Fall, so you are learning those pieces in the summer. Many of those pieces were also audition songs. But to be honest learning alot of songs in a short time is the story of most music programs.

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Unfortunately my kid’s major non-music EC’s are Special Olympics coaching, and varsity basketball. Both have short seasons, and missing a month is really hard.

I am not seeing a pre-screen process at most of the schools my kid plans to apply to. Music therapy, for the most part, isn’t at the most selective programs, so maybe that’s why it’s a one step process?

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pre-Screen is probably used much more in a performance based degree I would completely agree with that. If the schools he wants to to apply is all one step it could turn out to be a much simpler process for you.

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My daughter applied for voice performance which is a slightly different beast, but she was super busy like your son–a class officer, captain of her school dance team (10-month season and performed at every home boys and girls basketball game), concert choir section leader, and lead in her high school musical. My suggestion would be to see if any of your son’s school choices have the option to apply early action (not early decision–that is binding). That way he can get some applications/auditions out of the way in the fall (Oct-Dec) which will spread out the craziness and possibly fit better with his other obligations. My daughter did this with 3 schools. Otherwise she would have missed far too many dance practices/performances and musical rehearsals. It also allowed her to have some early acceptances which lessened the pressure just a bit and allowed her a little time to breathe and enjoy all the second semester senior stuff–awards banquets, prom, homecoming dances etc.

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My kid applied and auditioned in person at four schools, two of which were out of state. We only visited the out of state schools once for auditions.
The audition days are nearly always on Saturdays. If your son’s EC’s are on the weekends, late January through mid march will be disrupted by auditions, depending on how many schools he applies to. Late summer and into fall is busy preparing audition repertoire, filling out applications, filming prescreens if needed, but not necessarily missing school or activities, just zero free time.
My son stayed in all his activities (school choir and orchestra, all state ensembles, lead in the school musical, youth symphony) with minimal disruption but a lot of exhaustion. I think he must have missed the maximum days of school in the spring semester, from travel on fridays for Saturday auditions, and school related things like the all state festivals that required missing some school. Again, he only applied to four schools.

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Similar experience here re: getting the best offers from the schools where she had relationships with teachers. My daughter applied to 7 schools and auditioned/accepted at all 7. Only one was in state (Texas - UNT), though. The rest were on/near the East Coast. I HIGHLY recommend visiting if possible and having trial lessons with teachers (over Zoom if a visit is not in the cards) prior to submitting applications. If you can a few in during a trip to the area, etc, it’s great to be able to be on the campus and take a tour, etc. The vibe of a school during the visit can make a big difference, and the teacher fit can be life changing.

We did manage to visit most of the schools prior to applying. We went on one trip to NY/PA in October (fall break) of her junior year. We did 5 schools in 4 days, and it was exhausting, but it really helped her narrow down her choices. She went in thinking that she wanted Juilliard or Curtis but then decided that she didn’t really care for Curtis and that Juilliard would be better for grad school (she did still apply for Juilliard for undergrad and got in but said she wouldn’t go there unless it ended up costing less than her other top choices, which it didn’t). She ended up liking Eastman a lot.

Then, last summer, she attended a summer vocal institute at Miami University of Ohio, so we took a few days after the institute to look at IN/OH schools (IU, Oberlin, and CIM). By that point, she had made a few connections with teachers at some of the schools through the CS Music convention and the vocal institute, so she had sample lessons at all 3 schools.

The only school she didn’t tour ahead of time was CMU. A prof did reach out to her when he saw her prescreen and offer a lesson, but they never managed to find a time to connect. CMU was the only school that didn’t give her significant merit. And though their official “policy” is that most merit goes to grad students, I know of a few kids who got good packages when they had relationships with teachers who went to bat for them.

We also had a situation where I lost my job in March, so we appealed all of her offers except UNT and CMU. All schools came back with more $$, but IU, Oberlin, Eastman, and Juilliard – all schools where she had worked fairly extensively with the teachers and they advocated for her – gave her the most.

Audition season was intense - we did the 7 auditions in 4 trips, so we were traveling about every other weekend for 2 months. Most schools did offer multiple options for audition dates (exception is Juilliard - you audition when they tell you to audition, and Curtis is the same, though she didn’t end up applying there), so we were able to somewhat plan around her schedule, but we also had to plan them against each other. State schools with larger music programs tend to have more dates than smaller conservatories, which often only offer a couple of dates to choose from. I recommend looking up the audition schedules for the schools your child is interested in and try to plot out where/when you would go ahead of time, especially if you have a sport/activity calendar you can also work around. That will give you a better idea how it will all fit, and you may be able to mostly work around major games/events.

My daughter didn’t have to give anything up specifically for college auditions, but she did have to make some choices about arts-related competitions and other activities, and if your child is into those sorts of things, they do often ramp up senior year. For example, she decided to audition for YoungArts in October, but there was no guarantee she would get in. But she decided not to try out for her school musical knowing that if she did get into YoungArts, she would have to miss 4 days of rehearsal the week before they opened. Then when she DID get into YoungArts, she also had to decide whether to do that or to continue with the All-State Choir process (which is a HUGE deal in Texas) because their last audition was the weekend she was going to be at YoungArts Week (we did try to find a way to make both work, but there was no flexibility). She chose YoungArts, so she had to drop out of the All-State process at the very end. But, she didn’t have to give up any regular school activities.

9

Great input from everyone above!

I would like to add that every musician (and their parents) will have a unique journey. My recommendation is to follow your kid’s lead and stay flexible with their load and adjust as much as possible as the path unfolds.

My son came to his choice to wholeheartedly pursue music performance at the end of his sophomore year in high school. He chose to make some drastic changes to make this happen. He dropped his 2 varsity/club sports and moved across the country to study at a performing arts boarding HS. He devoted most of his day through junior and the beginning of senior year preparing, practicing, growing as a musician.

My point is not to make big changes. Rather it is to let your musician lead the way. They may need to let some things go, perhaps not. But having you as a parent being open to and helping with adjusting the schedule and commitments can be very important. And just being there for them when it gets grueling.

My son just graduated last week from his dream conservatory. He is happily working as a musician already. When he was in high school we took the leap of faith with him. It has worked out well. :blush:

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I agree with @anotheroboemom , that let the kid lead the way with decisions about the schedule and let them decide what they wish to drop or keep, because something you might consider as a parent to be not directly involved in studying music (like lets say a sport) , might in fact be a balance for them with music, which can be very single minded in its nature.

One thing I will add is that music in many ways is different than academic college (and understand that I cannot speak for every school of music, what I say I am pretty sure of with stand alone conservatories, and I also think applies to a lot of music schools inside universities). With academic admits besides test scores, GPA and AP tests, there also is the EC beast and the notions of needing the ‘right ones’. In music schools (with my caveats above), ECs won’t matter, it is going to be the audition. Could EC’s be important for admission to the university side of things? Potentially, but even there I am dubious (and obviously this is my experience/opinion). Same way taking AP classes, honors classes, won’t affect the music school side, and I suspect on the academic side won’t matter either (in terms of admission; AP classes could get them out of core requirements). If kids are doing EC’s or taking a high academic load, it should be because they want to do it, not because of the admissions angle. And again, if a kid wants to do dual degree and takes AP’s to be able to skip some foundation courses, that makes sense to me. But having a tough schedule with all the high academic courses and EC’s can be counterproductive to getting into a music performance program. Those won’t help you get into the music school and likely the academic side, knowing a student is music peformance, won’t be looking at those as strongly as they do for an academic admit IME. As someone put in another thread, proper sleep is huge with budding musicians, the book cited isn’t the only one I have seen cited. With a heavy academic load and all the homework there, and the time with EC’s, not only will they be struggling to find practice time, they also likely will be working late into the night to finish practice and homework and may not be getting enough sleep.

If the kid is seriously looking at music performance, than I would encourage parents to talk to your kid about it and how music performance admission works and try and nudge them into thinking about taking as much non music load off to allow for proper practice that fits the kids desires and needs in terms of other things, because as with most things, it depends on the student. Some kids want the academic rigor along with the music and can handle the lack of sleep and time demands, others may not be able to. Most importantly, don’t do what some parents I have seen do, and that is the kid has a crazy academic load and ECs, is complaining they are tired out, struggling, and tell the kid he/she needs all the academic stuff and EC’s to get admitted, because in that situation it is actually compromising the kids chances of getting admitted into a competitive music school.

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My kid applied to 4 conservatories and 2 BA programs for music. Dropped all school band and orchestra and instead did a second year of conservatory prep and participated in another (composition) program thanks to a mentor- outside of school. No sports or theater.

They took two online classes (AP environmental science and AP US history) for flexibility and didn’t take math at all. Accepted at conservatories but merit of $17k was not enough. They ended up at an ivy for financial reasons where music EC’s and recommendations were extremely important for admission, I believe, as long as academics and SAT’s met benchmark. Later did PhD in music, still in the field. Just posting to illustrate the points that are well-articulated above!

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