Sr. Parents: Question about ED

BassDad
Fri, 22 Apr 2005 11:51:03 +0000

My daughter (music performance major) applied EA to a school that we thought would be indicative of whether she should pay more attention to auditions for her reaches or for her safeties. Had she been rejected or deferred at the EA school, we would have probably withdrawn applications at a couple of her reach schools and paid a lot more attention to the safeties in terms of visits, getting to know the teachers and so forth.

As it turned out, she had an acceptance in December that let her immediately withdraw applications to four schools at the bottom of her list. She could then concentrate on auditions for the remaining five knowing that she had an excellent choice no matter what. Ultimately, she chose the EA school over two others that accepted her.

A lot of music schools tend to hold auditions between late January and early March and offer only an RD cycle. Given that a relatively short audition counted for 60% to 100% of the admissions decision, having a non-binding acceptance in December removed a tremendous amount of stress from the process.