It’s not too late! I have a daughter who is a freshman VP major at Oberlin this year, and other than NATS, which she did sophomore year, she started the major competitions in the fall of her junior year.
I highly recommend the Schmidt competition. They hold auditions all over the country, and I know there are still several left this year, so he can probably get into one of those. I wouldn’t recommend traveling a long way if there is not one near you, though, unless you think he has a really good shot at winning top 3, which could offset some of the cost. He could also just wait until next year and find a competition that is closer. My daughter competed at Schmidt her junior and senior year, winning 3rd place the first year and 1st place the second at the state level, and she went to their national competition both years, as well, and was a finalist and encouragement award winner her senior year, which was great, but even without the wins at nationals, it was worth the experience. It’s a fantastic program, and she made a lot of great friends and contacts. They also have a summer institute that is wonderful, and you can use your competition performance as an audition for that. For the summer institute, they bring in teachers from all over, so it’s a good way to get exposure to several different schools.
If you can swing it, I also highly recommend the CS Music competition junior year, which will be in Boston this year in late May. We went the past 2 years, and my daughter met a ton of teachers and was exposed to several great colleges through the program. She was also awarded a bunch of scholarships. The scholarships are the reason it’s good to go junior year – you can then go into senior year already knowing you have some guaranteed awards at certain schools.
The Richard Miller competition at Oberlin is also a good one. The prize money is nice, and it would give him great exposure to the teachers there and give him an opportunity to have a sample lesson or two if you can stay an extra day. It’s in October and also usually happens during family/opera weekend, so there will be lots of activities going on, and they give the RM competitors free opera tickets for their family after the competition, which gives you a little more insight into the program.
YoungArts is another great program that will have auditions in the fall. You audition online, and then they announce the winners in mid-late November. Winners with distinction get an all-expenses-paid trip to Miami for YoungArts week, where they will meet other talented kids, audition for additional scholarships, and work with teachers and performers in their field. My daughter’s teacher from Oberlin was at YoungArts her senior year, and after working with her for a week, my daughter was absolutely in love with her and wanted to study with her. She still agonized over her decision when it came down to choosing a school, but she’s really happy with where she ended up and feels like having that time with her at YoungArts helped her make the right decision.
There are also several online and sometimes local competitions he can enter. We have a local concert venue that does a big competition for kids in our area who are in the arts, so that was a good source of scholarship $$ for my daughter. But those will vary by state/district.