Hi all - wondering if anyone has experience with optional music supplements to liberal arts schools and non-audition schools. My daughter is a senior violinist. She is applying to a few schools with specific audition requirements but also plans to submit a music supplement as part of a regular application to Williams, Wesleyan, Brown, William and Mary, Amherst, and possibly a few more with an interest in a music major. What should that supplement look like? We have videos of her playing at various venues and with different kinds of accompaniment (she plays a lot of non-classical music like fiddle and jazz) and also more formal solo videos like you submit for audition schools and conservatory. The venue ones seem a little more fun to me and we could put together a kind of “highlight reel” of different styles - but is it better to submit just the solo videos? Any insights? This board has been so helpful. Thanks!
First of all, there is an article out there that talks about how music supplements can be extremely helpful, neutral, or potentially harmful, so you might want to take a look at that as you go through this process. (I’m not sure I am allowed to link it here – message me if you can’t find it.)
Assuming you fall into the neutral or helpful category, the people from our program who have been the most successful have mirrored prescreen videos for top conservatories. I would suggest going to the audition pages for several top conservatories, looking at what they ask you to submit, and submit something similar. For violin, this is usually some Bach, a concerto movement, a Paganini caprice, and maybe one more thing like a showpiece, a modern piece, or Mozart (that last category can vary considerably). I think it would be fine to include one non-classical video, but not more than that, and only if she is very skilled in this area. Many schools asking for a music supplement are looking for students who can potentially play in their orchestra, as that is a big win for them.
Not violin, but I think @helpingthekid73 has a musician at one of the schools on your list and applied last year.
My S24 is a freshman at Williams and @kokotg has a freshman at Amherst. My son submitted formal audition style videos. He had them professionally recorded since he was also applying to BM programs. Each school has very specific instructions on what they are looking for and I suggest following their directions. I also strongly suggest meeting with (or at least contacting) the faculty of those schools and arranging a meeting in person or over zoom. This was very helpful both for admissions and to help decide fit for my son. Feel free to PM me with questions.
I suspect this is school/faculty-specific.
Recently I sent a video of my nephew playing decent but not extraordinary solo Bach and not-super-terrific Mozart (some intonation and coordination issues, etc.) to a faculty member at Stanford and asked how she’d have reviewed such videos and she indicated that they would not hurt him with her department. She liked that one of the videos was from a live performance (shows he gets out in the world and shares his music.)
Before I’d spoken with her, I’d have erred on the side of don’t-bother-unless-you’re-conservatory-caliber. And there are plenty of conservatory-caliber violinists at Stanford, BTW. The Duke professor who teaches him thought he should submit videos too (it was his idea in fact) – so presumably at Duke, his level of playing would also not be seen by those faculty as a deficit.
Beyond those two schools I really can’t opine. Some people are grumpy/mean. Some are kind. The ones I mentioned spend a lot of time trying to ensure that non-majors have playing opportunities. I can recommend both schools for a strong musician who plans on majoring in something else but would like to keep developing their skills.
ETA just read OP more closely and realize that the bar for “might major in music” is probably a bit higher. I think in this case I’d hope that her teacher is aware of how competitive she is for music programs and would probably just include the more formal audition videos you’ve done for conservatories. They probably won’t listen to much of it; you don’t want to waste their time on something that isn’t canonical.
My son’s a first year at Amherst–he’s a horn player, planning to major in music and English. He applied to a handful of music schools and a lot of LACs and submitted a music supplement everywhere that accepted them. I believe his music supplement was just his favorite two pieces that he had submitted for prescreens for music schools (i.e. he submitted the same videos for both kinds of applications). He did them at home…he recorded them with his iPhone and an external microphone (a Shure one that I think I originally saw recommended on here at some point). A couple of other thoughts: seconding getting in touch with music faculty at the schools she’s most interested in. My son found that most were happy to talk about the program and often to provide sample lessons (Amherst was actually one of the few exceptions; the horn teacher there told him she only did lessons for accepted students, so he had one when he visited after being accepted. I don’t know if that’s instrument-specific or if all the applied faculty would have said the same thing). I’ll also say that I’d disagree with the idea I’ve heard sometimes that a kid needs to be playing at an extraordinarily high level for a supplement to be helpful. I believe Amherst says specifically on their website that a supplement can only help, not hurt. Of course that may vary by school. But in my son’s case he’s a very good horn player, who’d played in competitive youth orchestras locally, but not tippy top (for reference, he had some very nice music school acceptances (St. Olaf, Lawrence, UGA) but he also failed to pass prescreens at Blair and Oberlin). But music faculty at a number of his acceptances, including Amherst, were very encouraging and very proactive about reaching out to him to share music opportunities. It was pretty clear at some schools that the supplement was a big help (at one school the orchestra director explicitly told him, “I advocated for your admission.”) Lots of variables, of course–playing horn vs. a more popular instrument might have helped him a good bit, too.
My S22 (voice, Oberlin) used his prescreen videos as a supplement for Brown and was accepted. If your D is applying to audition-schools as a potential music major, I would think that her videos for those programs should be more than sufficient.
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