College Related: Clinic Archives

January 27, 2013

(Note: It's audition time! In the next couple of weeks, I'll run some information that I hope will be helpful for those students auditioning for college performing arts programs. I'd love to hear your experiences with auditions -- email me at PerformersParent@sbcglobal.net!)

Preparing for Your Music School Audition

If you've ever performed in a play or musical, then you're probably familiar with sweating through an audition. Even if you're not, pursuing a degree from a music school, dance school, or theater colleges will probably require you to endure at least one.

However, auditions for college admission at a performing arts school may be a bit different from auditions for high school or community music events. You can expect more competitiveness, more seriousness, and an expectation that you possess a certain degree of talent.

It's important to prepare for your music audition, so whatever your specialty, here are some practical tips for nailing a stellar music performance and knocking the admission committee off their feet.

Music school vocal auditions
• Prepare at least two pieces in contrasting styles, including one in a foreign language, if possible
• Opt for operatic, show music, or art song selections
• Memorize each piece
• Try to bring a familiar accompanist to the audition, if permitted

Music school instrumental auditions
• Prepare to play scales and arpeggios, at least one etude or technical study, and a solo work
• Instrumental pieces don't need to be memorized but you may have to sight-read

General advice for your performing arts school audition
• When you're performing sight-read music, take time to look over the piece and make sure you understand the key and time signatures before proceeding
• Ask for help from teachers as you prepare for your college audition
• Try to acquire audition information ahead of time
• Know more than is required for the audition
• Select your audition time and date early
• If you haven't already, get involved in high school performances

What music programs are looking for at the college audition
Music departments usually want you to demonstrate technical competence and performance achievement but each program is different. Call the college and ask for specifics about their music audition requirements. It's a good idea to audition with at least 3 colleges (but no more than 5) to amplify your opportunities. This can definitely ring true for instrumental performers, especially those aiming to study with a renowned musician who teaches a certain instrument.

If you feel like you could have done better, some music colleges may allow you to audition a second time. Ideally, you'll be accepted into the school you really want, but it's possible that you won't make the cut. If that's the case, remain upbeat and decide if you want to pursue a music program at another college or consider a different major.

Talent and hard work can make a difference
Some degree of talent is typically required for admission into a specialized college, such as a dance school, art school, or music college, but it's also important to remember that you should not rely solely on your talent or think that your talent is not strong enough. Hard work, practice, and effort can make a difference in the admissions process.

From www.Petersons.com



November 18, 2012

Music and Drama: How They Fit Into College Applications

If you’re involved in music or drama at your high school, learn how you can boost the impact of your participation on your college applications.

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times: admissions officers are looking for well-rounded applicants with plenty of extracurricular activities.

So, what does it mean if your interests lie in the arts?

Misinformed people will tell you that the arts aren’t important in college preparation, but that’s not true. While all extracurricular activities look great on college applications, high school arts and music are just as important as math and science to admissions boards.

Here are a few ways to use your fine arts classes and extracurricular activities in music and drama toward your college applications.

High School Band, Orchestra, and Choir: Making the Most Out of Your In-School Music ActivitiesNotre Dame Marching Band
When applying to college, many students overlook their band, orchestra and choir classes. Don’t make this mistake! Participation in a music ensemble demonstrates teamwork, focus, and dedication - all of which are invaluable traits for college applicants.

Look to expand your involvement in your music ensemble, if possible. For example, try to become a section leader, or run for cabinet position. Organizational and leadership skills are important to develop early, and admissions officers will certainly take note. Take advantage of extracurricular musical activities, as well. Glee clubs, show choirs, jazz bands, and chamber orchestras will strengthen your musicianship, and your college applications.

Theater and Drama: Marketing Your Passion for the Stage to Admissions Officers
If you’ve ever worked on a play, you know that it can be a lot of fun. What you may not have considered, though, is how well it can fit into your college application. Theater requires extensive research, interpersonal and organizational skills, concentration and perseverance.

Of course, these traits aren’t reserved for actors only; technicians, crew heads, stage managers and directors have heavy involvement in production too. Be sure to make your theatre experience known on your application, and look for as many participation opportunities as possible. Lead roles are probably more notable on your applications than bit parts, but don’t forget to seek out leadership positions as well. Stage manager, dance captain, and assistant director are just a few of the great leadership options available.

Music and Drama: Tips and Tactics
• Getting involved in music and drama outside of the classroom is a great way to set your application apart from the crowd. By finding opportunities outside of your high school, you’ll show admissions officers your passion and dedication for music and drama.
• If you’re interested in music, check out the competitions offered by your state’s high school band, orchestra, or choir associations. For example, solo/ensemble and state honors ensembles will hone your musical skills in a professional and competitive environment.
• As for drama, community theater is a fantastic opportunity. Find out about the productions scheduled at local theatres and audition for anything that looks interesting. Even if it’s a professional production, it can’t hurt to try.
• Many regional theaters and festivals offer internships and workshops for high school students. While they are often quite intensive, if you’re willing to put in the work, they’ll be worth the effort. Admissions officers love to see that kind of commitment, especially if you’re applying to study theater.

reprinted from: CampusExplorer.com



November 4, 2012

Your College Audition Timeline for Acting and Musical Theatre
By Mary Anna Dennard

College audition coach Mary Anna Dennard shares a schedule for those looking to enter into theater training programs.

September
Research colleges and programs. Make a list of the 5 things you want in a university, and the 5 things you want in a training program. Make plans to attend the free NACAC Performing Arts College Fair in your area. Check their schedule here (note that these have passed for this year, but keep an eye on dates for October 2013): nacacnet.org

Review college audition requirements and time limits. Finalize your audition material. Actors decide on your classical and contemporary monologues. Musical Theatre students, ready your monologues, song choices and cuts, and take ballet class 3 times a week! Great source for monos: dramabookshop.com

Begin the college application process. Check for schools that accept the common app. Here is a list: Commonapp.org

October
Record your electronic prescreens for colleges that require them. Follow instructions exactly. You do not need to hire a professional videographer. Have a plain background, good lighting and sound. If singing, be sure your voice can be heard clearly above the accompaniment.

Have your headshot and resume completed, and audition outfit chosen.

November
Begin plotting your audition schedule and making travel plans. College Audition Coach Online Prep has an online Audition Master Planner, but you can create your own with an Excel spreadsheet. Keep up-to-date files on each school. Participate in mock auditions and master classes. Here are some master classes on my website:
Collegeauditioncoach.com

December-March
College Auditions begin!
Many of the college auditions are conducted on-campus. However, about 50 colleges hold regional auditions during the National Unified Auditions. Unifiedauditions.com

April
Sort out your acceptances/deferrals/ waitlists/rejections. Visit ALL schools to which you have been accepted. Compare scholarships/tuition.

May 1st
This is the national reply-by date. You must make your final college decision by this date and have placed your deposit. Review your Students' Bill Of Rights.

reprinted with permission


Mary Anna Dennard has been a college audition coach since 2000. She is the author of the book, I GOT IN! The Ultimate College Audition Guide For Acting And Musical Theatre and was special contributor to the New York Times Theatre section. She is also guest faculty for the Broadway Dreams Foundation, and a member of the National Association of College Admission Counseling. For more information, visit Collegeauditioncoach.com .


September 16, 2012


Making the Most of Your Performing Arts College Visit

If your child is planning to major in the performing arts, it’s important to actually go to colleges they may be interested in before applying. Visiting a college campus is a great way to get a more complete picture of what studying there would be like. Websites are a useful starting point, but they can’t replace the first-hand experience of meeting faculty, students and staff members and seeing the campus in person. Over the course of a couple of years, we visited several performing arts schools with Greg. Here are some tips – and pitfalls to avoid -- to make the most of these visits:

1. Maximize your travel by combining college visits with other trips. If you have a family vacation planned near a college you are interested in, try to set aside some time for a campus visit. Some families plan road trips with stops at several schools, which can work well too. However, visiting more than three or four different colleges in a single trip can become a bit overwhelming.

2. Contact the Office of Admissions for the music or theatre school and for the university in general well in advance. Ask about tours and/or information sessions available during your visit. These may be offered only on certain days or times of day, so plan accordingly. Also ask about any other opportunities that might be available, such as sitting in on a rehearsal or attending a concert. The music or theatre school may be able to set you up with a classroom visit. We visited several schools with Greg, and set up personal contacts at each. DePaul University let us sit in on a jazz ensemble rehearsal. At Northern Illinois University, we watched a choir class, and the professor (who was the director of the vocal music department) spoke with Greg for a few minutes. At Columbia College Chicago, we sat in on an impressive sophomore-level audition preparation class, and the instructor invited Greg to join the class for vocal warm-ups. All of these gave him a great feel for the level of instruction, the interaction between students and faculty, and the types of music performed. Spring and summer are the most popular seasons for college visits, but other times of year can also work very well.

3. Connect with faculty. If you are hoping to meet with a faculty member during your visit, contact him or her via email as far in advance as possible to introduce yourself and inquire about availability. A lesson or meeting is an excellent way to get a feel for teaching style and “fit.” A lesson can also be particularly useful if you have started preparing your audition repertoire so that they can give you specific tips on how to improve. Most faculty members do charge a fee for sample lessons, so be sure to inquire about this when you arranging the lesson time. Even if you think this is just going to be a meet and greet, bring your instrument with you -- at DePaul, Greg was able to meet with the saxophone professor, and Greg assumed that this was just a meeting. The professor, however, expected to spend the time getting a feel for Greg’s skill level. But since we had not brought his sax along, this time wasn’t used as well as it could be (Professor Colby was terrific, however, and invited Greg to send him a CD of him playing for a few minutes, and offered a critique of his playing, and then invited Greg to come to his home for a private lesson.) At Northern, Greg was able to play for Professor Duke, who suggested several private teachers in our area to help him prepare for the audition. Also keep in mind that faculty members have very busy schedules, and may not be available if you haven’t made an appointment in advance.

4. Talk to current students during your visit and ask about their experiences. Spend some time in the cafeteria, local coffee shop or any common areas where students gather. At Purdue University, we stopped into a local deli for a snack, and a young man sitting near us overheard us discussing what we had learned earlier. He introduced himself, and gave us some personal insights into marching band and the university’s engineering programs (which Greg had been looking at before deciding to major in music). Your tour guide may be a student, or you may be able to meet up with some of the students who play your instrument. Several students at Northern approached Greg after we visited the choir class, and spent a few minutes talking with him about the vocal and instrumental programs. Don’t be shy – students are usually more than happy to meet fellow musicians and tell you about their school.

5. Before you go, make a list of specific questions you want to ask. Some topics you might want to learn moreNeptune North, NIU%27s PA housing about include coursework, ensembles, student life, study abroad, dual degrees, financial aid, and the application & audition process. Ask if there is a specific dorm or floor (living/learning community) for music or theatre majors. These are often closer to the building that most of the classes will be in, and may have designated practice rooms. At Northern, Greg lived in a dorm specifically for performing arts majors, and really enjoyed the creative atmosphere, and the ability to live with other people who were into the same things he was. Your questions will become more focused as you learn more about different schools. There’s a lot to learn, and each school is different, so come prepared and take notes! Microsoft offers a college comparison template (for Excel) – you can download that here .

6. After your visit, take some time to review any brochures you collected as well as your notes. Think about what you learned, whether the school feels like a “fit” for you, and any new questions you might want to add to your list for future visits.

7. Get the information available about any audition that will be required for admission. Specific required pieces may not yet be available, but you can learn the types of music, whether you will have to bring a backing tape or provide sheet music for a accompanying pianist, determine whether you’ll have to play scales or other basic skills as part of the audition, whether you’ll be singing or playing entire pieces or just a 12- or 16-bar sample. Once you’ve decided to apply and audition, be very careful to follow instructions to the letter – Greg’s audition at Illinois State University was doomed to failure quickly when he assumed that they required only a 16-bar sample, like the other auditions he had done recently, and surprise! The entire piece was required (while he could have sung the entire piece, he only had the sheet music for the sample to give the accompanist).

8. Follow up! Your student should send a thank you email to any professors they encountered. Ask a relevant question or make a comment on some aspect of the visit.



March 18, 2012

Orchestrating the Right Fit
by Steve Lipman
First appeared on MajoringInMusic.com

How to Find the Music College You Can Call Home
Choosing the right music school, college music department, or university music program, can be a daunting task for the uninitiated. Even for professionals in the music education field, it’s not always a slam-dunk advising a student as to which school would best serve his/her educational and career goals.

In my 25 years as a director of admissions, and later as assistant vice president for student affairs at a major music college, I always advised students and their families that overall “fit” was the key to a successful college experience. Contrary to popular belief, fit is not just about, “who will my private teacher be?” or, “what ensembles will I be placed in?” or even, “what are my chances of getting into that major?” It’s about all of those things and much, much more. In fact, and this may surprise you, those factors may not even be the most important criteria in making your college years rewarding, fun, and the launching pad to a successful career in the music industry.

So, what are the keys to a successful fit between student and institution?

Well, there are many. In no particular order or priority they include:
- Size of school
- Location
- Setting
- Facilities
- Curriculum
- Faculty
- Educational philosophy
- Majors available
- Performance opportunities
- Minors available
- Academic rigor
- Diversity and attitude of students attending
- School-wide culture
- Extra-curricular activities
- Student clubs
- Financial aid and scholarships
- Career advising

Criteria often not thought about, but I consider important enough to at least take into consideration are: Leave of absence policy, so students can accept occasional short professional gigs; musician-directed wellness programs; and even the goals and objectives of the president of the institution. Got your head spinning now, don’t I?

You may notice I left out such obvious things as dorm life, dining hall food, and a few others that some of you might be concerned about. I have a personal philosophy about such things. And that is: if all, or at least most of, the other things listed above are chart-toppers and working to your advantage, you won’t even notice that the food may be bland, or that the dorm mattress is way too soft for your liking. If you’re excited about going to class, practicing, jamming with friends, writing music, playing gigs, engineering sessions, networking for the future, and sitting in on clinics with world-class musicians, then the other stuff is small potatoes, as they say.



March 25, 2012

Orchestrating the Right Fit
by Steve Lipman
First appeared on MajoringInMusic.com

Part 2: Which Music School Fits You?

In (last week’s column) I introduced the concept of overall fit as being the single most important aspect of selecting a college or university to attend. That is, no one component should be the sole reason for attending an institution of higher learning. Attending college is a series of interactions and experiences spread over four or five years. By conservative estimates you will attend somewhere in the vicinity of 1450 hours of classes over eight semesters. When you account for outside activities – social as well as educational – you might spend perhaps 20,000 hours of your life in college. That’s a lot of time spent. It better feel right. It should be rewarding and comfortable. It should bring you closer to who you are, who you want to be –– as a musician, as a person, as a citizen of the world.

Each of the components of “fit” described in the first installment, as well as a few others, could take up a whole blog by itself. So let’s just tackle a few in brief –– some obvious, some less obvious –– just so you get the idea of how to approach this undertaking.

Size
You no doubt have come across the phrase, “one size fits all.” Well, when it comes to attending college this phrase couldn’t be farther from the truth. The most well-known and respected music schools in the country range in students from just a few hundred to many thousands. And, if you choose to attend a school of music that is part of a large university, the number of students at that university may easily be in the tens of thousands. I bring this up because the “feel” of attending a conservatory with 400 students is quite different from that of attending a university with perhaps 40,000 students. Both offer different educational opportunities, as well as different social environments. Only you can decide which setting feels right to you.

Geographic Location
Going to college in a small town in Vermont, or Ohio, or Colorado, is a whole lot different than attending school in Boston, New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles. The energy, crowds, and intensity of the urban setting that may be perfectly suitable for one student is another student’s nightmare. Even if you think you know which setting turns on your creative juices, you owe it to yourself to visit one of the opposite settings. You just might surprise yourself and expand your world and horizons.

Private Instructors/Faculty
Admittedly, this is one of my personal pet peeves. Yes, I understand the attraction of choosing an institution with the opportunity to study privately with a renowned artist/performer/teacher. They often have a lot to offer and at times can serve as a conduit to the professional world you so longingly wish to enter. But take into consideration the limited number of times and the limited hours spent under the tutelage of your private instructor. Consider how many weeks a semester might they be on the road, fulfilling professional obligations. Now take into account the number of classes and time spent in harmony class, ear training or sightsinging, ensemble, counterpoint and composition, English literature, even in the listening lab and practice rooms. Your education and capabilities will eventually be an accumulation, an amalgamation, of all these learned skills. Don’t pay them short shrift. Evaluate those classes and the faculty who teach them. They are important and may mean the difference between a well-rounded versus a narrowly educated musician, or one with a limited focus and skill set.

Networking
No doubt another phrase you are familiar with is: “You are judged by the company you keep.” Well, this one IS true. In the music business, networking is everything. Who you know, who you’ve played with (or written for, or engineered for, or subbed for), and who knows YOU, may be the key that opens the door to your career. Choose a school that attracts like-minded students. Your college buddies often form the foundation of your adult (and professional) life. I’ve repeated many times that the most important thing to leave school with is that proverbial “little black book” (nowadays your PDA or iPhone). Come Monday morning following graduation, it will become your closest friend.

Extra-Curriculars
Fraternities, sororities, school newspaper, inter-mural sports, homecoming, student government, mock-trial, debating team, semester study abroad, internships, student clubs, etc. How important are these college experiences to you? Be aware not all schools or colleges have all of them; and some music/arts institutions may have none of them. Check them out. Weigh the pros and the cons of attending a school that has them or doesn’t have them. Only you can ultimately make that decision.

As you can see, choosing the music school, college, or university that fits your needs – educationally, professionally, socially – is serious business. Just like the college experience itself, you’ll get out of it only what you put into it. Consult your parents, your teachers, your friends. But in the end, in the final analysis, remember it’s YOUR four years; not your parents’; not your friends’, not your bandmates’. Just yours. Choose wisely. They just may be the most important four years of your life.


Steve Lipman is president of Steven Lipman Associates, a music education consulting firm based in Boston, MA. Specializing in the field of contemporary popular music, Mr. Lipman advises talented high school age student musicians and their families in identifying and selecting music colleges and university music departments, guiding them through each step of the application process. Having spent more than 40 years at Berklee College of Music as Director of Admissions, Assistant Dean of Students, and as Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, he is one of the country’s leading experts on contemporary music education and college admissions.