Getting into college isn’t that difficult if you’ve had good grades in high school and do well on the SAT. But if you want to study music in college, the admission process is more complicated: at each school you apply to, you have to show up and audition.

You’ll be making the rounds of your college auditions in the winter of your high-school senior year, but preparation should start when you’re a junior. Besides getting ready as a musician, you need to be thinking early about what sort of school to attend. Do you want the intensely music-focused training of a conservatory, or the more general education offered by a university or liberal-arts college? Will you be more comfortable in a big school, or a small one?

Whether or not the school’s size matters to you, it’s really important to decide exactly what kind of music degree you want and find a school with the faculty that will give you the training you need. The two most popular choices are performance and music education, but some schools offer such options as music business, music technology, or music therapy. If you want to concentrate on performance, you’re looking at a bachelor of music degree; if you want to teach, it’s a bachelor of music education. A bachelor of arts degree allows you to pursue a minor or even a double-major outside of music, which is good if you want the broadest possible education or want to prepare for, say, entering an MBA program as a graduate student with a major in music and a minor in business.

“Be very clear about which degree program you’re applying for,” advises Margaret Schmidt, assistant professor of string music education at Arizona State University. “We have people saying, ‘I’m auditioning for a performance degree,’ but they mean a bachelor of arts, and our standards are different for those programs.”

Getting Started
Look for schools that will give you the education you need, programs that don’t favor graduate studies at the expense of undergrads, and faculty members who will give you expert guidance and training in your chosen specialty.
How do you glean all this information? First, drill through schools’ websites. Then, don’t be afraid to email specific professors with questions.

Says Karen Becker, associate professor of cello at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “If you’re a cellist, email the cello instructor and say, ‘I’m interested in your program; can you tell me about your studio, how many majors you have, and how many cellists are in the orchestra?’ Try to find out about the quality of the orchestra program, the string program in general, and the program for your specific instrument.”

And if the professor doesn’t answer your mail? “That does happen,” Becker admits. “Sometimes people are so busy that they don’t respond right away. If you don’t hear in a week’s time, email one more time, politely saying, ‘I was hoping to hear from you about your program.’ Usually people will respond; if they don’t, maybe that’s a sign you should look somewhere else.”

Of course, by visiting the campus in person you can get inside information from current college students, maybe even sit in on a lesson or orchestra rehearsal if you ask ahead of time. But that can get expensive if you’re checking out more than a couple of schools, and many students can barely afford a single audition trip. If your travel time and funds are limited, get as much information as you can when you take your audition. And it is best to audition in person rather than submit a tape or CD.

“A lot of times it’s more difficult to be convincing and to have a polished-sounding performance on a recording,” warns Becker, “because it’s like looking under a microscope—every little intonation problem and everything else is magnified, whereas in a live audition the committee gets a better overall sense of your playing.”