Preparing your Students for a Successful College Audition

Preparing your students for a successful college audition is a guide to helping students transition to their next phase of learning beyond secondary school. Yvonne Lam brings up the following points for consideration, researching teachers, choosing repertoire, practicing, dealing with performance anxiety, mock auditions, audition day, and a timeline.

As musicians, performers, and educators, we’ve had unique experiences in our musical learning. Relationships (some lasting a lifetime) are formed when we collaborate with our studio teachers/professors. Lam’s approach to researching teachers encourages prospective students to learn about studio teachers/professors’ mannerisms, teaching approach, and operations before making a commitment. Meeting and establishing a mentor/mentee relationship ahead of a college audition (in summer camps as Lam suggests) can become an audition prequel and advantageous.

While our riffs try to address articles/publications in its entirety, we are going to examine this practice of researching teachers a step further. Choosing repertoire, practicing, dealing with performance anxiety, having mock auditions, and the audition itself is of great importance. These elements are applicable to almost all institutions, but how often do we find the one teacher that fits a student’s needs?

There are only a handful of teachers that I’ve studied with and I can only speak to my experience as I entered college and additional schooling. I did not get a chance to research my teachers as my institution assigned my violin studio teacher/professor to me. Here’s some more context. I was given an in person audition date and I performed at my audition. Once accepted, I was notified of my studio teacher/professor in my course schedule. I often wonder if the audition panel took notes about my audition to pair me appropriately to my studio teacher. While some of my peers switched studio teachers throughout their four years of undergraduate studies, I stayed with my violin studio teacher throughout my four years of undergrad. As I look back at my experience, my studio teacher and I were well matched and this was one of the best musical collaborations I have ever experienced. I felt a great sense of accomplishment upon graduation and I could not have imagined studying with anyone else in college.

Researching a teacher and making adjustments to our college plans is part of finding a mentor that will meet our needs. This begs the question, do I need to enter a top tier institution to become an established musician? Renowned author Malcolm Gladwell credits his experience at the University of Toronto and praises his professors and opportunities he has had. This is not so much of a riff as it is speaking from experience. Students also have varying degrees of access to summer camps and educators in their geographic locations. Perhaps students should consider the opportunities available and assess what their musical needs are when preparing for college.