sigmastolen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sigmastolen) wrote2009-11-11 05:57 pm
sigmastolen) wrote2009-11-11 05:57 pm
OMG. (Grad school is a Big Fucking Deal)
So I just spent the last three? 3.5? hours lying on my bedroom floor, poking around websites of music schools around the country (though mostly on the other side of the Rockies, if not the Appalachians) and trying to decide where I want to apply. I made a chart detailing the location, bassoon faculty, admissions deadlines, audition dates, and repertoire requirements for ten schools, on a sheet of butcher paper that's about three feet by three feet. Jesus.
Schools: Northwestern, Manhattan SoM, Carnegie Mellon, Juilliard, Roosevelt, Peabody (Johns Hopkins), Mannes, San Francisco Conservatory, Yale, Cleveland Institute of Music.
I also had tabs open at various points for UCLA, That Other School, Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, De Paul, Curtis, Eastman, Oberlin, Rice, and Indiana (@ Bloomingdale), but they didn't make the chart for various reasons... wrong location, teachers I've never heard of, teachers I doubt will be a good fit, lack of MM programs, unappealing gossip from friends...
I'm sort of overwhelmed. At least my preliminary research in September paid off -- the TRICERATOPS ASSLOAD of music I'm preparing puts me in good stead for... well, everywhere, pretty much.
Still, I feel I should whittle down this list, if for no other reason than to save my parents money on application fees and travel arrangements (and, you know, so I don't have a paperwork-related breakdown, and so fewer professors will hate me for giving them inadequate letter-of-recommendation-writing time). Right?
SO. My brain thinks it wants to be in Chicago. That means Northwestern and Roosevelt. (And I don't know how I missed this before, but David McGill teaches at Roosevelt? There's a reason to go there all by itself.)
Manhattan looks super-attractive, but I'm also really intimidated by it. For reasons I can't suss out at the moment, Juilliard is not as attractive, despite having the same professors plus a few, notably Judith LeClair.
Carnegie Mellon feels safe to me, since I got accepted there for undergrad, but I've had mixed reviews.
I don't know how I feel about San Francisco -- I want to leave CA, but I do like The City, and Stephen Paulson is kind of a big deal, although I don't know if it would be weird since Flaky Junior studied with him in HS. Actually, I'm probably being quite silly when I say that. It wouldn't be weird.
Yale looks pretty attractive, as well, and has the BIG advantage of being FREE... but I'd have to make a pre-screening recording, and I HATE recording, and it'll also be very competitive because (a) small studio and (b) FREE.
CIM.... kind of made the list on a whim. I haven't heard of any of the teachers, but Malia raved about the Cleveland Symphony, and the audition repertoire is pretty harmless.... but also the auditions are Super Early. But then, it might be better to spread out my travels? Or else I'll be missing something like three consecutive weeks of school for this shit, you know?
Mannes was also kind of a whim, but the requirements are like Manhattan Lite, and two of Manhattan's teachers overlap (though not Frank Morelli, who is the Big Deal guy. But then I don't know how much he really does at MSM anyway, right? Apparently he teaches chamber music at Juilliard, which makes sense), and the website went on and on about how the school is a community, which appeals to me. Indiana didn't make the list because it was so impersonal.
Peabody just came to mind today, as well, because I remembered that one of my singer friends got in there with a v. prestigious teacher (though he ended up somewhere else), and I do still want to do opera, so I do want to go somewhere with a decent opera program. And it also seems surprisingly attractive, although the fact that its application materials will only work with Internet Explorer is off-putting, because that means I can't use my own computer.
I should have made a note of which ones use the Unified Application. If I fill out the Unified App, should I just send it to all the member schools? But that would be a whole lot of application fees right there. And I do have reasons for not wanting to apply to some of those schools.
I can't decide now if I had legitimate reasons for not putting Boston Con and NEC on the chart, or if I was just overwhelmed at at the bottom of the paper.
I also can't decide if I'm aiming waaaaaaaay too high or not, or if I'm just being insecure. Honestly, I have no real conception of my appeal to music schools, in relation to everyone else who will be applying to master's programs in bassoon performance. But I sort of think I should have more schools that aren't "reach" schools on my list. But then, I wouldn't even know where to start sifting through the less-prestigious schools. Bleh. *tries not to cry*
In other news: today's frustrations.
Remember that panic attack I almost had yesterday, which happened mainly because suddenly my day of Rest And Big Decisions got hijacked by a rehearsal and a busywork class group project meeting?
Neither thing happened. No, I'm not kidding. I hauled my ass out of bed and drove to campus on a holiday, and I couldn't get hold of three of the four people I was trying to schedule-on-the-fly with, and I sat around texting/e-mailing/on the phone for about an hour that I could have used for other things, like staying home and sleeping or doing grad school legwork. And then it became clear that the rehearsal couldn't happen, and the project guys were still incommunicado, and I figured, hell, I'm here in the music building, I can at least practise. So I did, for about two hours, and it wasn't great. My hands were not working today, and the left one kept having worrisome numbness.
But damn, that was all morning that I could have spent sleeping or charting, but no.
Things still to do today:
- read article on race and music school admissions
- write lesson plan for busywork class's midterm two weeks ago
- look over piece for busywork class group project, think on lesson plan (to be hastily written tomorrow between 11 and 12, extending to 2 if necessary. There goes my chance at getting lunch.)
And I was hoping for an opportunity to go shopping, because I am out of chips and cheese and crackers, but that's probably no longer on the table, either.
Percent of my shit that I currently have together: ZERO.
Schools: Northwestern, Manhattan SoM, Carnegie Mellon, Juilliard, Roosevelt, Peabody (Johns Hopkins), Mannes, San Francisco Conservatory, Yale, Cleveland Institute of Music.
I also had tabs open at various points for UCLA, That Other School, Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, De Paul, Curtis, Eastman, Oberlin, Rice, and Indiana (@ Bloomingdale), but they didn't make the chart for various reasons... wrong location, teachers I've never heard of, teachers I doubt will be a good fit, lack of MM programs, unappealing gossip from friends...
I'm sort of overwhelmed. At least my preliminary research in September paid off -- the TRICERATOPS ASSLOAD of music I'm preparing puts me in good stead for... well, everywhere, pretty much.
Still, I feel I should whittle down this list, if for no other reason than to save my parents money on application fees and travel arrangements (and, you know, so I don't have a paperwork-related breakdown, and so fewer professors will hate me for giving them inadequate letter-of-recommendation-writing time). Right?
SO. My brain thinks it wants to be in Chicago. That means Northwestern and Roosevelt. (And I don't know how I missed this before, but David McGill teaches at Roosevelt? There's a reason to go there all by itself.)
Manhattan looks super-attractive, but I'm also really intimidated by it. For reasons I can't suss out at the moment, Juilliard is not as attractive, despite having the same professors plus a few, notably Judith LeClair.
Carnegie Mellon feels safe to me, since I got accepted there for undergrad, but I've had mixed reviews.
I don't know how I feel about San Francisco -- I want to leave CA, but I do like The City, and Stephen Paulson is kind of a big deal, although I don't know if it would be weird since Flaky Junior studied with him in HS. Actually, I'm probably being quite silly when I say that. It wouldn't be weird.
Yale looks pretty attractive, as well, and has the BIG advantage of being FREE... but I'd have to make a pre-screening recording, and I HATE recording, and it'll also be very competitive because (a) small studio and (b) FREE.
CIM.... kind of made the list on a whim. I haven't heard of any of the teachers, but Malia raved about the Cleveland Symphony, and the audition repertoire is pretty harmless.... but also the auditions are Super Early. But then, it might be better to spread out my travels? Or else I'll be missing something like three consecutive weeks of school for this shit, you know?
Mannes was also kind of a whim, but the requirements are like Manhattan Lite, and two of Manhattan's teachers overlap (though not Frank Morelli, who is the Big Deal guy. But then I don't know how much he really does at MSM anyway, right? Apparently he teaches chamber music at Juilliard, which makes sense), and the website went on and on about how the school is a community, which appeals to me. Indiana didn't make the list because it was so impersonal.
Peabody just came to mind today, as well, because I remembered that one of my singer friends got in there with a v. prestigious teacher (though he ended up somewhere else), and I do still want to do opera, so I do want to go somewhere with a decent opera program. And it also seems surprisingly attractive, although the fact that its application materials will only work with Internet Explorer is off-putting, because that means I can't use my own computer.
I should have made a note of which ones use the Unified Application. If I fill out the Unified App, should I just send it to all the member schools? But that would be a whole lot of application fees right there. And I do have reasons for not wanting to apply to some of those schools.
I can't decide now if I had legitimate reasons for not putting Boston Con and NEC on the chart, or if I was just overwhelmed at at the bottom of the paper.
I also can't decide if I'm aiming waaaaaaaay too high or not, or if I'm just being insecure. Honestly, I have no real conception of my appeal to music schools, in relation to everyone else who will be applying to master's programs in bassoon performance. But I sort of think I should have more schools that aren't "reach" schools on my list. But then, I wouldn't even know where to start sifting through the less-prestigious schools. Bleh. *tries not to cry*
In other news: today's frustrations.
Remember that panic attack I almost had yesterday, which happened mainly because suddenly my day of Rest And Big Decisions got hijacked by a rehearsal and a busywork class group project meeting?
Neither thing happened. No, I'm not kidding. I hauled my ass out of bed and drove to campus on a holiday, and I couldn't get hold of three of the four people I was trying to schedule-on-the-fly with, and I sat around texting/e-mailing/on the phone for about an hour that I could have used for other things, like staying home and sleeping or doing grad school legwork. And then it became clear that the rehearsal couldn't happen, and the project guys were still incommunicado, and I figured, hell, I'm here in the music building, I can at least practise. So I did, for about two hours, and it wasn't great. My hands were not working today, and the left one kept having worrisome numbness.
But damn, that was all morning that I could have spent sleeping or charting, but no.
Things still to do today:
- read article on race and music school admissions
- write lesson plan for busywork class's midterm two weeks ago
- look over piece for busywork class group project, think on lesson plan (to be hastily written tomorrow between 11 and 12, extending to 2 if necessary. There goes my chance at getting lunch.)
And I was hoping for an opportunity to go shopping, because I am out of chips and cheese and crackers, but that's probably no longer on the table, either.
Percent of my shit that I currently have together: ZERO.