welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight in music at the college level my guest today is little and john ends and there from the youth orchestra of central jersey welcome to the show thank you so usually a star i guess when they went to college so would you go to school i went to school at montclair state university and i got my bachelor's in the music education and i went to a small school in indiana called goshen college and did a little work at ann arbor at the university of michigan as well as my masters at temple  college level well i plied to a lot of new jersey state colleges as i was i spent high school in new jersey i also applied to carnegie mellon out in pennsylvania and that was my first choice financially didn't quite work out so i decided on montclair state because the violin professor there at the time oscar vina was a violinist with the new york philharmonic and i thought the proximity to the city and getting to study with this artist would be a good opportunity for but it didn't feel comfortable musically to me so i settled on goshen college which happened to be nearest to where i lived at the time in elkhart indiana and  more than i feel most undergrad professors could do and it was quite a great experience and then i studied with her teacher for a year or two it into the lock in and at the university of michigan on the very dell and from there i did some work some teaching and ended up doing my masters at temple university mainly out of for the education edwin gordon was there a very fine music college of music educational education music education professor excuse me and  learned a tremendous amount from from that institution and it really helped me in my teaching so that's primarily where i went based mainly on what felt comfortable to me in terms of the news music department so so there is scholarships at the college level for music oh yeah definitely definitely and they're there for some of the sometimes it's based on the needs of the college you know like you know that the typical thing for string players they need the oldest you know violinist you know you move over and get a scholarship and or when i went in cellos were not as i was often taught in but it was more of what i had to offer to the department i was sort of a music education performance major all the way through school and and i did a lot of performance  i feel the education is what completes in the picture do you guys know how many scholarships they give out for music or is it is not really sure well it it really depends on the funds impact on the gift and how much money is available in that for the music department which is not as much maybe because but usually there are people who make donations that designated for specifically music and there's different areas of music obviously it's music composition music theory music education but a lot there's a lot of able in music  s a program that generates money for the music department but it also is a representative and a sort of you know i kind of picture for for the university or college and and it's important that that be said you know substantiates supported and so they get scholarships for people who want to go on especially i can to marching band and and education and that sort of thing so know how did you get from college to where you are today oh i'm well i got my degree in music education and started teaching right away and when i went to school in the late eighty's governor kaine in new jersey had this unique scholarship program where students could apply  get seventy five hundred a year so there's a thirty thousand dollars scholarship and if they taught in a rural district in new jersey for four years or for six years actually they would be forgiven their loan if they thousand dollars could do it and so i started teaching right away so that my loan could be forgiven i taught for four years and now been englishtown actually to two years there and then fo and then after that i started a family got married started a family so i've been teaching for many years now as a private violin instructor and doing weddings you know on the weekend and then very recently got very involved at the youth orchestra of central jersey first as a private teacher sending my own private students to play with the orchestra then as a parent sending my children to play and  then i've been involved with the board for the last three years and then this year i'm very honored that the board has the sighted to hire me as their executive director for this upcoming season that is they were very excited indiana that's where i began and found a job teaching in haiti for two years in port au prince and after that i helped my brother in law in philadelphia elementary level they had been trying to get a program started and so they finally when they hired me we got a wonderful program started there it just almost exploded right on the spot i mean like it went from thirteen to eighty and one year and then and that was just elementary and then it just has grown so now mr pugh who is also  director and while c j is teaching as many as three to four hundred elementary students in just one of the elementary upper elementary schools and so it's it's a wonderful program that is strongly supported by the community and it it was a great job because it i changed with it you know i taught elementary went to middle school and high school in the process  know i teach the symphonic level but but the one i was there i was able to get a sabbatical from the school for one year and finish my master's at temple university and  and i've been reaping the blossoms of my passion for music and music education ever sense so a little bit in college what is entailed in music in college is their product this is their competition what's in it held at the college level i think music is very unique when students decide that that's what they're going to do with their lives because you typically have to prepare many many years ahead of time as opposed to other majors where you can declare your major your first year decide what you going to do music majors have been studying for years in years and string players i often from an early age of three four years old so that's very unique to music and once you get to the college level if you're doing music education music performance there's all kinds of courses in those areas rehearsals ensembles for education be doing a lot of you know competition is the trouble involved in that kind of stuff or is it pretty much just always at the school there's there's a when the competition for scholarships is really strong when you asked me to be on the show you you you pose some questions and i so i asked some of my students who have just graduated from college and university and one who's just a senior  and is actually the orchestra librarian at u c l a and and she was saying how she she started early like her junior software junior year started appearing solo's what we what she does which all music students and the high school orchestras give them the experience of the repertoire that's i propose appropriate for their their level of musicianship as a group and it gives them that experience  so so the they they start organizing you know what they want to do in their auditions for college so not only is it important is it  sential that you prepare your audition to make a good entrance like if you want to go to a school like eastman or juilliard or any of these are the the high art high top top schools but records you prepare as well as you can for that audition for entrance and if you want to acquire a scholarship then you have to show that you have had experience performing  and demonstrate that in your audition and and so what this particular student did she auditioned many places at different different ways you know for the we have region orchestras reach into orchestra so they get a real strong regimen there and then if they do they get into region to region one or region three they go to the all state level and and if they do really well there they can audition to get into an eastern and and they if they do well there or if they want to they can go to all the national and so so there's quite a lot of levels that they can audition on and each audition experience is giving them a maturity as a performer but and this all starts in high school that and that's separate from school public school programs usually starting fourth or fifth grade and that's usually all instruments at west windsor we start strings in fourth grade and winds brass and percussion in fifth grade and that's in question you know why maybe we should start everything in fourth grade that you know were wrong and that's it's always growing it's always a work in progress and so so they have their they have their ensembles and things and school but then you're saying that they should do these extra things outside the school for regions international rules and so on to get more experience crum when they go to college is that every college is a do addition when they go so they they have to audition at every single college that they want to apply to that's correct it's not necessarily for you know if you're a music major you want you to audition just to get to know who you are and how well you  fit and if you're not a music major and if you just want to you know you just love music but you have your passions in computer science or something they still want to know how well you play so they can offer you a position in the orchestra and sometimes when you can offer you know more than one talent they they like that and they being the school of the university college and like that kind of a student because they will be you know a citizen of that educational purpose to promote so so how many classes or or part of the  music at the college level is there's a whole array of different classes or are they taking their general classes for the first two years and then it becomes all of their you know they need classes that the young music and music majors need to be doing music classes their entire time they're really i'm sure every college you know has their curriculum for for every major but od there are so many different ensembles and music courses that they need to be doing also their general education major  requirements those courses they would need to do as well but it's not like they would just take care of their general educational requirements first and then the music courses later it's constantly the whole time they're there so is music and bear and the same type of thing  they totally separate type of things because the is the band for like the football team and they do all their little things outside the school and then there's music as a music teacher and things of that sort they do the same with a totally separate college level the core subjects of music are the same music theory and they have various levels of that usually three four levels of music theory music history same of course the applied music that means that the get to their lessons on their instrument that's always going to be unique to their instrument the band program is  has various levels to be at the jazz band you have the marching band you have the concert band or the wind ensemble and each each group has their own  symphony and and they're they're very versatile in that way and to get a complete education if they're going to be in music education these really need experience in each younger and so so you see there's a there's a lot to to  learn at the college level in even the high school level to do that and how do these colleges find these kids that want to go they do the kids have to just apply their normal read or are they sending in tapes or how  usually work well the it's a two way street usually to students finding a school you know and that's that's the important thing you go to a student chooses their school by what you know like i said earlier what feels comfortable when feels right you talk to the teacher you talk to the private the applied teacher of your instrument and that well will generate an interest in a particular institution you  you're interested in composition then you talk to the composition professor and you just see what they have to offer and what their perspective is and it's usually a student in a teacher can find a common kind of chemistry  that can create what they want you know what the student really wants to become and i think that's important to understand that that it it there's the core subjects which are fundamental to music but then then it becomes specialized as the interests become specialized in each musician you know which you know you said that you applied to the carnegie mellon so i'm assuming it became financial  bit better because if i guess if they want to do more would they be able to give you more to come there was an interesting question and this is something that we ran into recently as my oldest child went through the college application process and starting at college in the fall and one of the things we were told is there that you know if you have outside scholarships that's going to limit the amount of money that you would be able to receive from the colleges themselves so that was true in my case i got the  governor's teaching scholarship program you know from governor kaine and once carnegie mellon found out that i had this outside scholarship they withdrew their offer they were going to give me ten thousand dollars a year and then i thought oh great with along with the scholarship i'll be able to pay for the school and then you know once they found out about the outside scholarship they withdrew that for so yeah and i was told that that you know private scholarships could hurt your chances of getting you know scholarship money directly from the college so so that ended up being the case for me and then you know as we went through the college application process for my oldest son we were we feel very fortunate that we got a very good scholarship offer for him from getting for college but he's not doing music so in computer science that so yeah he has no outside private scholarship so we got a good offer from them for  like so so at the college level it really is all consider the consumption of music at the college level do they do extra things at school i mean is there extracurricular activity that that a student can do the did you do anything when you were in college outside of just music yeah i went out for track for the first time in my life so that really strange i had i got infatuated with the guy that who the discussing on that in that sculpture the greek sculpture and want to know what that was about and i pursued that i also did flag football you know and did all kinds of things and played a little talent but but it i also did some in our in my college there at goshen college they had what we called a study service term abroad which was integral to graduation and everybody did this program where they want to broad and we studied there and i went to germany for that bit to east germany actually a little bit so there's lots of things that are really encouraged it's a lot of times what happens especially the conservatory which is different from university in the sense that they they really channel things in the music and sort of exclude other programs to a degree that that it's it's more of like twenty four seven in a practice room and and it's it's very necessary to have quality time with your instrument to be sure but but it's important for the student and they're the kind of you to help the sanity of the health of mental health of  musicians to have those outside thanks but it has to be balanced but we're coming to the end of our show all know and usually i ask my guests what advice you want to give to families out there that their kids want to go to college and want to do music well one thing that i dealt with very recently with a student who applied of my clare and i did end up getting him and it's really enjoying his saw his music studies they're very  much i told him he is his own best advocate he really has to sell himself when he goes to the interview that's part of the audition process he actually went through this process twice the first time he really didn't sell himself quite as much as he could and i had a conversation with his private teacher and you know iceland he's been in y o c j he travelled to austria and prague he's had this experience orchestra with the associate principal cellist from the philadelphia orchestra he's had all these great experiences and she said he didn't talk about them in his interview so he went through the process again and then he got in and he's there he's very happy but the students you know need to make sure very factually there are you know giving a complete picture of who they are and what they've experienced and what they can offer of the school and you know being humble you know you don't want to do it in an arrogant way but you need to be able to put it out there this is what i've done you know this is how i can contribute so to be their own best advocate good when we run out of time so i thank you very much for coming i appreciate it