STEPS FOR APPLYING US MUSIC SCHOOLS (esp for Masters degree) PART THREE - final!!! 12. submit other supporting documents Some schools may want you to mail / email them supporting documents like financial proof of funds or the assistantship application form (you are automatically entered in scholarship and assistantship application for some schools, but of course some are not) right after your finished with both earlier application. These things are supporting in nature and should not be of top priority if you are still struggling with the earlier steps. Financial proof of funds documents show that you have enough money to sustain through your first grad school year in the US coz you are not allowed to work in the country in the first year and the government does not provide any financial aids to international students normally. Now, you should go dig out the page where it says financial proof and see how each school calculate cost of attendance at the school. State universities will charge you like $15000-23000 for an academic year; private schools may need $30000 or more. If you dont have enough capital in your bank account to show them, you may need donors, sponsors or your parents to help you with the proof. So the next thing will be inviting your sponsors or begging your parents to support your further studies. You will need to send copies of the bank statements or tax receipts with signatures agreeing to help you to get through this step. Again, your parents may need time or even your help to get a bank statement with detail lists of savings (sometimes stock assets doesnt count) in English. 13. Preparing for your auditions and book your flights So you should have got result from your prescreening a few weeks after 1st Dec. Since competitive programs just dont offer scholarship or assistantship to anyone who hasnt attend a live audition, you may now want to apply for a US visa (tourist visa) so that you can attend a live audition later. Usually, many music schools hold their audition slots around spring break. But you may see audition period as early as mid of Dec or as late as early Mar. If you are applying several schools like me, PLAN your AUDITION TRIP wisely. Indeed, I should have put this piece of information earlier as some applications already require your preferred date of audition. So now look at the example here: Eastman school of music: 30 Jan, 6 Feb, 20 Feb Indiana U: 16-17 Jan, 6-7 Feb, 6-7 Mar U of Texas at Austin: 17 Jan, 24 Jan, 31 Jan Arizona State U: 17 Jan, 30-31 Jan, 14 Feb If you want to attend all of the live auditions, you may need to fly like: 17 Jan Indiana U 24 Jan U of Texas at Austin 30 Jan Eastman school of Music 31 Jan Arizona State U (very dangerous choice but possible) Of course you can have other sequence too but that all depends on the distance between each school and the availability of flights. Beware that USA is a really big country. As auditions are usually held at weekends, sometimes audition on Fri at school A then audition in another state the next day just doesnt work out! You may be assigned an early morning audition, or it takes 4 hours to fly between states and dont forget there is time zone difference among states!!! In my case, due to the fact then I just cannot do auditions on consecutive dates, my audition trip is a one-month scale... Last thing in this section: book your flights earlier! Tips for saving some money in this process are: 1) book through good agency: they will help you figure out which airline you should choose and plan your arrival dates. And of course, they have good bargains for tickets. 2) Apply for Asian miles account as well as Cathy Pacific Polo Club member, then book your flight at CX official page to state earning milage via ticket purchase and actual air travel. 3) No need to tell you theres a thing called priceline right? 14. Apply for a US tourist visa if you havent got one yet ustraveldocs/hk/hk-niv-visaapply.asp It takes quite some time for you to get one at hand. Plan at least 1.5 month for the visa to come. You need to show financial document again, specific size of passport photo and attend interview with the embassy officials. Conclusion: Now, you will be of good shape to start your application chores. You can see that going through all these is never handy and easy. Always start the applications early (otherwise you will have to get speed-post mail and waste you more money as I did the first year I applied to schools). And up to the point of finishing your audition trip, you may have already spent like $20000 HKD (depending on how many states you are visiting). Still, you can always make full use of the money and time spend by try observing lessons and attending rehearsals during your stay in the US. I learnt quite a lot in those 2 trips. In the meanwhile, try joining some professional performances and practice more. Give you the very best to the whole application process!! PM me if you have further questions :) I just like sharing!
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:45:43 +0000