Where Do You Want to Go, and Why?

Every year around this time, students across the country are wrestling with a huge decision: where to audition for college, or grad school, or a doctoral program, or a fellowship. After 20+ years of working with students in music, I've watched this struggle play out again and again. But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something that changed how I think about the whole process.

I started asking students two questions: "Where do you want to go?" And then, "Why do you want to go there?"

The shocking part isn't that students struggle with the second question. It's how many can't answer the first one either, at least not with any real clarity.

A tale of two mindsets

When I talk with students from Europe and Asia, the "where" question gets an immediate, confident answer. And when I ask why, the first thing they mention is almost always a specific teacher. They want to study with that person, at that school, because they believe it's the best path to developing their own ability. They still apply elsewhere, because nothing is guaranteed, but the degree itself isn't the prize. The instruction, the mentorship, and the opportunity are.

American students, in my experience, tend to do the opposite. They apply to eight or ten schools: different institutions, different teachers, different programs, sometimes with almost nothing in common. They fly all over the country for auditions and interviews, spending thousands of dollars on travel and application fees. Then I ask where they actually want to end up, and the answer is a shrug.

This isn't unique to music. If you're pursuing a highly specialized field of medicine, you want to train under the person who knows that obscure subspecialty best. If you're researching a narrow corner of astrophysics, you want to work with the handful of people on the planet who actually understand it. Combining your effort with their knowledge is how you get somewhere. How you define "best" will vary by person and field, but the logic holds everywhere: you're choosing people and environments, not just names on a list. Remember: “If you can’t say why, don’t apply.”

Three kinds of answers

When I ask music students where they'd really like to go, I usually get one of three responses.

"I'd be happy anywhere; they're all such great schools."
This sounds open-minded, but it often means the student hasn't thought past reputation. They're confusing prestige with fit, and avoiding a real choice for fear of making the wrong one. Applying widely becomes a substitute for self-reflection. When every option is "equally great," none of them have actually been chosen. The cost shows up later: unfocused auditions, scattered preparation, and no clear reason for being in the room beyond hoping to be picked.

"I really want to go to [school name]."
Better, but when I ask why, the answer is usually "it's such a great program," which is still just reputation wearing a name tag.

"I'm going to go wherever gives me the most money."
Especially in the US, this is often the honest answer, and it's a completely reasonable one. Higher education is expensive, and needing financial support isn't a character flaw.

The problem isn't that money matters. It's what tends to get left out of the conversation entirely: the teacher, the studio or program culture, the actual environment a student would be working in every day. Plenty of students haven't taken a single lesson, or had a real conversation, with half the people they're planning to audition or interview for. They don't know how those mentors communicate, whether they'll be pushed in the right way, or whether the environment will actually help them grow. And yet they're prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year finding out after the fact.

Reframing the money question

I want to be direct about the financial piece, because it's real and it's scary, for everyone. It's easy to default to whichever offer is biggest. But you're paying for your education either way, so it's worth making sure it's the one you actually want.

Think of it like an investment, because it is one. If you were putting money into the stock market, you wouldn't just buy the cheapest stock available. You'd look at performance, trajectory, and what you believe that investment can return over time, then choose based on that research. Your education deserves the same scrutiny. The years you spend in a program, undergraduate or graduate, are often the single biggest window you'll ever have to develop your skills with real intensity. Once life sets in (a job, a relationship, kids, a mortgage) practice time and deep focus get harder to protect. How you're trained now tends to become how you operate for a long time.

So funding can absolutely be your top priority. Just don't let it be the only factor. Find the programs where you're likely to get support, and make sure those programs also fit your larger goals.

The problem with applying everywhere

There's a separate trap that has nothing to do with money: the urge to apply to as many places as possible just to see what happens.

It feels good to rack up acceptance letters. It's validating. But collecting offers from "good schools" isn't the same as choosing where you belong, and it comes at a real cost: application fees, travel expenses, time, and stress, multiplied across institutions you may not have seriously considered in the first place. All for what?? “Congratulations!! You’ve been accepted at 10 places you never intended to attend, truly a triumph!”

Auditions and interviews aren't a curiosity experiment. They cost money, they take time, and they ask faculty and institutions to invest time in evaluating you too. If you can't narrow your list to three or four places and clearly explain what each one offers that genuinely fits you, that's worth pausing on.

And if you go through that focused process and it doesn't work out anywhere, the answer isn't necessarily to apply to more schools next time. Sometimes the better move is to take a year, keep studying or working privately, grow, and come back stronger. That's not failure. That's strategy.

One more thing: stop treating any school on your list as a "backup." If that's the one you end up attending, will you actually show up motivated, knowing you never really wanted to be there?

So what should you actually be thinking about?

Be honest about your real priority, whether that's funding, reputation, mentorship, or something else, and then let that priority actually shape your list instead of applying broadly and sorting it out later.

If reputation matters most to you, be honest about that too. But if only one place truly fits your idea of "great," focus there. If you don't get in and don't see real value in the others, it's worth asking why they were on the list at all.

If mentorship, studio culture, or connections matter most, go looking for those things intentionally. They are not interchangeable across schools that happen to share a similar national ranking.

And above everything else, ask: who is actually going to teach me?

That's the entire point of the exercise. To improve. To grow. To become better at what you do. But if you don't actually know what you need to improve, because everyone around you has only ever told you that you "sound great," then it's worth asking why you're applying anywhere at all. Self-reflection, understanding your own weaknesses and what would genuinely help you perform better, is part of this process too, not a side step to skip. Choosing a teacher and program that can actually help you address that is the whole point. And if you can't answer these questions yet, take some time to figure out what you really want before you apply.

Teachers and mentors are not interchangeable. Some will explain things in a way that clicks for you; others won't. Some will invest deeply in your development; others will expect you to figure it out alone. Some will genuinely change the direction of your career.

If a mentor's explanations don't make sense to how you think, don't go there. If they're regularly unavailable, don't go there. If the environment doesn't feel supportive or safe for your growth, it doesn't matter how prestigious the name on the building is.

Don't go there. Honestly, don't even apply there.

The bottom line

The time, money, and emotional energy that goes into choosing a school, whether it's undergrad, grad school, or beyond, is enormous. It deserves more intention than "let's see what sticks." Choose carefully, and know exactly why you're choosing. The right school isn't just a name on a list. It's the place where you actually grow, as a professional and as a person. That's not something to leave to chance.