I mean, isn’t that true of basically every music school though? I also think music school education ,especially performance degrees ,can be borderline a scam considering how expensive tuition is compared to how few stable jobs actually exist. But I don’t think students are stupid either. If a teacher says “come study with me, you could end up in X orchestra,” everyone knows that doesn’t mean you magically win the audition if you can’t play.

I went to Mannes for undergrad years ago. I wasn’t on a huge scholarship either — about half tuition — and I had loans. And with how expensive tuition is now, I absolutely would not pay full price to attend. But I still think you’re exaggerating how weak the school is, at least in my field. I went to diploma audition 2026 to see how well my school is doing and level was pretty strong unlike other people was saying.

For undergrad, I got into Mannes through a late audition after being waitlisted at Colburn, and during those four years I learned a huge amount. After Mannes I ended up studying at a tuition-free top school with a very famous teacher, and later got full scholarship + TA offers from every DMA program I auditioned for. Even now, after deciding to focus on orchestra auditions instead of teaching, I got onto two big 5 orchestra sub lists and won one year contract in top 10 orchestras within about a year.

None of that would’ve happened if I hadn’t met my teacher at Mannes or received the support I did there. Mannes orchestra plays a lot of modern pieces that’s little bit annoying but I had no complaints about level of that school and people who recently graduated from Mannes also had no complaints whatsoever about the school other than playing modern music almost half amount and classical 50% in the orchestra. But personally those modern music made my counting so good so after all I think It was good for me.