Well,I've been looking for a good music college because I want to be a director/teacher.
I checked out Santa Clara Vanguard,but I didn't really find anything.
Any suggestions?

What area? State? ore even country are you looking into?
Check with your current music teachers for their opinions. You may find that your marketability may come from attending a local school where you can do your student teaching wigh a local band director and thatway you are better known.

my flute teacher told me if money is a problem, go to a small in-state school who is willing to give you a lot of scholarship money over a big school because big schools dont give money to undergrads and if they do, its very little. she then said to go out of state to a conservatory for a masters because if youre pretty good as a grad student, it doesnt matter where you graduated from, theyre going to give you money and a lot of it. of course this was for a performance degree, not an education one.

but the main thing is to take a lesson with the professor BEFORE you committ to 4+ years at that institution. if you end up not getting along with them, your life will be a living hell. and you just wasted a lot of money. so if your favorite teacher happens to be a at a small school, it doesnt mean that the school sucks. the uppity/expensive schools dont necessarily mean a bigger and better chance at a job when you graduate.

Well I li9ve in Arizona and I don't really mind where I go.
Here,we have ASU,NAU,and something else.
I talked to my band director and he said that NAU and ASU have really good flute studios.
So I might just go to GCC(Glendale Community College)for a year and then spend 6 or so years at college and start learning horn now and go in to Santa Clara Vanguard...

I think your idea of going to GCC is a good one. The Maricopa Community College system (GCC is part of that system)is excellent. I know many flute players who went to ASU for flute and have done very well. I do not know the profs, because I didn't go there, but I do know that people are very happy with what they received there.
But start out at GCC, it just makes sense.

my niece, who is not in music, started out at a community college in LA, moved on to UCLA, got her masters at George Washington U in DC and is now a top aide to a US Congressman.

College is about what you do with your time there and how wisely you use it...I have several friends who are fantastic musicians who went to Julliard and Curtis who hit brick walls when they graduated because they expected things to happen...

If you get into an audition, chances are you will be a number and nothing else...

LoL Just like the slogan,"GCC is the college for me!" >_>

Thanks Patrick for raising my hopes...
But I always need to have a back up plan if I don't become a musician..like professionally...
I'll just be a director..but then that's kind of boring...but then I would have a band to call my own which is pretty cool...

Or if the whole music shpeel doesn't work I'll go be a hobo on the side of the road!!! ;-;

"Or if the whole music shpeel doesn't work I'll go be a hobo on the side of the road!!! ;-;"

Oh, I think we have enough of those in the Valley of the Sun already!

You have plenty of time to figure out your life's calling. Explore and enjoy!

all my friends who became band directors as a fall back job were miserable, only go for that if that's what you want to do...I teach privately for a company that teaches in home lessons and I also recruit and interview for them...my first question in the interview is; are you teaching because you want to or you have to? if they answer the latter, the interview is pretty much over...anyway, being a band director is certainly not boring if you are dedicated to it...

do not do not do not do not choose education as a "back up" career. more than the sympathy for those who "have" to teach that don't want to there's sympathy for those people's students. it's not fair to a group of kids to be deprived of a dedicated instructor who wants to be there with all of their soul just because someone who didn't succeed at something else, or who couldn't think of anything better to do decided to go into music education. i know of far too many music programs that have been destroyed by these people. i have seen far too many band directors putting the idea into kids heads that music in school is a frustrating, negative thing instead of a positive and rewarding experience. if i was a part of a program in which the head though his or her job boring and didn't want to be there... i don't know what i would be doing with my life right now (im a performance major). kid's minds and opinions (yes all kids up through high school even though they don't want to admit it) are so pliable and delicate. their view of things can easily go one way or the other... if mine had gone the other what would have happened to me? so you never know who's life you are touching, who's ideas you are influencing, who's future you are building or breaking. never go into education just because it's a sure job. sometimes it isn't even that. and trust me...it is NOT boring. it is one of the hardest jobs out there if it is done with all the soul, sweat and time it truly requires.

well said, I was lucky to have music directors that wanted to be there, but there is a lot of dead wood out there, ask Joe B,

we have two music teachers at my secondary school but one of them isn't very nice, seems a bit miserable, but the other is happy and jokey(unless you get on the wrong side of him) and he is a much better teacher so just think what you are getting your self into, don't make your pupils life miserable, if that isn't what you want to do in life (you could always try out for a big orcestra or something if thats what you enjoy)

I went to a municipal college and a state college in the mid west, and found that music majors are so over the top stuck on certain things. (Let's face it, their snobs!) Some are so over the top caught up in trying to please their professors that they forget that music is an art form, and not a science. I began to think that most colleges are turning out little player pianos with fingers, not musicians. This after 3 years, and long hours, and practice and all of that, I was so sick (angry at the other musicians in college?) of music that I didn't do any professional work for over 3 years after I stopped doing music in college. I hated it. Being a music major made me truly hate music for the first time in my life. I could never agree with the professors, and my abstract ideas were so often shot down in class. To this day I have learned to avoid stereo types, but college did everything it could to try and teach me every sad stereo type. I am glad I got out and wised up. Don't be a music major because it is fun, play music because it is fun. If you are over the top energetic and think you know something about music, know what a piano professor I know said. "Being a Piano major is harder than being a brain surgeon or a lawyer. You will work 10 times harder, and longer"

I know this to be true too, and I only had to major on flute to get an idea just how hard and rough being a music major really is in this day and age. I respect people who majored in music, but if all they learned was how to follow the latest treatise on Bach, then they learned very little. I learned to play from the heart, and ad-lib, and at the same time I read music very well, and took the time to listen to what the music schools said, as well as what is actually the truth, which turned out for me to be a complete mixture of everything. There is no place that will teach you the complete truth. To believe that is to only fool yourself. Don't be a poser, be yourself, and play because it is what you do.

not all music majors are, or were, snobs, take myself and Joe B as examples, however, I have run across those who have gone to the big schools and had an attitude to go with it, but, alas, at the end of the day, the final judge is the audience or the listener...

and the only audience members who asked me where I went to college or what kind of flute I play were other musicians...

music is food, if it taste good people will eat it...

See being a director is not a fall back.
If I don't be a musician I will gladly be a director and do my job with pride and happiness and teach them all that I know.

Wait,what part of the valley do you live in?

But I went to this Drum Corp thing on Saturday and it just made me feel so small in the music world.It made me feel as though woodwinds were not needed(though I know this is wrong )
But,I dont know...I think all things will come in time and I'll figure it out sooner or later,but hopefully not too late from now!