YouTube For High-School Jocks

theodp writes "Used to be college scouts had to put in lots of miles to find a hick from French Lick. But thanks to the Internet, athletic recruiters no longer have to traipse out to actual games to find talent. The players are coming to them via links to video streamed from sports-info websites like Student-Athlete Showcase, iPlayers, and GetMyNameOut. The home-video-meets-NFL-Films highlight reels — which parents commission for a fee ranging from $300 to $5,000 — have become a standard component of college applications for jocks (as well as for aspiring actors, dancers, and musicians). One sales pitch: 'Are you willing to risk your child's potential scholarship with a homemade videotape? Remember, first impressions last forever!'"

Comments

I'm going to music school someday!

[MichaelCrawford]

While I have been a programmer for (as of next month) twenty years, I have been taking formal piano lessons for several years with the aim of going to music school to study musical composition. I want to compose symphonies!

Most music schools require an entrance audition, which is best done live. However, if one is unable to travel to the audition, one can submit a video. The Dalhousie University music school (in Halifax, Nova Scotia) says on its website that such audition videos must show one's hands. I guess they don't want someone else to play your audition, eh?

My plan, being a prospective composer, is to also present my audition judges with hardcopies of my piano scores. There are a couple scores on my website, but I'm working on new ones which will be much more advanced than what's there now.

In Canada, the Royal Conservatory of Music publishes music score books of varying degrees of difficulty, and periodically conducts exams throughout the country. When one has learned some songs from the Grade One book, then one can take the Grade One exam and, having passed, move on to the Grade Two book.

The entrance auditions for Canadian music schools are based on the RCM exams; Dalhousie requires one to play Grade Nine material. While I have come a long way since I composed the recordings on my website (they're from 1994), I'm still a long ways from Grade Nine. But I'm very determined.