Sorry for way too long post, but figuring out future college stuff for my 17 year old violinist

The practice time description is also helpful. The ones who want to do violin performance are sacrificing everything to get in several hours a day. It's okay that that's not her.

Where are you based? People might know schools where she could pursue a degree or double major and continue to improve as a player.

There are lots of public universities with good music education programs that would love to have someone like your daughter.

What solo repertoire has she played / is she working on now?

1) Music can't be treated like a hobby if you plan on pursuing it as a career. Right now your daughter is treating it like a hobby. She would need to prioritize practicing way more than she is currently. I know IB schools are known for having a ton of work. Maybe she needs a different school if she can't reduce her load at all. My son didn't go to an IB school, but one of the top public schools in the country. However, he took fewer AP courses and picked easier electives to give himself more time. Most of his peers actually do online school, but we felt it was important for him to do high school. Don't rule out any options. I know some IB schools allow you to do a so-called music major where you focus more on music in the last two years. Is that an option? Practicing needs to be about 3 hours a day.

2) Start doing Suzuki teacher training once she turns 18.

3) As for conservatories, it's difficult to know what her level is from the information provided. What is the rep she is currently playing? Your list includes one school that is not easy to get into on violin (NEC), a few medium ones, and a few that don't have rigorous violin programs. If you can give a little more info, I may be able to point you in the right direction. Most likely you are looking at regular private or state universities is my guess, but I'm not sure at this point.

4) There are some schools that specialize in Suzuki training that you may want to seek out. For example, where I live there is a joint Suzuki training program between Roosevelt University (which happens to have one of the best violin teachers in the world) and my kids' precollege program. That might be a great fit for your daughter, though it may be a graduate level program. There is a list of them here: https://suzukiassociation.org/events/colleges/

Another trap that you can fall into -- and I'm speaking from experience -- is doing too much of the leg-work for your daughter. You've made her v.com posting for her, but maybe she can do the follow-up? She'd be forgiven for signing up under an alias.

At minimum a double major in college that has the potential to be a solid professional degree in addition to a strong music degree. Not easy, but then life isn't easy.

When the aspired to career lands on the rocky shores of reality life gets difficult. It is important to understand how this works in reality. I learned about this from a good friend who was an excellent pianist and had been accepted to a prestigious conservatory. Hi father got him a job as an assistant to a touring professional pianist for a semester. He came back shriven at the level of work required to be a preforming professional pianist.

While music was a huge part of his adult life, it was not his source of income.

If there is a way to introduce your young musician to the life of a professional that would be the best suggestion I can offer.

FWIW: I've come to know more than a few professional musicians in my life. While it is psychologically rewarding it is physically and emotionally taxing to a lot of the professionals I know.

All career/life choices require sacrifices. That is what most teenagers fail to understand.

While I had a successful career in Supply Chain Management, my 17 year old dreams, and subsequent dreams, were shattered on the rocks of reality until I discovered my talent for teaching and knowledge of how supply chains work combined to make a career.

And yes, I love music and playing the violin. I fell in love with the instrument in 7th grade and only started playing in my late 20's.

a) affordable: something you and she can afford without taking out debt (so either an in-state public school or a private school with signifiant need-based financial aid.)

and

b) flexible about majors and double-majors. If she's never really spent more than 45 minutes a day practicing, she may learn in college that she'd prefer to maintain music as a hobby. She may take a biology or psychology course and find herself excited about an entirely different pathway. This would be significantly trickier to pursue if she's at a small conservatory or a school where you get locked into a major from the outset.

If her teacher doesn't think she's a candidate for a career in music, I'd also ask more about that. Being told that she shouldn't go into violin as a profession is pretty direct/clear (and in my experience unusual). I wonder why her teacher is so certain. What does s/he know that would be helpful?

Best of luck. Music is the journey of a lifetime whether or not one gets paid to perform and teach. Your daughter is so lucky to have had both music education and (what sounds like) rigorous academic preparation for college. She should have some good options!

However, since the OP doesn't sound like they have money to spare, I think the opportunity cost (for the child and for the family) of choosing an expensive-to-train-for low-wage career is pretty significant. A great student has the opportunity to win a scholarship to an academically solid school to train for some kind of higher-paid career. Even graphic design, while not fantastically well paid and already impacted by the rise of generative AI, pays well compared to music. An academically outstanding student, though, has a lot of other possible career paths.

But I'm going to guess that small-town violin teachers don't make much money, and local symphonies that are always on the hunt for players probably pay an unattractive per-service fee (and might not even be union) -- else they'd probably be getting plenty of freelancers willing to make the drive from Boston. So going away to college to study the violin, without a scholarship, and then coming back home is probably not rife with opportunities to make an income that's going to make it easy to pay back those loans.

I also don't think that a 45-minute-per-day kid is likely to suddenly find that they want to immerse themselves practically 24x7 in music. Music as a hobby is very different from music as a career.

The good news is that for amateurs living in the right places, there are LOTS of opportunities to stay immersed in playing music. There are plenty of careers that offer good flexibility that leave time to practice, take lessons, play in a community orchestra, play chamber music -- and even gig and teach, if that's what a player wants to do.

I don't think any child who wants to be meaningfully good at anything these days can spend any less time on that thing -- whether it's music or calligraphy or circus ribbons -- than athletes spend training for a sport each day.

As for OP's child, what exactly was the teacher discouraging? Joining the NY Philharmonic? Or starting a teaching studio? And why? Context counts. Perhaps a conversation there might be more helpful than anything you hear on this board.

Of course if the 45 minutes is simply (pardon the pun) fiddling around, and nothing specific is accomplished that is a poor use of time. That being said, two hours of fiddling around won't make things better.

I have often printed out specific instructions for a daily 15 to 30 minutes of daily practice and those who followed them improved skills rapidly.

It is the age old problem of quality versus quantity. The only necessity for lengthy practice sessions is to develop the stamina required to play full on performances even as an orchestra member. Being able to play and focus for long periods of time is an issue of mental and physical stamina. Skill development doesn't require endless hours.

I was six when I started, and I learned much faster than my peers. My teachers thought I would become a pro. And yes, I'm aware of the level of perfection expected from professionals -- when I was taught the Tchaikovsky, for instance, it was with intense exactitude, with the expectation that at that level, the standard must be technically flawless, as well as artistic.

There was one year (my final year of playing) where I practiced more -- but my teacher then was a firm believer that if a student needed more than two hours to get through everything (in his particular way of assigning: concerto, pair of Paganini caprices, solo Bach, scales and exercises), you were being inefficient and/or too stupid to play the violin at the level he wanted to teach it at. (For the record, I don't agree with him, but I did put in two hours for a while, and sometimes as much as four, for which I was reprimanded.)

I will note that I did not share my teachers' beliefs that I would become a pro, but despite my lack of personal practice time, I spent an awful lot of time with the violin in my hands, between orchestras, chamber music, and by the time I was fourteen, gigging. More so than anything else, it was the defining feature of my childhood.

But I was a Gen X kid, back before everyone began hothousing their children in the high-investment parenting pattern and you can't enroll them in practically anything without being told about how this teacher/place produces students who are international champions at whatever -- and the kids put in intensive hours into that thing.

By the way, I don't think 45 minutes a day is sufficient to acquire pro-level precision and velocity, from a purely physical perspective. I think you need about that much on pure physical drill, daily, to build the nerve and muscular connections up. After that you can maintain it with very modest amounts of practice. You can probably achieve it in a burst, especially when young (when that occurs more quickly) -- i.e. you could send a kid to Meadowmount for the summer and they'd probably come back with that, if they worked at it.

Getting back to the OP, I am very curious because it seems off for a teacher to be discouraging a student from the extremely modest goal of private teacher and gigger. It makes me wonder both about the student’s level and also what the teacher’s personal experience has been. When I was teaching at the University level, I had a few music ed students come in whose private lesson experience was slim to nonexistent. After four years, they had become competent players and better than competent teachers. I am extremely proud of those students.

I read it as the teacher expressing caution about pursuing violin as a profession, which is a common sentiment on violin boards. It sounds like the daughter is interested in a conservatory or performance experience, but there are many reasons to be wary of trying to pursue that.

I personally think the liberal arts options are a great idea: Williams, Ithaca, etc. If she can get in, that would be a great education and would give her options going out.

I started off writing that I "wouldn't actively discourage my teen student from pursuing private teaching" but I would point out challenges and drawbacks and say that if you could be content and fulfilled doing something else (while keeping music for leisure), you should do that instead...so effectively, I'm discouraging it.

One benefit of private studio business (and being accustomed to living below one's means, i.e., no summer pinch when I drop one full weekday and half the Saturdays because fewer students are around) is that I never have to face being laid off or fired. Individual students do leave of course, but I don't lose the entire roster all at once.

Well, that sure was a fascinating attempt at a personal attack. Setting that aside, Bruce was presumably replying to my comment, "Why are you assuming that women must transition into a role as the primary parent, if they want children?"

Bruce went on to say, eventually, "What may seem wrong and offensive to you, is perfectly normal and acceptable to somebody else."

When did I ever indicate that women who made the choice to be a primary parent was wrong and/or offensive? I merely asserted that no one -- male or female -- should make assumptions that women desire to be, or should be, the primary parent. Of course I understand that people come from different cultures with different values (and some of those cultures are sure judge-y about women who don't choose to stay home with their children), but that's no reason to reinforce those choices as the Correct Defaults.

[Telling a personal tale here for the archive, so to speak, since kids look things up on search and I think it can help to see examples of non-default choices.]

I am entirely content and comfortable with the fact that I didn't choose to be a primary parent; my husband and I would not have had a child if he hadn't wanted to be the primary parent. Like many Americans, I received no maternity leave from my job, so I went back to work (working from home, as I had for years already) three weeks after my son was born. My husband got paternity leave, but we split baby duties pretty evenly through the no-sleep phase of parenting.

My husband and I are both lucky to have worked for the same companies for many, many years. As well-compensated and very senior top performers, we've been lucky to receive significant job flexibility. He uses that flexibility to be the primary parent. And I've used much of that flexibility to pursue my musical interests. (I gave up frequent business travel pre-pandemic once my son was born, though.)

[End of personal bit.]

Everyone benefits from flexibility in gender roles, so they can tailor lives that work well for them and their families (or for themselves should they not choose to take a partner and/or have children). And, of course, this helps people change those roles over the course of their lives, either because they want to or because circumstances force alterations.

Broadly, I think, regardless of gender, a life of patching together teaching and gigging for a living isn't very family-friendly. Most teachers are in demand precisely at the times that people normally want to spend with their spouses and children, and income instability makes family budgeting difficult, creates complexity in purchasing a home, etc. on top of the relatively low pay.

But certainly, if a teacher doesn't want to be the primary parent, there are plenty of jobs their spouse could hold that would offer both a good income and the ability to function as the primary parent. After all, professional working women have done that for the last 50+ years.

Clearing up a misconception, my husband and I don't work in related businesses, and while we both work in the technology industry, we have different sorts of careers. But yes, they're careers that (at least at this stage of our lives) are conducive to either of us playing parenting roles. I will note, though, that we also deliberately chose to delay becoming parents until we had reached the level of career advancement necessary to become parents in the way we desired.

But this is somewhat orthogonal to the point that freelance musicians can decide to not be the primary parent (regardless of gender), since they may very well have a spouse who can bear that weight (along with a job, whether high income or not) so that the musician can maximize the students they take and the gigs they play. People who stay in their small home towns can also often lean on the grandparents for help -- and the lower cost of living helps compensate forlower incomes.

I am glad you mention that going to a state university like Ithica, Williams is a good option as we are looking at that and although she put Ithica as her C choice (Boston Conservatory and Depauw University her A and B ) it is still a wonderful way to explore more and delve into what she may want. I have not heard of Williams so thank you for adding this so I can take a look at it. We are located on Cape Cod. And she attends New England Conservatory Preparatory School for past 6 years. Her level there at Orchestra is YRO and she does chamber with Dr. Song and has a wonderful teacher there. He does not think she is up to Par to get into a conservatory but another teacher suggested she at least put her hat in the ring for experience and why not, they can only say no. But to not be too surprised . She does attend a summer 2 week summer program as well and did get into South Eastern competition but can't quite reach all states. (13 points shy and many of those loss points due to her not being able to read as proficiently )

Thank you for saying a Many public universities would love to have her. That brings hope and light to our current path . ??

Fantastic question. and I agree, "practice everyday you eat, my dear, and at your age. 3 hours is to be expected" are my forever words as I see her slump in her chair half closed eyes in her lap top trying to keep on top of the overloaded IB high school an exceptionally hard high school which she struggles with since she was homeschooled for 6 years she is missing a lot of foundation to math and such. So I am proud she is able to maintain a B- usually even though I wold love a B+ or more. Her math and language keep it down and it is true most violinist seem very advanced in math and science as well which is not her. She shines in arts, music and creative writing but does the natural sciences.

So to speak to this. Sorry for long answer. She wakes at 6 has a 1.5 hour commute to a hard high school, has another 1.5 hour commute and then dives into her homework because now teachers all use computer and can just email assignments anytime and usually it is a midnight due in. There are points if late so she madly rushes to get her homework in.

Then she does practice and it is usually really late at night. We are all asleep or going to sleep. She has, in my opinion poor practice habits since she started high school which are exactly the years she needs to be doing more. It is a daily struggle between grades and violin and she is resentful at her school for not honoring her need to practice. She wanted to be in a type of high school that put more emphasis on the arts but we don't have that option.

So she only gets, if that 45 but if she can get vacation and a good run of no homework, she gets in 3 hours a day. Must say it is rare. This summer she plans on 4-6 hours and 2 lessons per week.

She is working on currently Mozart, Concerto No. 3 In G Major and Mozart W.A. Concerto No. 4 in D Major Bach Partita no. 2. n D Minor
her is sample of a snippet if anyone wants to chime in if can view
https://vimeo.com/828684495?share=copy

That is so wonderful that you did this on your own. Because of her sincere respect for her teachers and her desire to really get more input from a academic level and really network and have a university education, I know she would want to attend a college with a really great music program. Of course her dream was Eastman but she was told in a text, that would not be a reality for her. Hard pill to swallow but we appreciate reality here.

Thank you for that information about Susuki schools. She took her first lessons from a ms. Carol Sykes who was amazing. they had a special connection and we always hoped she may be able to give her teacher Susuki lesson as she was a trainer but she passed away 2021. She has taught a little girl down the street who asked and would be very good at a very beginning teaching but really wants to go to college to get the proper teaching to teach. because we have maybe all had those great teachers who gave wrong bow hand or wonderful performers who played in all sorts of fancy venues who are not great with communication. The art of being able to do both is, in my opinion, not as easy to find. She wants to be reaching for performing but teach.

We are still trying to find schools. Of course her dream is Eastman but looks like maybe her next level choices may be a state school with a wonderful music program but we are in the North East. We are not sure about the levels of this one but a school like Bard on the Hudson or Boston Conservatory we would be thrilled with .

Her current pieces working on are Mozart concerto No. 3 in G Major and concerto no. 4 g major. L'Abeille by Francois Schubert, Op. 13, Bach Partita no. 2 in D minor

Yes, I agree with a college that is affordable. I am a widowed mom of three and desperately battle the economy of affording music, which to me is as important as any subject in school but that is just me. Not sure why I am like that. But I am.

We are looking at schools that maybe kinder to give a financial help and state schools yes.

The teacher is wonderful and I think he simply thinks she cannot go into music as a career. He teaches students at very very high levels. We are lucky to have him but to give an example, his students come from Eastman school undergraduate to his masters at BU. I know it is harsh , but my daughter respects his advice so she appreciates it. His words verbatim " there is unfortunately a huge disconnect between dreams and reality. We understand and it did shake her to her core. I did tell her, if you can't get in the practice, you should not be surprised. But she is caught right now to get through her hard high school or getting in her practice.

She just had her teacher yesterday and we asked to speak to this subject and he just said, there was no path for her in music. He said to go into art and take music courses as a minor. That did not sit well with my daughter because although she loves art, she does not like her teacher she admires telling her what she can or cannot do. She just was not brought up that way. So yes, it is a bit uncomfortable but I am grateful for his honesty anyways.

It is true that her major thing preventing her from getting more ahead with her abilities in music is her high school and the commute is a grueling 1 and a half hours each way. I know , awful. but it is top high school charter IB in the state lottery ticket gets a lucky kid in so we feel so lucky for her to have that education. But it keeps her from her practice. She says that she is in school all day using her brain and really working on many different subjects, then the commute and she has to really switch her mind set since violin uses such a different type of energy and she has a hard time after getting home from school with tons of homework, to do this. She is just so tired. And violin she says is very physical and takes a certain mind set that is opposite from the requirements as her school. So a gap year may not be a bad idea. She is planning on a 6 hour practice all summer and taking lessons 2x per week for her Mozart #3 / #4
stops, scales, hone basics, etc. pre-screen auditions submitting to several schools to throw her hat in the ring if you will.

Ah just read your other post. You were a 45 minute practicer but still got to the Tchaikovsky level by the time I was 16, is very telling. Thank you for sharing that. This may be what her teacher is referring to then. Perhaps she is just not able to "get there" is a reality. I watched a utube video of a girl who went from 6 to 21 on violin and my daughter was right along with her level and pieces until she got to be about teenager and you could see a noticeable increase in her abilities and pieces where my daughter is not. So that made me curious. At what level do you say, I'm out if you don't make those key jumps? Music is like no other career path, but does one really play and let music into their lives wholly from age 3 and just keep as a hobby. Perhaps. I just don't know.

Good annalogy.
Yes, it is important to have a Plan B. As my daughter may be the top two violinist in her high school of 850, but this doesn't say as much as I would like because in Boston at NEC Prepatory, she falls behind. In her high school there just are not many violins and why is because schools don't prioritize this. They actually don't offer it really. That is another thread.
The teacher says that she should not go into performing and when says, hey what about teaching little kiddos, he says that even very very talented top of their game violinists compete for teaching kiddos. It is maybe a matter of perspective and a dash of reality because he is right. Most teachers in areas around Boston are even overqualified and may have gone to they finest conservatories and performed at some top orchestras and yet there are teaching pre-twinkle to a small lot of proud parent little ones. So I see what he is saying. Yet, as well, it is not to say that she would not have a successful teaching career in the places not near a large city where everyone else quit. Gave up. Kids need a caring, respectful passionate role model to introduce them to these amazing arts. It is not given in schools at young ages. I think there is a bit of truth to her teacher yes and to her own desire yes. Ms. Skyes started out with a lot of varying ages in Susuki when my daughter started out. We saw many of them quit. Several went on and became very very good. One went into microbiology , one is a high advanced but his own mother is a violinist. and then there is my teen. Who searches where she fits here. Not the prodigy, works extra hard to read the notes, but had a wonderful ear. There has to be those caring and compassionate early teachers to make all those amazing advanced students. That we were lucky my daughter had. If not for that one caring amazing Ms. Sykes, my daughter would have never known violin. That speaks volumes (pun intended) to me

I do believe there is importance to how someone practices so true. If it is not productive practice it can be lost and even less time is truly given to practice. I wonder how if teachers should from the get go, establish the "right way" to practice. so important .

I totally agree about your comment on practice . Well said

I agree with you about 45 minutes not being enough. Just even to practice scales and warm up and such, there is no way to get into and sort out a piece in that time. I just wish my daughter had more time to do such. I have really gotten upset at her and it has really cost her not to but I was told by one of her teachers, not to push as it will only produce the opposite affect. I think it is about establishing a base expectation like anything we want to excel in. You have to put in the work there is just no way around it, and high school demands really compete with this. Perhaps we should all start a charter division of high schools for the arts across communities. Where we put music and it's practice right up there with science and language . That would be something.

I think you hit the nail on the head in your comment about "in order for a professional violinist to get to the point of having experiences in which one can enjoy the deeply spiritual nature of western art music, it is necessary to pass through an extended period of competition. " It is true that we realize in this form it is highly competitive, but also I have seen such lovely young rising performers who really want to find a place of this in their lives. Truly are they all going to come home from work to their little kids and play violin as a hobby. Maybe but I think once someone experiences the language of classical music, it is a different thing all together than say, other forms like pop . I am not sure as I am not a musician and I only wish my parents introduced me to this when I was young. But I did not have that myself. Classical music has given my daughter something different than her peers. she honors it and it has made her see the world differently. It has been her voice when she was too shy to talk, it has been her friend. Her dearest. It is not about competing or being on top, although she would love to and welcomes to rise to that. But it is not about that for her. So this was nice to read.

in reply to not loosing all rooster. I get that . I work for myself and my business fluctuates. I decided that I just could not have my entire profession be judged or even taken by one person. A boss, so working for myself has always been a must. I gain, I loose clients. Some years are very hard. But it is my gig. My thing. I am so glad for it every single day. My daughter has been raised watching me in this role. Doing it on my own, working for myself, creating our own reality. In this, it may help her see herself in her own studio as a teacher. She has said she can clearly see it. So that is meaningful to me.

Anyhow, I think your daughter sounds like a lovely young woman, and I think she certainly has potential to improve a lot more if she doesn't have to worry about school. I think getting a degree in music education (not performance) and teaching young children isn't an unrealistic path for her as long as she's willing to work hard. My understanding is that the audition requirements for education majors are often not as difficult, so that helps. I'm glad that gave her a well rounded childhood. Many youth don't know they want to do music until their teen years. On the flip side, some may have dreamed of a music career for years but decide by the end of high school I'm not going into music, so yeah.

I watched the video (and looked at some of the other more recent videos). I would say that her repertoire seems appropriate at the intermediate level, but she's very, very far behind even students entering decent music ed programs -- and nowhere near the students who would be entering performance programs. Even basics like "be consistently in tune in 1st position" aren't fully solidified.

You can't just go from "practice 45 minutes a day when lucky" to "practice 6 hours a day" as she hopes. That is a recipe for injury, not to mention that she's unlikely to know how to use multiple hours of practice effectively. (In general, it's also not effective to practice more than 4 hours a day.)

Teenagers need sleep, by the way. They shouldn't be sacrificing sleep in order to put in more hours of academics, or in order to cram in more extracurricular time. Sacrificing sleep is counterproductive and has long-term negative effects on their growth, health, and brain.

I think if your daughter was 15, it would be worth considering a less rigorous academic route, given her relatively low grades. I believe that it's generally considered better to take a somewhat less intense academic schedule, but to get As in those subjects. To me, a B- suggests that not only is she struggling, but she's also not really learning the material well. It'd be better to fully comprehend and absorb less challenging schoolwork -- and stronger grades would have really helped the quest for financial aid.

It's too late to make that decision for high school, but perhaps you can make a better choice for college. Even if your daughter decides to pursue a fully academic rather than artistic path, I'd look for a school with really solid teaching (which will probably be a SLAC and not a research university), that isn't a stretch academically. You may be forced down this route regardless because a GPA below 3.0 will be regarded as problematic. She'll want great SAT/ACT and AP scores to make up for that, if that's possible. You'll want to pay close attention to where Naviance thinks her profile fits, and what her guidance counselor advises.

If your child desires to go into art instead, have you invested in doing portfolio prep, so she's a strong candidate for an art school? If not, can her art teachers work with her on the portfolio? Would you consider a gap year at a place like Interlochen, where she could work more intensively on both her art and music? (Scholarships are available, and I'm guessing your income would make her eligible for one.)

Most of the adults that I know who manage high-paying day jobs while moonlighting as violinists (especially if they're teaching and/or gigging) were academically outstanding as well as being very strong players by the time they finished high school. Personally, for instance, I coast on the technical skills I developed when much younger, which allows me to lead a rich musical life, despite having an intense professional life and a family.

I think if your daughter wants to get to a level where she's able to teach and gig as a profession, she's going to have to major in it during college, and really devote herself to practicing intensively during those years. She's probably going to need the additional time spent getting a master's to get her playing level up to par, and it'll be something of a roll of the dice to see how quickly she'll improve if she devotes time to it.

IB program is not for everyone especially if you are getting only B- and wasting 3 hours on the road everyday!

Your daughter is playing currently what mine was, a year or two ago. She’s 13, and not considered particularly advanced for her age. Just in her teacher’s studio, there are at least two kids her age that are more advanced than she is, to give you an idea of what the landscape looks like. Like your daughter, she’s a 45 minutes a day player, but has only been playing since she was 7, and is strictly doing it for fun and enjoyment.

All this is my long-winded way of saying that your daughter’s path in music is not going to be easy or straightforward if she chooses to go down that path. Based on what I have seen of music teachers in local schools (who are by and large not good enough to have private studios), they are all playing at a much higher level, and are versatile, able to play multiple instruments decently (piano, cello, violin, and viola). There is a significant gap between where your daughter is currently, and where they are.

I think the idea of going into something like a music/art therapy program is a good one. I have two friends, one a speech language pathologist, another a special ed teacher, both of whom find it handy to have musical backgrounds (SLP friend is a singer and pianist, the other friend is a cellist). Those are all in-demand careers that would allow your daughter to work with children, incorporate music into their lives, and still make a good living. She will always be free to join chamber groups or local adult orchestras and keep music as a hobby as well.

The OP's original comment about her daughter's teacher's comment sounded as if the teacher was venting personal frustration, not participating in a thoughtful discussion about the daughter's future options. At the least, the teacher should be able to describe what the student would need to do to prepare for success in various careers (violin studio, music education, other pro roles), even if some of them are highly improbable.

A glance at the UMass Amherst audition requirements for violinists indicates that the OP's daughter's playing level is probably marginal for the minimum difficulty. (Kreutzer is the bottom of the etude list there in terms of difficulty. OP has posted a Kreutzer video of her daughter. She's playing it okay-ish, which would be good if she were a hopeful 11-year-old, and not 17. I say that recognizing that the video might not represent a finished state for the etude.)

But UMass (likely the OP's public university given where they probably live) also requires academic acceptance to the university, and with what a quick search says is an average 3.9 GPA for admitted students, the OP's B- average is not going to cut it. (Even if using a weighted GPA for the IB, the OP's academic record would probably be of concern unless their SAT/ACT is really impressively high.)

The academic record is going to potentially be an issue at any college that requires academic admission as well as a successful audition. And getting into a school is quite different from affording it -- and having that investment be worthwhile.

Jocelyn, it sounds like they asked the teacher directly and the answer was essentially to not consider it. It didn’t sound like venting to me, more of a ‘I don’t think it will work out’ type of response.

One of my daughter’s elementary school teachers had mentioned in passing what she auditioned with when she applied to college. I think it was Bruch. She’s not that young, so probably went to college a good 15 years ago.

She always get A+ in Art. That is her other passion. (oh joy another area that can be iffy getting job when get out ?????) But she is a wonderful artist.
Yes, I think we are starting to think a bit more as considering other arenas but she is just so set on keeping her violin purposeful. Not just a hobby but something to bring daily purpose. Tricky though I see.

Art is much like music, though -- if a student can't get a scholarship for it, they should probably rethink their future.

"I am not sure where that happened since she has been in lesson every year" -- I think the answer to this is pretty simple. She's been putting in one-quarter of the practice time, or less, than other kids seriously interested in pursuing music as a profession.

Talent and really effective use of practice time can make up, to some degree, for raw hours. That's partially why you see kids who can handle very demanding academic work and music at a high level and sports and other stuff -- they've got brains, energy, and a work ethic that let them just power through a lot of things and learn really fast. For everyone else, they've got to focus and put in the hours.

And it's not "30 applicants for one seat" (in pro orchestras). Think more like three hundred applicants for one seat. And that's after filtering out the thousands that might once have dreamed about that seat but never make it as far as an application for the audition.