[Perform-Talk] Accommodations for theory placement exams for master of music students

[Elizabeth Sprecher]

Hi All,
I wanted to look for some suggestions from anyone who has had struggles with trying to accommodate themselves or trying to advocate for accommodations for music theory and history placement exams before starting grad school.
I have been in contact with an advisor who is in charge of these theory placement exams, but he doesn’t check his email very often during the summer, and I sent him an email more than a week ago describing what accommodations would be best and what alternative ways of Looking at music would work best for me. The reason I did that was because the Disability service is here does not work very quickly. And everything has a process of requesting accommodations.
So I sent this advisor, a very long, detailed email, describing each part of the exam and what alternative options would work best for me with the limited resources that Disability services has and the limited resources that I have. I have not heard back from him, and I forwarded the email that I had sent to him, to Disability services, and I am supposed to have these exams done by next Friday.
I transferred to another University, because although my accommodations for the placement exams were very successful in theprevious university I attended, but this is a very different situation with professors who don’t understand how important it is to have things ready ahead of time.
Do you have any suggestions on how to navigate this? The exam includes everything from putting in notation to written theory, to oral skills, and an analyzing an entire piece. So I would like to know how to make this process faster for all of us.
My thought was possibly just doing the entire exam orally and dictating my answers to someone who would be able to write it down.
Thanks!
Elizabeth

Sent from my iPhone