How We Plan an Exam Year, Semester by Semester

Our year runs in three terms: Fall from September to January, Spring from February to June, and a shorter Summer term across July and August. Exam preparation does not fit neatly inside any one of them, which is why families who start thinking about it in the spring are usually already late.

Here is how a full exam year is actually laid out.

Fall: choosing, not cramming

The first weeks of the Fall term are for deciding two things with your teacher: which examination, and which grade. Not the highest grade the student could scrape through, but the one where the repertoire will make them better.

Repertoire is chosen early and deliberately, because the pieces have to live with the student for months. Technical work (scales, arpeggios, whatever the syllabus asks) starts in the same weeks, quietly, at a few minutes a lesson.

Spring: building toward the date

The Spring term is where the exam is actually won. Sight-reading and aural work move from occasional to routine, the technical requirements get tested cold rather than warmed up, and the pieces stop being learned and start being performed.

This is also where our recitals do their real work. Students are offered one or two recitals a semester, and the ones sitting exams should take them: a recital is the only rehearsal available for the specific problem of playing well while frightened.

Summer: consolidating, or resting

The Summer term is lighter by design. For a student who has just sat an exam it is the moment to play repertoire nobody is grading, the thing that keeps a player attached to the instrument after a demanding year. For a student sitting an exam in the autumn, it is quiet, uninterrupted preparation time with no school timetable competing for it.

NYSSMA and ABRSM are not the same job

Families often use the two names interchangeably. They ask different things of a student.

• NYSSMA is the New York State School Music Association evaluation, widely used by school music programmes in the state, with repertoire drawn from its own manual and a rating given at a festival.
• ABRSM is an international graded syllabus, taken at a booked appointment, with a set structure of prepared pieces, technical work, sight-reading and aural tests.

Both reward the same underlying preparation. Where they differ is in how repertoire is selected and what else is on the day, so the choice should be made with a teacher who knows the student, not decided from a forum post.

The single best predictor of a calm exam is not how many hours a student practised. It is how many times they had already played the programme for someone other than their teacher.

The part families underestimate

Studio class. Playing in front of the other students in your teacher’s studio feels like the least serious item on the schedule and is the most useful one. Students who do it regularly walk into the exam room having already survived the thing that actually goes wrong.

If you are considering an exam this year, raise it at your next lesson rather than at the end of term. The calendar decides more of the outcome than anyone likes to admit.