Music School students annually lead regional competition

Statistics — particularly wins and losses — help make measuring success in athletics easy. What we really like to see are long runs of success — like the 43-1 record in Big 12 play that Baylor’s women’s tennis team has racked up the last four seasons.

Baylor’s School of Music has its own success rate to brag about. The National Association of Teachers of Singing holds an annual regional competition in which singers from most every college and university in Texas and Oklahoma participate. The students compete in various vocal categories: freshman men, freshman women, sophomore men, etc., up through graduate student men and women. For each category, panels of vocal experts choose finalists who are judged as the best singers in each respective category.

Since 2001, Baylor students have earned more spots in the finals than any other school, and it’s not even really close. Of a possible 365 finalists selected during that time, Baylor has 68 (19%). The next closest school is North Texas, with 55 finalists (15%); the third place school, SMU, drops off to just 34 finalists (less than 10%).

Sic ’em, music school professors!