The advice we got for skills testing was "if you count to 15 and you are off by only 1-2 beats, when you multiply that by 4 you can end up being off in your final number by at least 4-6 beats. you can't be off by more than 6 beats to pass the skill". Basically the less time you count for, the...
I agree the basic and intermediate should be merged but it's not just one more semester, not in texas anyway. It's two semesters, a full year longer which totals up to $1550 in tuition and an additional $600+ in books.