Orchestral rehearsals in college focus exclusively on preparing concert programs. Drawing from the experiences of undergraduate string players and orchestral directors, I argue that this approach is educationally suboptimal because it fails to maximize the college orchestral rehearsal time as an educational space, forgoing the development of long-term skills in favor of learning repertoire. I design, write, and test some examples of a new curricular model which utilizes excerpts from across the orchestral repertoire to teach towards specific themes in orchestral string playing. I identify themes which are more advanced than the basic string techniques featured in other curricular precedents, and which are fundamental to orchestral playing in particular: orchestral dynamics, bow distribution, bouncing bow strokes, special “orchestral” techniques, and the constitution of a string section. I organize information about these topics in a structured way and use excerpts as examples that fit within a broader framework.