My daughter is a senior and we’re headed into the craziness.
She’s a drummer, pretty much even split skillwise and interest between contemporary and jazz.
So the 3 most obvious schools on her shortlist are Frost, Thornton and Berklee.
We’ve visited Frost and USC last year and met with faculty in both departments.
They all indicated she could freely collaborate and cross-pollinate classes between the two program, but you still need to pick where you “live” from a department standpoint, which makes sense.
Less clear is how you actually would do that from an application process.
And I’ve always assumed there was no such thing as EA at Frost/Thornton because they need to hear everyone before they admit. But my daughter found a reference to Early Action on the Frost site and I was confused. Does it give you a chance to do your audition earlier? Is that even advisable?
Anyway, thanks for any help on these two topics.
May we all survive this year together!
As far as I know, there are certain scholarships that are only eligible to EA applicants to Frost.
‘Early Action is for the most academically competitive students admitted to the freshman class. Applicants who wish to be considered for the University of Miami premier scholarships should apply Early Action and submit all required materials for both the university and the Frost School by the deadline.’
I have a couple of comments. EA at Frost is actually EA for U Miami. The audition is still required but it admits the student to the U earlier and opens up the academic scholarships earlier. I can’t recall but I think maybe it was @vistajay who’s kid was the only one on the board that was admitted EA there. He still had to audition during the regular time with everyone else. But I think his kid got a full ride there. It’s really an EA for academics only so for kids that have off the charts SAT/ACT scores and GPA it’s a good thing to do. Otherwise don’t bother.
The other thing to keep in mind is despite what they may tell you, there is little to no money in Popular music, the money is in jazz. That is absolutely true for Thornton as well and states it right on their admissions website. And with Thornton, truly the money is ALL academic. I know kids going there on good scholarship from academics (they are off the charts) and a pittance for music scholarship, like $2500 in jazz. My D would never have gotten in there academically so we didn’t waste our time.
Finally I would encourage your D to check out New School. They can be generous with money and your D would be heavily recruited as a female instrumentalist. She would have NYC at her feet and have opportunity in both jazz and contemporary music as it’s right in the title of the school. Worth a look, audition and application IMO. And they will bump initial offers with appeals as well.
New School is definitely on her radar. She’s had it recommended to her as a place where great things are happening, with a strong jazz drum faculty in particular. Her current drum teacher at MSM Precollege recommended it, as did Nikki Glaspie, one of her drumming heroes. It’s an easy visit for us too since she’s in NYC every Saturday for Pre-college. I was a little thrown off by that open letter blog post by Sasha Berliner, but I suspect that’s just the reality of being a female jazz instrumentalist in a lot of places.
I’m not surprised by the $$ discrepancy between the programs. The handful of popular music programs are new enough and novel enough (there are so few of them) that I doubt they have to provide any additional inducements to joining for the kids who want that track. On the other hand there are loads of great jazz programs out there, so even the top schools feel they have to sweeten the deal to fight a bit harder for the kids they want. Or that’s just my gut POV as a marketing guy who spends a lot of time on segmentation and demand/supply problems.
Sounds like EA at UM isn’t really helpful for us. Only reason she was interested was getting an audition done early (like you can with Berklee). She’s a solid student, but not so extraordinary she’ll be eligible for the top academic awards.
On USC, @astute12 do you mean he’s in both programs at school currently? If so, I’d give my right arm to be able to put my daughter in touch with him. She met with the Deans of both programs when we visited in the Spring. And while they were both encouraging about the ability to cross-pollinate between the programs, they were light on details and logistics of how that works or how one would apply for that scenario.
@DrummerDad18 -
Depending on how important your timing is, it is possible to ask for an early, or off-schedule, audition. When we were spending a week at Frost, the professor said to S, “Hey, do you want to do your audition early, like this Wednesday instead of Friday? It will make my Friday lighter.” I believe there was another student there that had an audition somewhere else on that Friday, so he auditioned early, too.
SpartanDrew was correct about Frost EA, it’s about the academic side. S18 applied EA and was selected for the Presidential Scholarship interview weekend, and had his audition then. He was admitted to the university prior to that weekend, and we were told by the music dean that only 3 Frost applicants were admitted early like that: all Presidential Scholar finalists. He still had to audition and be formally admitted to Frost though.
And you never know about talent money. It varies by year and by the school’s need, and since that may even change during the application process you may as well go for it. S18 is a vocalist but in addition to academic scholarships he received a $10,000 per year talent scholarship to Thornton, then Frost very late in the game offered another $15,000 music scholarship to try and entice him. You just never know.
