<p>Hi all,
my mezzo-soprano daughter is starting the final round of visits before auditions.</p>
<p>She's a three year All-State Choral member in Maryland as well as a MHEC Distinguished Scholar in Fine Arts (Honorable Mention). She's gotten "I" ratings in her state solo and ensemble pieces for all three years. As for academics, she's got a 3.6 GPA (taking AP/Honors courses in English, Music Theory, Social Studies, and Science), her SATs are "meh" so she's repeated in October and plans to take them in November again (after 6 weeks of intense tutoring). She's also a soccer player and is interested in playing in college, so she's limiting her searches to smaller schools.</p>
<p>She wishes to double major in Music Education and Vocal Performance with her eventual career goal to become a music teacher.</p>
<p>We're visiting the following schools... Any insight you can give me on strength of programs will be appreciated.</p>
<p>Shenandoah U
Frostburg State U
York of Pennsylvania
Towson (obviously no soccer here, it's a Division I school)
Salisbury
East Carolina University
St. Mary's College of Maryland (no vocal performance, but a 5-year program for her Masters in Education and MD Teaching Certification)</p>
<p>Any good programs in the area that we're missing? Her apps are already submitted at Frostburg, York, and St. Mary's. She's nearly finished with the other apps.</p>
<p>Any info/insight you have would be appreciated.</p>
<p>You can also search the forum a number of ways, by keyword, or postername. One of the best ways to get some first hand info is to scan the master lists and look for postings by user name for a poster with acceptances at the options you’re considering </p>
<p>I’ve found that using search this forum/advanced/titles/“keyword”/show threads is often the most effective initially. If little or nothing shows up, then changing the criteria to search/advanced/posts/“keyword”/ show posts will bring up info buried within threads where the keyword is not part of the title. Give it a try, and if you’re stymied, let me know. I’d be more than happy to pull some info up as links.</p>
<p>Good luck with the rest of the process and enjoy the ride.</p>
<p>From a music ed (instrumental, and string specific standpoint), I’ve recommended Shenandoah as a strong program with a very solid regional rep for producing well trained and sought after music educators. From what I know, they can be generous with merit/talent money for those at the higher end of the audition pool.</p>
<p>Towson is very well respected, and arguably the go to school for music ed in Maryland.</p>
<p>East Carolina has a strong following, and is mentioned in very favorable light in numerous threads here. There may be a few discussions of York, and a few mentions of Salisbury. I don’t recall much on St. Mary’s (of Md).</p>
<p>I do want to pull up a few past music and sports discussions. The curriculum structure of both music ed and performance may make a sports committment difficult if not imposssible for any number of reasons. Some of these are discussed here:</p>
<p>Whether it is “doable”, advisable, or will raise big red flags is an area to consider and address at each school when visiting or contacting. Personally, I don’t see as being typically a logistical possibility within a BM program, especially with a dual discipline commitment. Scheduling issues will abound, and it may raise “commitment” issues.</p>
<p>I have experience in both. Son was a perf/ed major, and D a Div III varsity soccer starter. If the talents of both were combined in one kid, two clones would not have yielded enough flexibility. ;)</p>
<p>I agree with violadad, especially about a BM performance program. There simply isn’t enough time for sports and the amount of music studies required. Also, serious conflicts of schedule are certain to arise… you can’t be in the recital hall and soccer field at the same time. Either the coach or the music teacher (and more likely both) will have a big problem with your student.</p>
<p>I agree with the others. A lot of rehearsals take place between 3pm and 7pm which is probably the same time the soccer coach expects attendance. Throw in traveling for games … yikes!</p>
<pre><code>An acquaintance of mine had a daughter who played Golf for Stanford. She was expected to get all her classes in before noon. The coach required 1pm-6pm to be open everyday for golf. It actually created a lot of friction with the roommates who didn’t wake up until 10am and resented her making noise while getting ready for 8am classes.
</code></pre>
<p>Thanks Violadad! I have done some reading before jumping in and posting so I totally get the conflict between sports and performance…however I am also a big believer in letting Stretch figure out what she wants to do. I’m not the mom that says “No you can’t do that” … I’d rather her find out for herself. This is a kid who found her passion pretty late in the game and only stopped being a three sport athlete in spring of her junior year! </p>
<p>Truly I know her first love is music ed. Performing, for her, is secondary (I admit I don’t get that part) so it may be that she decides to drop the second major, or she may decide not to play soccer at all.</p>
<p>We’re off to Shenandoah tonight and will stay through Saturday night. Shenandoah has a few conservatory students on the soccer team, so we’ll see how that plays out. I think Shenandoah is her first choice school while St. Mary’s is her safety school. The dark horses (the schools I know NOTHING about) are York, Salisbury, ECU, and Greensboro (apparently on her list, but Mom and Dad were in the dark).</p>
<p>In reading I hear a lot about schools like Oberlin, and Peabody, but that isn’t Stretch’s scene…she has indicated she wants a broader experience in college. </p>
<p>We call her Stretch because she’s always been a tiny thing… we joke that the nickname was in the hopes that it would inspire height. At 5’3" having just turned 17, I think we’ve done all we can do. :)</p>
<p>Mine wasn’t much taller, maybe 5’4"but a real scrapper. A midfielder, forward who like her sick old man has the true goalie mentality. She was pressed into starting service both in high school and college as starting goalie and was extremely effective. Moves like a cat, and is fearless.</p>
<p>I got a kick out of sitting on the sidelines yelling “beat the short goalie” everytime the opponents moved downfield. They rarely did.</p>
<p>Ithica College in NY (not too far out of your geographic range) is a college I know has a five year double major degree in Music Education and Performance which is pretty well regarded so that may be worth a look but not sure on what level they are for soccer. At most colleges it would take five years to complete the requirements for Music Education and a Music Performance degree but not all colleges will allow or encourage it like Ithica does. Even if you are not interested in Ithica from the location perspective I think they have a pretty good explanation of the double degree on their web site which you may find useful going forward for comparison.</p>
<p>Violadad, sounds like our kids have very similar mentalities! Stretch is defense-minded and plays most comfortably at center back, or outside back/midfield. Her last year of JV her quick reaction time made her the backup goalie and she actually ended up playing in three games when the starting goalie got hurt. Gave up the only goal of the season, however made 19 or 20 saves in that game (they peppered her, seriously…she was FURIOUS with her defense for hanging her out to dry) and luckily they ended up winning 3-1. Since then though, she’ll do anything to stay out of the goal!!
Now my 12 year old is a different story… she LOVES playing keeper and all I do is sit on the sidelines praying “not the face, please not the face, not the face”.<br>
I’ll look up the posts you found, thank you SO MUCH for the help. Not UNC Greensboro but Greensboro College.<br>
NJ Jazz Dad, I will definitely look into Ithica College… at this point, Stretch is kind of disconnected from the process. Her dad thinks that maybe Stretch has the belief that we have it all under control? HA! How rigorous is Ithica? She’s a good solid student, but not a superstar… she’s just all around well rounded and above average. It’s tough though, having to compete against all these superstars. SO many talented kids… I was an all-state vocalist in my day, but this group of kids has the bar set so much higher. I am truly in awe of them most of the time.</p>
<p>MomToStretch, Think Ithica is not overly rigorous to get in academic wise, and is probably in you daughters GPA range which is about the same as my son was last year. My son had Ithica in mind when he wanted to do Music Education as it has a very good reputation for that and he liked the idea of the double degree like your daughter. When he switched to a pure performance degree he decided not to audition although he had a date booked. Know there has been discussions on the site about Ithica especially on the scholarship side. The other schools on your list I am not familiar with. For Music Education the state schools tend to be the strongest at the undergraduate level so, for example, in Maryland, UMCP tends to come up but you want to limit your scope to lower sport division schools. So for example, in NJ, for smaller state schools there is Montclair State, William Patterson and Rowan that might fit the bill. You still have time to search for some additional choices and fit in visits/research before the application deadlines approach. </p>
<p>Know matching schools for sport and the degree you want to do is very difficult. A friend of mines daughter was trying to find a good college to play baskeball at last year and faced the difficult choice of choosing a college strong at the degree she wanted to do but not be able to play basketball as school was Divison II or be guaranteed a basketball slot but at a school that did not offer the exact degree she wanted. So good luck and I am sure a good match will turn up.</p>
<p>William and Mary – I do not think they have Music Education, but it is a strong BA music program where she would be able to also play soccer.</p>
<p>On the upper end of the east coast, maybe look at Plymouth State University in NH… they have a Div3 (I think) team, and a strong Music Education program with opportunities to double in Education and Performance and Pedagogy. Regardless – students with voice as their primary instrument are getting into grad schools like Peabody, NEC, Boston Conservatory, Boston University, UNC-Greensboro, etc…</p>
<p>Re. Ithaca- they DO expect performance time and I really don’t think that they would move things around enough to accomodate the soccer.Something was unusual about their VP admits this year and kids who expected the audition to be a mere formality were disappointed when told that they were welcome to attend, but as an “undeclared music major”. This is something new and could be due to a need for more faculty, overcrowded facilities or a really great pool of applicants from which to choose this past season.
Shenandoah has an OK VP program but a lot has been poured into their MT program- that’s something to look into.
Agreeing completely with Kat’s suggestions of James Madison (very well thought of Music Ed program) and William and Mary.Those lovely campuses don’t hurt either!</p>
<p>I’ll post a trip report… I was VERY impressed. Thank you all for your inputs. Stretch won’t make it into JMU based on her test scores… but we have added Plymouth State as a maybe. It’s off to Frostburg this weekend, and scheduling an audition at York on the 14th of November. Applications are getting done, essays being written… sounds like we’re on the merry go round for real now!</p>
<p>Glad you liked Shenandoah. I was there last year when I picked D up from NATS - the music building is very nice. </p>
<p>If the JMU music department wants her, they will “stretch” to get her. Sorry, couldn’t resist. They do have pull in admissions. If she’s interested, I wouldn’t let scores scare her off - they also factor the GPA in heavily.</p>
<p>Momtostretch – I used to teach at Plymouth and now teach at JMU. PM me if you have questions. I will do my best to answer or point in the right direction. </p>
<p>Glad you had a good visit to Shenandoah. I know many students who have really enjoyed their time at the school. :)</p>