<p>My son, a cellist and junior in an arts high school with about a 3.4 GPA, in "gifted" level academic classes, will probably end up applying to either a conservatory or a liberal arts school with a very strong music dept. (any suggestions?)
In his school, AP curriculum is an encouraged option "infused" into the class, i.e., he has to do extra reading and spend extra-curricular time with the teacher to prepare for the exam.
Although he is in the highest level classes, academics are a struggle, and he's already practicing a lot and in the local youth symphony, as well as the extra hour a day of school because he's in an arts high school.
Parents, help! Should I put my foot down and say he won't do the extra AP portion of his English class? I am worried that will handicap him for liberal arts schools. And then there's next year, when they will want him to take calculus and I think he'll need the opening in his schedule to practice.
So my big question is: If he doesn't do absolutely every possible most difficult class in his school, will that handicap him for Oberlin non-conservatory, or Northwestern Music School, or U. Michigan Music School?</p>
<p>If he is applying to the music school at Oberlin, it certainly won't matter whether or not he has a bunch of AP classes. If he is trying to do a dual degree, it could matter. My daughter went into Rice as a vocal performance major and liked the fact that she had some AP credits. It opened up some other classes she could take. She was also glad she stuck with high school calculus, by the way. Michigan and Northwestern are different from Oberlin and the academics might matter more, but not taking a load of all APs is NOT a deal-breaker.</p>
<p>My son was accepted at Oberlin and Michigan and only took AP US History, AP Government (one semester), and AP Statistics out of many, many more AP classes available at his school. He was rejected at Northwestern because he only played a jazz audition and not a classical one too, which is required. I'm sure he would have had no problem academically. My daughter is a senior at Northwestern (not in music) and got in without too many AP's. By the way, my son was accepted into both the College and the Conservatory at Oberlin, which are seperate applications and admissions.
I am quite sure that AP's are totally unnecessary for acceptance into music schools (Eastman, etc.) or music schools that are within a university (Northwestern, etc.). They can't hurt, but I don't feel they are worth all those extra hours if your son is sure he wants to be a cello performance major. Better he should practice those extra hours. His music will be his hook, even if he applies to liberal arts colleges with strong music programs. Students with 14 or more semesters of AP classes are a dime a dozen nowadays (amazingly). The average accepted student at UCLA for 2005 had a 4.25 weighted GPA and 19 honors/AP courses. My son also was admitted to UCLA for music and fell far short of this average. Music will be your son's best hook Schools are always looking for exceptional cellists..</p>
<p>Hi Mom4</p>
<p>My son is applying to U Michigan this year. The way it works is that you submit your app to the University Admissions and they determine if you meet the minimum criteria set for the School of Music (it is a greater than 3.0 GPA and over 1100 on the "old" SATs). If you make the cut (and it does seem pretty much based on the minimums) then the School of Music will likely invite you for an audition. From that point on it seems that the audition is all that matters. My son has a 3.4; 1360; has taken 3 APs (by graduation). He has some curricular deficiencies (only 2 sciences) but they seem ok with it.</p>
<p>My son is a cellist who just graduated from Eastman. A very strong student, he couldn't figure out how to do all the advanced classes and have the time he needed to prepare for his auditions. He quit taking math after his sophmore year ( he had finished precalc and would have started calculus.) Dropping the math opened up time for him both during the day and a much less homework load. Before he made the decision to not take anymore math, his counselor called Rice, a school he was very interested in. They said he would be fine stopping after precalc. (He was eventually waitlisted at Rice.) If your son is really interested in pursuing a cello performance major, he is better off putting his time and effort into his cello studies.</p>
<p>If you want to do the double degree at Oberlin, don't sweat the academics if they will get in the way of the music. My daughter was accepted by the Conservatory mostly on the basis of her audition but never bothered to apply to the college. She had no problem at all transferring into the Double Degree program this year after turning in a solid first year in the Con (while also getting a head start on some Math classes.) She had a grand total of one AP class (Music) in high school and never bothered to take the test, because music schools generally do not grant AP credit in Music. They just start you out in a more advanced class if you do well on the school placement tests.</p>
<p>If you can get into the Con, transferring into the double degree program is almost automatic. It is much more difficult from the College side, because you still have to be accepted into the Conservatory and that depends not only on your own playing, but also on the number of spots available and the level of the competition that year. Very few get into the program having started in the College only.</p>
<p>[Breaking news from daughter: she won the audition for principal bass this semester in Oberlin's Symphony Orchestra. Woot.]</p>
<p>YAY! Way to go, BassDad's D!</p>
<p>Congrats to BassKid! That's wonderful news.</p>
<p>Mom4 - my kid took too many APs, and regrets it. In the end he got 3s on the exams he took senior year because after April college results were in, he knew APs weren't going to do him any good, and he quit studying. The reason he went for them in the first place was because he did his first semester online while overseas, and that was the easiest solution for how to handle his schooling. Plus, we were hoping for merit aid at certain schools (namely Cincinnati - which he WAS awarded, but ended up not attending). And, Georgia requires 4 years of language arts and math, and that's all that was left for those. He did take statistics instead of Calc, though. He also took AP Physics and AP Econ/Govt - which he definitely didn't need. He enjoyed Econ, but physics was a bear.</p>
<p>Hindsights 20/20 - I know he would have had a much easier life that year had we done his education differently.</p>
<p>I know I pretty much answered my own question, but I really appreciate having all your insights and experiences to back it up. I'll have my son read this, too.
We're going to visit Oberlin at the Perf. Arts College Fair there, and it's exciting hearing about BassDad's daughter, and all the other student musicians.</p>
<p>FYI, I do know a girl who was rejected from Oberlin Conservatory but went to Oberlin liberal arts; she continued viola anyway and after rejections from the conservatory freshman and sophomore years, got in for this (junior) year and is doing a double degree. Obviously, very hard but it does happen!</p>
<p>that will be exciting.</p>
<p>Congrats BassDad, send one to your daughter in Oberlin</p>
<p>She deserves an ice cream from that little shop that is about 60 feet from the back door of the conservatory building</p>
<p>Only if they have something non-dairy - she's Vegan.</p>
<p>D is in the similar (worse) situation. She is a senior, decided that music is what she wants for her life only about a year ago. She goes to a high school for Math & Science (imagine that for a musician!). Courses she took/takes are either honor or AP. The minimum credits for graduation is 24.5. Basically she lost 3 years of practice time during high school. We talked to her school principal, and she was able to be exempt from 5.5 minimum credits (plus senior research paper) for seniors. She is only taking 4 credits plus senior research project this year. She will graduate with only 6 APs, far less than the average. But her counselor said that she won't have any problem getting admitted academically for a music major. Now she is trying to make up all the practice time she lost, and her confidence really suffers. If music is what your son wants to do in college, don't sweat too much about APs. Don't make the same mistake my D did.</p>
<p>It is all relative. My D went until the Fall of senior year before deciding to apply to conservatories. Her audition prep time was very limited.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if your kid wants to take AP classes because of their content and challenge (as opposed to simply resume value, though that is important too), then I would think twice before discouraging it -- there are many kids who are ambivalent and going too far in the direction of not taking a challenging academic program can have consequences for someone who decides that music, while important, is not the career path for him/her after all. My kid goes to a prep-type school with almost nothing but AP's in the senior year; he decided to audition for conservatories after a great experience at Aspen, but he had no intention of forgoing AP Art History or English because he loves those subjects. We'll see what happens.</p>
<p>Mine also has a very rigorous academic load as a jr (and has since he was a freshman, when he already knew he wanted to go to music school), but decided that he will take a lighter load next year.</p>
<p>He also decided to forego (although this is still in discussion) the National Merit Society, because it has its own 20 hour NHS run community service mandatory requirement (on top of the graduation requirement...and he already has 70 hours through music related things), plus meetings. DS doesn't think he has time for either, although I still think putting NHS on the resume is a good thing, but this is his call.</p>
<p>So much food for thought on this thread! </p>
<p>My D (violinist) is a junior at a rigorous prep school with an A- average (not sure of exact GPA). This year she's taking AP French, Honors English, Honors Pre-Calc and regular versions of US History & Physics. She will be taking the AP French test and the AP US History test at the end of the school year (studying independently for the history test with her teacher). </p>
<p>At the moment, as we begin the college search process, the double degree option is most appealing to her (who knows what will happen over the coming year?) She loves academics as well as music, and is very reluctant to let go any of her academic areas of interest. Besides strong music programs, she's also looking at academically selective colleges/universities that will want SAT IIs. So to keep her options open she's planning to do the French and U.S. History SAT IIs as well in the spring. With a major youth orchestra commitment and bi-weekly, 2-hour lessons with a teacher 150 miles away, she has a pretty intense schedule.</p>
<p>I am not at all sure what this will mean for her senior year course load, thinking ahead to needing extra time for practicing, college visits, sample lessons....We are fitting in college visits throughout this school year when we can, (started in the summer), but the entire process is daunting.</p>
<p>I'm glad I have company! Allmusic and FluteMomLiz, glad to be sharing this journey with you in the months ahead.</p>
<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>I just found this valuable thread, and Orchestramom and others have certainly struck a chord with us.
Junior D plays classical piano and Tenor Sax..but clearly piano is of primary focus. It is only in the past 6 months or so that she has decided to go for broke and seek to major in music--minor at minimum. Academics are still very important to her. Fairly intense HS curriculum with 4 AP's, which include AP French and AP Music Theory. She/we are also concerned about the practice time issue. Trying to figure out how to strike the kind of balance between the two, given that she would likewise want to apply to some of the more selective schools and have a reasonably relevant application to submit.</p>
<p>While I am sure it varies student to student, can anyone share the kinds of practice schedules your sons and daughters are dealing with?</p>
<p>My son did not pursue a particularly aggressive courseload in high school. He did take two AP courses and got a 4 on one which did give him credit for two required English Literature courses at BU. However, in HS he had so many musical commitments that an aggressive courseload would truly have interfered with his music. He elected to drop Spanish after honors spanish 4 in 10th grade, took statistics and economics as his math courses senior year (thought they were more practical than precalculus), and did not take a science because he wanted to do an independent study in music history. His senior year courseload was particularly "unaggressive" thank goodness. Between music festivals, school trips, youth orchestra commitments and AUDITIONS, he missed almost 20 days of school (all were excused absences). Making up the work for that many absences would have been impossible. In the end, it was his audition that got him into college (although his SAT scores weren't shabby either). He was very happy that he chose not to stress over an aggressive courseload. It drove the guidance counselor NUTS (but then she drove us nuts, so that seemed like fair play to me :) ).</p>
<p>D is a senior. As I stated in previous post, she did not practice much for the past three years. Even though she decided to pursue music a year ago, she still took heavy academic load in junior year due to graduation requirement. A straight A student, she always put her homework and study first. It ended up no practice time during weeknights. she did try the route of practice first then home work last year. But it only lasted a week or so. She would be constantly worried about her school work that practice was not effective at all, plus as she put it "My brain shuts down at 10:30pm". She is the only high schooler I know that goes to bed at 10:30 if she managed to get her homework done by then. She did get her SAT and SAT II done in her junior year and with very impressive scores too (SAT I-2320, Math II-800, Latin-770). It is a highly competitive school. For class of 2006 with 214 students, at least 3 got EA from MIT, 3 from Harvard, and 4 from Penn. One junior also got to Duke. Students put pressure on themselves, teachers don't. D did lighten her course work considerably this year taking only Greek, French I (she finished both AP Latin courses), English, and College Math courses Cal III and Differential Equations. She also serves as teacher's assistant in Latin classroom. She volunteered in a children's hospital for the past two years but gave up this year to focus on audition preparation.</p>
<p>Her music EC is not easy either. She has always been in a youth orchestra (2 in her sophomore year). Thankfully she finished all the theory classes that the music school offers in 9th grade. Her current schedule is like this: Tue & Wed-piano lesson; Fri - drive one hour to her flute lesson then back; Sat - drive one hour to orchestra rehearsal which lasts 3 hours, then drive across town to her woodwind quintet and piano quintet coachings which lasts at least another 3 hours, then another hour drive to get home. Her piano trio group will start soon, luckly local driving only. She has to turn down a piano quintet group because I refuse to take another hour-long trip. I purposely limited her camp this past summer so that she could get most her audition repertoire learnded. It was a wise decision. With her schedule now, I would guess that she has about weekly 10-12 hours of practice time on each instrument.</p>
<p>Whew! Quite a schedule. Thanks for the helpful feedback Pointegirl. Our D's timelines are similar with respect to when the music decision was made. Likewise, after a lot of consternation, she made the decision to stay the course with the most academically challenging curriculum reasonably possible for her. SAT's are looming. As a result, there has been a noticeable reduction in practice time. It approx equates to about 12 hours per week for piano, and half that for tenor sax. D also had to give up on a very talented and promising 6 piece jazz combo [ for sax ] because of piano priority and scheduling constraints. I did go back and read your prior post; and so, does your D honestly feel she made a strategic mistake? Clearly, her academics are outstanding and all things being equal, isn't that the biggest hurdle? I did read your comments about audition worries, but for the schools she is interested in, do you have any sense what will carry the most weight--superior academics and good audition...or superior audition and good academics? I do not know the answer to that question, as it is all new to us. Moreover, I am guessing that if the music decision wanes or changes in any way while in college, she has better options available to her by virtue of her academic standing?</p>