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College Majors Music Major
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I do respect the general policy about not sharing merit amounts or specific awards publicly and I understand the reasons and the variations from year to year, school to school, and studio to studio, even if you assume that reported amounts are correct. However, as the parent of a junior trying to winnow our list of schools, if there is a way to find out anecdotally a rough average range of merit for a given school, or that 1/3 to 1/2 tuition merit awards or out of state tuition waivers are not uncommon at a given school, that is VERY helpful information to have even if there is no guarantee my kid will get those awards if admitted.

As an example, if a CSS Profile school like Northwestern has a COA of 70K and you don’t think you will qualify for need-based aid and you hear that they never give much merit, well, then you know to cut that school from your list unless you are willing and able to pay close to sticker price. If you hear that a school’s typical merit awards range from $5,000-$20,000, you won’t know how much your kid might get within that range, if anything, but you might be willing to let your child apply to that school because decent merit aid is at least a possibility.

This has become more real now that I’ve looked at audition dates from last year and assuming audition dates are similar for 2017, about 8 schools of interest are likely to have the same 3 audition dates, and two of them are our financial safeties so we can’t drop those. The possibility of decent merit aid is going to be a significant factor in which schools might remain on the list.

I see threads all over the CC Financial Aid forum with kids who got into fabulous schools but without enough aid so their parents are saying no, we can’t afford it and in many cases it’s clear the parents didn’t do their homework about costs and financial aid before letting their child apply. I want to be totally transparent with my son and say here is a list of schools we can afford, even without any merit money, and here is a list that you can apply to, but that you will need decent merit money+aid to be able to go there. If I know that a school is likely to be out of reach no matter what, I want to be able to tell him that.

I’m not sure what the best solution is, but I do feel it’s my duty as a parent to do my financial research on schools to the best of my ability, and I really appreciate others’ willingness to share info about awards, either privately, or otherwise.

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@Classicalsaxmom - I’m assuming your child is applying for classical sax? So you’ll definitely be looking at Michigan, Indiana, Eastman and Peabody? Have you read this older thread? @woodwinds is an expert in programs for classical sax. You might search for old posts by him/her. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1542703-classical-saxophone.html (Check out post 10 for teacher recommendations.) I also saw mentions in the past of Hartt, Mason Gross, and Arizona State. All of which offer significant merit. I think the schools which offer classical sax are much more limited. Which will make your search easier!

It’s reasonable to consider which schools historically do not give large merit awards for music - if there is absolutely no financial need, which @classicalsaxmom is saying they are. In our experience, as stated, Northwestern offers tiny merit awards, and Thornton at USC also generally offers merit awards under 10K - but USC, unlike Northwestern, also offers academic merit awards up to full tuition or more. Michigan offers substantial music and academic merit - up to full tuition or close, even for out of state. Vanderbilt offers significant academic merit, and I’m guessing music merit (no personal or anecdotal experience,) as does Rice. Lawrence and Oberlin can be generous in their music merit. And academic awards. Hartt is known to offer good merit aid. I do not know what kind of merit Eastman offers or Peabody - I think you’ll need to apply to find out - there is nothing cut and dry out there about those schools and their offers. I think it probably varies from wonderful to not as good.

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@SpiritManager - this sounds like the start of a great new USNWR ratings system for college affordability. :wink:

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My favorite story about this is about a father of my D’s friend who told me his son got a significant scholarship. They were over the moon bc it made the school affordable. They were quite adamant with all other parents that music talent brought in significant dollars and you shouldn’t be concerned about cost.

I shared that my D got a nice scholarship (at another school but similarly priced) but the school was still expensive. I felt that while the merit dollars were nice you would still be dropping a chunk of change for your music education.

Later my D mentioned the scholarship amount for the boy. It was the SAME as my D’s scholarship. It’s just we had different opinions on words like “significant”, “generous” as well as the cost of college. To me for something to be “significant” it would mean a private or OOS at in-state costs. That would really mean something to me. Bringing a $60K annual school down to $40K (knowing in-state is 25K) is nice … but still the school is pricey. It would be hard for me to say you don’t have to worry about cost - $160K for UG seems like a lot to me - knowing my neighbor is paying $100K for an engineering degree in-state. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong to pay that, it’s just hard for me to say music talent scholarships can take all your money worries away.

For a parent trying to ferret out what scholarships to expect for on UG music degree, I would say you could expect a bell curve of offers for all students in a year with some around 0 and a few around full. The majority would probably congregate around 1/4 to a 1/3 starting a slow decline towards at a 1/2 before descending with maybe a pit stop at a 3/4 then straight down to a few at full tuition. This is totally unscientific however - just based on years of gossiping with other parents. And this does assume some variety in schools. Northwestern, USC, NYU with no financial aid may find you not even climbing that bell curve since you picked schools that produce the lowest results usually. For schools that are rumored to give lots of merit you may find yourself with a very good offer. With a more traditional mix of some big U’s, some LACs, a conservatory or two and maybe a school or two that are known to give lots of merit, a talented student could reasonable expect some offers keeping the bell curve in mind. But I still guarantee some surprises - I just hope they are the good kind.

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Just FYI, I didn’t mean to say the bell curve could represent the offers for each student. It would represent ALL offers in a year for everyone. Meaning a few lucky students would get a full ride. But if you audition to 9 schools you can’t expect a full ride from one. You may find yourself hanging around the 1/3 for 2, zero for 1, and 1/2 at another. That would be more reasonable. But then again you may get a substantial offer. You just never know.

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@SpiritManager - thanks so much for that old thread link and the search suggestion. I’ve been lurking here for a few years but that thread was a bit before my time. Yes, those 4 schools are on our list. DS’s teacher (who has had a number of students go on to top programs over 25+ years of teaching) gave us an annotated list of schools with comments about some programs and teachers, which was very helpful. He has given us a rough idea on recent merit awards based on his students’ past success, and that’s helpful, too, but doesn’t cover a lot of schools. Of the other schools you mentioned, several don’t do classical sax, and we visited Lawrence but DS didn’t care for it.

@bridgenail - your perspective on offers and how they can be perceived quite differently seems quite logical. On an instrument where most studios will only be accepting 2-5 people it’s hard to know how many will be offered merit, and how much. You would think that a top program with only two spots available is likely to offer both some merit unless merit is rare at that place, but who knows! Of course, getting in to those programs in the first place will be a challenge.

We have a high income now by FAFSA standards, but we live in an expensive area, and have only been in that income bracket for a few years due to a major career change so we don’t have as much saved for college as a family in that income bracket typically might. We are self employed and have a large amount of home equity, too, and those things will hurt us with CSS Profile schools. We don’t need an expensive private or OOS flagship to get the cost down all the way down to in state levels for it to be affordable, but we don’t want to take out student loans or a big home equity loan for a music degree either, if at all possible. Fortunately, we just have one child to put through college.

Sorry for taking this thread off onto a merit aid tangent! I may have to start my own thread (or four or five)!

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@classicalsaxmom regrading your comment about two spots at a top program and being likely to offer some merit aid to both kids, that sounds logical on the surface but may or may not be true. Yes they may offer “some” but a lot of schools offer merit aid out of a pool of money for all kids accepted (hence early April merit offers), not necessarily by studio or instrument. So, for instance, you could have two sax players accepted into a studio, both of whom are quite talented, but there could be a lot of other-worldly flutes and trumpets that year so the sax players don’t get even close to as much as the same kids might have only one year prior. This all enforces the argument of why historical data is almost meaningless as far as being predictive. And why parents that don’t understand this get upset when their kid doesn’t get even half the merit award that a friends’ kid did the year before, even though the other kid was nowhere near as talented.

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Point taken, @DesignDad. We will not make any assumptions at all about DS’s ability to get merit, except in cases where we know merit is so rare or stingy at a given school that we might decide it’s not even worth applying.

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@bridgenail your bell curve seems exactly right according to my experience with our D plus gossip I have gleaned from this website and other sources. Also same experience with differing perceptions of “generous”!!!

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One problem is that there isn’t always much consistency or a “formula” for merit aid–or even for need-based aid. This is true from year to year, but also within a given year. The only schools that tend to be predictable are state universities that give merit aid based on standardized test scores. After that, all bets are off.

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I look at this like predicting the stock market. No one knows the futures. And one, sole stock is very dangerous to predict. I think most parents get that idea. But all stocks together in a market will show trends which again cannot predict the future of one stock but the trends can be informative in trying to move forward with an investment. So some basic understanding of trends in scholarships should be sought after.

The second issue of basing your value on your scholarship amount is certainly more problematic. It shouldn’t be done in part due to the many reasons for giving or not giving scholarships but even more so that monetarizing your value is just a very, very bad thing.

But I do see these issues as separate. One looking for information about a financial fit is fine. Seeking general information is smart. And many people do understand things differ year to year. The second trying to value yourself based on scholarships is bad. Holding specific award amounts private does make sense particularly in audition season just to keep the stress off.

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Well said @bridgenail!