<p>With substantial previous music background, including college course work at the community college, it is more likely that the advanced music courses are the proper placement. The advisers in the music department likely have plenty of experience with students similar to him in pre-existing music proficiency.</p>
<p>{qoute}It seems really unfortunate to go into frosh year with flash cards of the courses that need to completed. Courses change a universities, majors change, and I would have felt strangled if I had started that way, and so would my kids. They each changed majors, too.{end quote}</p>
<p>Why is this unfortunate? He simply took each course from the listed required courses that the composition faculty gave him on one of his visits and turned them into flashcards. He wanted to map out his 4 years. The school provides a suggested course sequence for the BA major with specific emphasis. When he inquired about that for his emphasis, he was told that it was inadvertently omitted from the handbook when it was printed. So if the school provides this for all majors, then why is it unfortunate?</p>
<p>
I think it depends on the type of music degree and the school. As thumper1 mentioned, the BA would generally be different than say a Bachelor of Music.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate because college is about growth not walking in lockstep. Risk, change, discovery are part of the process. For a parent to plan out the life of a young adult short circuits that.</p>
<p>My D’s major has almost no wiggle room if the student wants to graduate in four years. They gave her a sheet at her initial advisement that showed the class selection for each of the 8 semesters. She ended up with a few spots based on AP/IB scores, but for her major there was absolutely no deviation. It is a good thing that this was made clear to her at that advisement.</p>
<p>Cromette - {quote} IF he did not. She doesn’t know how he scored, which also seems weird, because one usually knows the outcome of placement tests prior to registration. {end quote}.</p>
<p>For anyone unclear on what I said about the remedial English. His advisor emailed him today and told him that she cannot see his results online and asked when he took the test. Apparently, something has gone wrong with the system. And for clarification, ds is not likely to need to take remedial English. As I said, he took AP English and made a B. However, how cannot I assume anything without his placement test results. And IF he does have to take an extra English course, it will make a huge difference on his schedule because the school requires that students take ENG100 (not remedial) within the 1st two semesters.</p>
<p>{quote} It’s unfortunate because college is about growth not walking in lockstep. Risk, change, discovery are part of the process. For a parent to plan out the life of a young adult short circuits that. {quote}</p>
<p>Parent is not planning. I was asked to assist in the making of the flashcards. DS’s idea…mom helped. I don’t want any of my children going into college with no foresight at all about what is needed and at what level. As a freshman in college, I went in with your “risk, change, discovery” mind set and succeeded at the mind set yet struggles mightily in my first three semesters. So, we will have to agree to disagree on this.</p>
<p>Remember, we have experience with a very limited umber of schools. If you have a child with a music major, you have direct experience with one school (unless there’s a transfer). If all three kids are music majors at three different schools, you have direct experience with three. So, if people tell you “music majors are this or that” you really can’t put much stock into that. I happen to work at one of those unis where the music major is huge. Even if someone could squeeze in the hours, they’d never meet the requirement for X number of semesters in certain ensembles without adding extra semesters. Course numbering is also weird, because no matter what the numbering, the student is going to take German diction when they have professor X for vocal. Theory is a series of 5 semesters with numbering from 100-300 level. It’s not like a chemistry major where you’re going to start with gen, move to O, then on to P and Biochem in an orderly progression. Knowing how one person,a school operates doesn’t help the OP in the slightest.</p>
<p>WRT the remedial English, the OP was the student’s teacher as well as his parent. If there’s a suspicion that the student doesn’t write well enough to pass the assessment, I’d say the OP should trust his or her instincts.</p>
<p>My son was a music major (also concentrating in composition), and he was evaluated for course levels in theory and “musicianship” (including ear training). This governed what classes he got into as a freshman. If something like this was done, you’ll probably find that they know what they are doing. As I noted above, it might be a different story if the advisor was somebody in another department who was randomly assigned to a bunch of kids.</p>
<p>This may have been mentioned already–</p>
<p>Is it possible that the English 100 class sections are already full, and so that is why his advisor did not tell him to sign up for one of those? If they are full, then he would take that requirement in the spring.</p>
<p>At the local college here (where I advise freshman students) the Freshmen seminars were filled up by 3 hours after registration opened, and the required English class soon after. </p>
<p>Just a possibility</p>
<p>{quote}My D’s major has almost no wiggle room if the student wants to graduate in four years. They gave her a sheet at her initial advisement that showed the class selection for each of the 8 semesters. She ended up with a few spots based on AP/IB scores, but for her major there was absolutely no deviation. It is a good thing that this was made clear to her at that advisement. {quote}</p>
<p>This is the case with my son. The only wiggle room he has is 1 upper level music or visual & performing arts elective and 2 spots from transferring in two gen ed courses from the community college. He received only elective credits for his cc music courses; however, there are no elective requirements in his major except the 1 mentioned above. So all cc music courses are simply extra courses on his transcript.</p>
<p>{quote}Is it possible that the English 100 class sections are already full, and so that is why his advisor did not tell him to sign up for one of those? If they are full, then he would take that requirement in the spring.</p>
<p>At the local college here (where I advise freshman students) the Freshmen seminars were filled up by 3 hours after registration opened, and the required English class soon after.</p>
<p>Just a possibility {end quote}</p>
<p>This is not a possibility. His group (honors and scholars students) were the first to register of the incoming freshmen group. There are lots of ENG100 slots still open.</p>
<p>
I’m a bit confused by this. Is this a BM or a BA? If it’s a BA, then music courses would only take up a part of his overall courseload anyway. There may be other distributional requirements, of course. If it’s for a BM, then it may be that there really isn’t much wiggle room at all, since more of the total courseload would be in music.</p>
<p>Update:
DS emailed his advisor to inquire about the prereqs for the 300 level courses. She replied, </p>
<p>“Yes, you should take both these classes as a first semester music major. To bypass the pre-requisites, you were given a particular permission allowing you to register. We try to keep classes fulfilling music major requirements only for music majors as much as possible, so you’ll find many of your classes need our permission.You’re all set. It’s great that you are keeping track of things yourself - please continue to do so!”</p>
<p>DH asked ds to contact the actual instructors of those two courses. DS has yet to do so. </p>
<p>In the mean time (this morning), DS’s advisor sent him an email saying that cannot find his English placement test results. In a second email this morning, she said that she received word from one of the composition faculty members (one that is very familiar with ds) that informed advisor that ds should take MUSC224 (one of two of the prereqs for the upper level MUSC311 advisor has ds register for). The advisor then tells DS to drop ENG100 to take this course. Mind you now that ds is not even registered for ENG100. </p>
<p>I took the advice to be hands off for now, but I let ds know that dh and I are here if he needs us. I think natural consequences will be the best lesson for ds.</p>
<p>Kiddo was a composition major as well, but BA, not BM, so there may be the discrepancy.</p>
<p>He did leave the major because he did want to be more broadly education.</p>
<p>OP: I apologize since you were asked to make the flash cards. I would still have told the kid to lighten up. And he may change his mind, though music is a passion for music kids.</p>
<p>As for English, from what you’ve said, I think it’s not very likely at all that he would need Remedial English. His score on the SAT writing section would also exempt him if over a fairly low thresh hold.</p>
<p>So many composition majors. Who knew? Cool.</p>
<p>My S segued into Art and is now in a graduate program. Still plays the violin though. I was shocked at his change in direction.</p>
<p>Sounds like all is proceeding as expected: SNAFU. </p>
<p>Good luck to your son. We can never have too much music in the world.</p>
<p>It sounds like the music department is paying attention to what he should be taking, so it will probably all work out fine.</p>
<p>Oh, and welcome to the world of casual sons. I guarantee that this isn’t the last time that he is going to hang back from some things you think he should. Even when you’re right!!</p>
<p>Sigh. That’s how they learn.</p>
<p>{quote}WRT the remedial English, the OP was the student’s teacher as well as his parent. If there’s a suspicion that the student doesn’t write well enough to pass the assessment, I’d say the OP should trust his or her instincts. {end quote}</p>
<p>I was not his AP English teacher. This is a course ds took outside our home-school.</p>
<p>I’m glad your son emailed his advisor, even if the response wasn’t 100% satisfactory. Good luck with the “hands off” thing-it can be so hard to see our kids punished by natural consequences. You’re being a good mom, even though it might feel counterintuitive.
When you feel ready to burst from holding it in, just come back to cc to vent!</p>