<p>Okay - the big question - where should I go to college? Right now I plan on starting out pursuing a double degree in Horn Performance and Chemistry. I pretty much love every subject, so I want to go somewhere where I can keep all of my options open for a while. I am thinking grad school afterwards, for horn, chem, engineering, or something like that, but I am not really sure at this point. I have a 4.0 gpa, 36 on the ACT, and I'm a National Merit Semifinalist, so I can probably get into any school. However, I have no idea where to start looking. Any suggestions as to where I can find an amazing horn professor as well as an academically rigorous college? Any advice would preferable to this vast, uncharted sea of possibilities that I am looking at right now.</p>
<p>Sorry if I sound arrogant! Although no one probably cares, I feel bad. I am terrible at saying what I mean in writing, and I just realized how awful I sound in this. I don’t mean to say that I can get into any school, just that with the schools I’ve been looking at so far, acceptance hasn’t been a problem, and I figure I have pretty good chances. I guess I was just trying to be concise and lay all of my cards on the table, and did a poor job of it.</p>
<p>Use the search feature to find threads on double degrees (there are quite a few extensive threads on the issue). Many of the double degree programs discussed involve two institutions (Harvard/NEC, Columbia/Juilliard, Johns Hopkins/Peabody, U Rochester/Eastman etc.). </p>
<p>A couple of schools with very strong music programs and very strong academic programs: Rice University (Shepherd School of Music) in Houston and Northwestern University (Bienen School of Music) in Chicago. As well, Cleveland Institute of Music is very strong and provides its students access to all of Case Western’s courses. Sorry, I’m not sure if the double degree is possible at these schools, but I am not sure that a double degree is the only or best way to realize your goals, as I understand them. </p>
<p>Another place to consider is Bard College just north of NYC. All music majors must have a second major. Bard works very hard to make both majors possible. Both the music program and the academic program are good.</p>
<p>In regards to the programs in the first paragraph, when you read the previous threads about double degrees, you will discover how difficult acceptance is to many of the programs even with stellar stats, how logistically difficult the double degree is, how little support some institutions and teachers provide for double degree students, and how few students admitted to these programs actually complete them despite their amazing brains, musicianship, and work ethic. </p>
<p>If you want to keep the door open for grad studies in music, you should know that a music major is not necessary for admittance to grad school in performance. You just need a good audition! You can continue to grow as a musician and get accepted to excellent music grad schools in performance without a degree, major, or minor in music. Some fine music students choose to go to places like Harvard, Yale or Princeton where no bachelor in music performance exists (with a tiny exception at Yale). While at these schools they often take private lessons with an excellent teacher (often not at the school itself) and participate in the school’s orchestra. This can be sufficient for ensuring enough development to gain acceptance at good music performance grad schools.</p>
<p>There are a number of threads/posts on this forum about double degree programs. Some colleges/universities make it easier than others to pursue a double degree - such as Oberlin and Bard (where every conservatory student is required to get a second degree in the college.) Others often mentioned are Northwestern, Michigan, Peabody/Johns Hopkins, Eastman/Rochester, Lawrence University, Vanderbilt, CIM/Case Western, Tufts/NEC. If you do a search in this music forum for double degree you’ll find lots of suggestions, ditto for searching for horn recommendations.
There are also some programs which do not encourage the double degree pursuit - such as Rice, which is not to say it would be impossible.</p>
<p>OP, my son attends the University of Michigan, and has several performance friends who are pursuing a dual degree in BM plus Engineering. The SOM and COE (school of music and college of engineering) will work together on this, but warn that it typically takes 5 years and exceedingly careful planning.</p>
<p>I mention this not because I know anything about horn profs at Umich (although my bet is that it may be worth looking into since we found various programs there to be awesome) but I do know that the engineering program is very highly ranked. At the same time, with your stats, you’d likely be a candidate for one of the $20,000 OOS COE academic scholarships (or more) plus any merit available at the SOM. Although UMich is terribly expensive OOS, every now and again it finds full funding for the rare student ;)</p>
<p>Good luck in your search! Visit as many places as you can to get a good feel because you are in the enviable position of having (I suspect) a lot of options due to your hard work in school, which makes it even harder to select a school ;)</p>
<p>PS You didn’t need to apologize for your post, btw. You didn’t say whether you are a junior or senior. If you are a senior and determine you are interested in Michigan, the best opportunity for scholarships is application by the Nov. 1 Early Action deadline. It’s non-binding, and doesn’t conflict if you’re applying Early Decision at places such as Stanford.</p>
<p>Again, excellent advice.</p>
<p>Tons here on dual/double majors, institutional caveats and policies, the effects of BA/BS/BM degree paths in formulating the “plan”, Ivy, joint music options. Most be already written. Advice on how to locate past info, specific posters with experience or in a program.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/892168-search-tips-other-insights.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/892168-search-tips-other-insights.html</a></p>
<p>And mandatory reading for all examining the possibilities: [Peabody</a> Institute - Conservatory Admissions: The Double Degree Dilemma](<a href=“http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/doubledegree]Peabody”>http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/doubledegree)</p>
<p>In what state are you a resident? If you are in Ca, UCLA [Department</a> News — UCLA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering](<a href=“http://www.chemeng.ucla.edu/]Department”>http://www.chemeng.ucla.edu/)
is a great option A lot of work (most take 5 yrs) but doable.
(But unfortunately, rather expensive if you are out of state)</p>
<p>The academic stats are quite good, but where do you stand with respect to others who will be auditioning for admission to the performance major? At many of the schools mentioned so far, you may be an easy academic admit but you will need to play an outstanding audition to be accepted to a horn studio. Depending on the overall size of the horn studio, a school may only want a couple of new horn students per year on average and some years either one or none, depending on how many just graduated.</p>
<p>Even in cases where they do need a few freshman horn students, the competition can be tough and it is always possible to have an off day at the audition, so you cannot take that part of the acceptance for granted.</p>
<p>If you are a senior, you need to pick out some schools pretty soon so that you will be able to come up with a set of audition pieces that satisfies the requirements for all of them. In that case, you should already be working with the best horn teacher you can find on your audition pieces if you intend to apply within the next couple of months and audition early next year. If you are a junior, you still have a bit of time to work up your short list of schools and prepare for the auditions.</p>
<p>The usual schools that have viable double degree programs have pretty much all been mentioned above, but some are more friendly to the idea than others. There are some teachers at Rice, for example, who have a set policy of not accepting double degree students. I don’t know if any of them teach horn, but that is something you have to be aware of even if the school admissions department says that a double degree is possible. There is another problem with coordinating a performance major and a lab science major. You have to make sure that you can schedule all of your required lab classes and all of your required ensembles, because both tend to meet in the same mid-to-late afternoon time slot at a lot of schools. You need to do some pretty focused work and dig deep into the web sites of the schools of interest to find class schedules and see if you can plan out all ten semesters (most double degree programs take five years) in such a way as to satisfy all of the requirements for both degrees.</p>
<p>Finding a teacher with whom you work well is a critical part of the experience. Have you had opportunities to take any sample lessons with potential teachers, or to observe them teach at a masterclass? If you are not familiar with how different the process can be for music school applications than it is for academic applications, you may wish to have a look at the first dozen or so articles in the thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/258796-so-you-want-music-major-one-familys-experience.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/258796-so-you-want-music-major-one-familys-experience.html</a></p>
<p>Definitely check out Northwestern. I am not sure how good their horn performance is but their chemistry department is ranked 7th and 4th by USN and NRC, respectively; it produced 3 Goldwater winners in 2010.</p>
<p>Northwestern’s reputation for brass in general is superb (as is the Chicago Symphony’s).</p>
<p>The common wisdom suggests that Oberlin, Bard, and Lawrence are the most accommodating and seamless for those wishing to pursue a double major combining musics and academics. </p>
<p>Rice is extremely competitive from a talent standpoint for horn.</p>
<p>If you have trouble finding past discussions, I’d be happy to pull a number of links.</p>
<p>I may be repeating info here, but one of the reasons Northwestern is known for double majors is that it is on the quarter system, so you will take more classes and thus be able to double major. Double degrees are possible, too, but in 5 years.</p>
<p>here’s some info: [Degrees</a> at Bienen School, Academics and Faculty, Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University](<a href=“http://www.music.northwestern.edu/prospectivestudents/degrees.html]Degrees”>http://www.music.northwestern.edu/prospectivestudents/degrees.html)</p>
<p>Northwestern and Michigan both have great horn studios. Rice, as has been mention previously, seems not to care for double degrees, and their studios are tiny and the brass department seems to be geared toward grad students. University of Illinois-UC actually happens to have a phenomenal horn studio. A friend who studied there for another instrument said that the horn studio there is among the best in the school, and he said many horn players there were getting jobs right after or even during their undergrad degrees. Indiana is great, of course, but from what I hear from brass players there you’ll have to work your tail off to keep from getting lost in the shuffle in their enormous program, and that might not make for an easy balance with another major. I know a couple of successful horn players who studied at U Wisconsin - Madison, and I believe they’re well-regarded in the sciences. </p>
<p>That all depends on where your horn playing puts you. Northwestern is inarguably among the top programs for horn players.</p>
<p>Also, I assume if you’re looking at horn performance, you have a private teacher. Where does he or she think you’d be able to audition?</p>
<p>Also, I was wondering, just in reference to Lawrence: I’ve heard people sling that name around along with some of the better Midwestern schools (NU, UMich, Oberlin). I understand the Oberlin correlation just because of the LAC/Conservatory thing, but I understand Lawrence to be a pretty significant step down… There are some recordings of their ensembles online, and they’re pretty ragged. Does anyone else get that impression? I see Oberlin students in jobs and festivals everywhere. Not so with Lawrence.</p>
<p>I would have to agree that I frequently see Oberlin, NU and UMich grads in the industry but relatively few from Lawrence. That may in part be due to the size of the music program at each of these schools and it may be that in some departments Lawrence is a step down. Whatever the reason, I continue to mention Lawrence when the issue of dual majors comes up because I have no way of knowing the level of playing of the person asking the question. Lawrence does have a very well planned out dual degree program that is completed by a reasonable number of students each year and, regardless of how the music school stacks up against some of the others mentioned, it could be an attractive choice for at least some students considering the dual degree.</p>
<p>University of Rochester/Eastman Conservatory has been mentioned already, but I noticed on the UR website this story about Nicholas Huang who has just won a Goldwater Scholarship. Looks like UR makes the music and science double major doable and is very proud of this young man- featuring his story on the website.</p>
<p>“Huang, of Butte, Mont., will graduate next year with a bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering and a bachelor of arts degree in music. As a Take Five Scholar, Huang is able to spend a fifth year at Rochester tuition-free working on a long term project on human cognition and philosophy. On campus, he has conducted research at Professor Laurel Carney’s auditory neuroscience laboratory. He also spent a summer working at the National Institutes of Health as a research intern. Huang would like to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. degree with the ultimate goal of focusing on the biomedical engineering research.”</p>
<p>Sorry- I’m not so good at the links and formatting stuff. I’ll have to ask my son how to do it.</p>
<p>BassDad, </p>
<p>Rereading that, my last post was significantly more negative than I intended it. I had only wondered if maybe that was something peculiar to the impression I was getting. One of my good friends has a dual degree from Lawrence, and it seems like a very doable thing. He was a saxophonist/biochemist, but the emphasis was on the science side. I hadn’t intended the disparaging tone towards the school, I was just curious about the reputation.</p>
<p>I am interested in something similar to you, except that I want to do voice and premed!</p>
<p>When I talked to the admissions counselor at Rice he told me it really wasn’t possible to do a double major with voice and premed since the requirements for the vocal program+the core curriculum are extensive. I don’t know about horn, but the best way to tell if a double major is possible is to look at the requirements for each program on their respective websites. Carnegie Mellon is a school that I have not seen mentioned but that I know is pretty awesome for music and academically. I’d also look at Boston University since they told me they are pretty accommodating for double majors in music and a non-music related field. Oberlin is the obvious choice, it’s really famous for it’s flexibility in allowing students to double major. Also from what I understand Eastman is pretty accommodating. I’ve heard really great things about Northwestern too.
My voice teacher tells me NEC is amazing so if you could get into the double degree program with Harvard I bet that would be awesome. Also, if you want to do graduate studies in music he has told me Yale is incredible, but they don’t have a very good undergrad music dept.</p>
<p>I met a representative from Columbia who told me that even if I didn’t do the columbia/julliard exchange the columbia music major is the same as a conservatory-level music department, but they don’t require auditions, which makes me suspicious.</p>
<p>These are all things to think about, good luck with your auditions!!</p>