<p>My second post so far(spent 40 mins trying to figure out how to post a new thread ><)</p>
<p>I am a junior and I play the violin. I am currently part of the Houston Youth Symphony(2nd season) and deciding what music school I want to attend. My choices are:</p>
<p>Northwestern U(1st choice)
Baylor
College of Williams and Mary(still shaky about its conservatory)
Boston U
Princeton</p>
<p>A lot of people have recommended Baylor, but I am still skeptical about it. What I am looking for in a music school is:</p>
<p>Great violin teachers(preferably ones who have graduated from top conservatories and are well-known)
Amazing orchestras
Good community orchestras
Plenty of music activities(playing in malls/hospitals)
Good chamber music programs
Financial aid
Outstanding master classes</p>
<p>Some advantages of Baylor, given your specifications:
Bruce Berg (and probably the other violin teacher at Baylor) will give you a great deal of individual attention and will be more available to help you than many of the teachers at the big name schools. At the major conservatories, often teachers just pop in for a couple of half days to do their teaching and then they are gone. Dr. Berg has one of the best pedigrees available: three degrees from Juilliard including a DMA; primary teachers were Galamian and Gingold (doesn’t get much better) and also studied with Dorothy Delay, George Neikrug, Joseph Szigeti, Nathan Milstein. There are relatively few violin teachers that can boast such a list. I would recommend that you get a trial lesson with Dr. Berg given your proximity to Baylor. It would be helpful if you could also get a trial lesson at a place like NW to make the comparison.
You mention community orchestras. At Baylor the connection with the local orchestra will be relatively easy to make and rehearsals etc. will be relatively painless to get to. In Chicago you would have more choices, but logistics might make many of them difficult or impossible in terms of time and transportation.
For good violinists and students, Baylor has very generous merit awards (check their website). The academic awards are automatic and predictable (usually in the neighbourhood of about $12 000 to $18 000, I think, depending on your stats). In addition the music school offers generous merit awards which can be piled on top of the academic, so that most or all of your tuition is covered (i.e. a total of over $30 000) and near free ride can be approached depending on your ability.
Baylor is a large school and has plenty going on musically. </p>
<p>NW has some awesome violin teachers, as well. Given their location, they are generally better known in the violin world. At NW you will have some very able peers and the orchestras will be very, very good. Some people say that NW is not generous with financial aid, but, of course, financial aid varies considerably depending on one’s circumstances. I suspect that you would get considerably more money at Baylor than NW, but strange things can happen in the music world.</p>
<p>I would recommend emailing Dr. Berg and a violin teacher at NW about the chamber music programs and the master classes at their schools. I don’t know anything about chamber or master classes at those schools. I think that the responses you get from teachers via email also reveals something about them.</p>
<p>Rice is an awesome school for music, but its absence from your list suggests that you want to get out of town.</p>
<p>Musically, as I learned from the veteran parents here, you need to have your playing level evaluated to determine how competitive you will be as an applicant. Even though Rice is not on your list, I assume you are near there; try to schedule a meeting with one of the professors, explaining that you would like to pursue a career in music and are trying to see what schools would be appropriate. Then, it is advisable (and expensive) to visit the schools to meet the teachers for lessons; perhaps there is a national strings convention, or summer festival, where you can meet several at one time.</p>
<p>Academically, you need to qualify for the schools as well… Some of the schools on your list are extremely difficult to gain acceptance at.</p>
<p>Princeton, like the other ivy league schools, does not offer a BM in music performance. However, if you secure an acceptance there with satisfactory grants (all of their financial packages are grants; there are no loans), that is certainly an opportunity to consider. My older D is not pursuing a music career, but has found extensive opportunities to perform (clarinet and sax) and says that the musicians are superb.</p>
<p>RE: perform in “malls and hospitals” I haven’t heard of any opportunities where colleges send ensembles out to perform in “malls and hospitals.” However, that does sound like an opportunity for you to demonstrate leadership, by organizing and pursuing, as an extra curricular. And, from what I’ve seen, most major universities offer ample performance opportunities for students who seek them out.</p>
<p>RE: “community orchestras” are you looking to perform in something like the HYSO, while you are a student at a university? Perhaps other parents, with kids already in the system, will have 1st hand experience with this.</p>
<p>My audition at Baylor was a great experience, it a very good school I am a soprano and even tough Baylor was never my first choice I really had to admit that I love the atmosphere there, one thing you have to have in mind is that is a very large university.
Also I think you should request information about Rice I was accepted there MM Voice but my top school also accepted me so I will attend Belmont University majoring in church music, Good luck with your search</p>
<p>I’d be happy to speak with you more about this by private message or some other means-- I’m a grad student at Rice and teach in the prep program there.</p>
<p>Asking one’s teacher is not always the best way to find a new teacher! Some teachers are great about helping their students find suitable placements, but many are actually pretty bad at it, even very fine teachers. They have built-up connections with certain teachers and send people to them more or less mechanically.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about Baylor, but I auditioned at Northwestern a few weeks ago and had a great experience. Students or applicants all played at a very high level, and the campus is just BEAUTIFUL. i think you should definitely talk to your teacher about it, and probably apply to both of them, so you’ll have more options later on.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your help! Yes, the main reason why I don’t want to attend Rice is because its like 20 mins away(way too close). I love Rice, but I just live to close to it.</p>
<p>I second mtpaper’s advice about getting a lesson with one of the Rice teachers in order to get an assessment as to which schools would be within your reach. My son’s first audition was at Rice and the violin teacher there predicted his acceptances at all of the schools that he applied to with 100% accuracy after hearing him for 10 minutes. You can save substantial time, energy, and money with some good advice. Knowing where your ability is in relation to the acceptance standards at various schools will really help focus your search and will dramatically increase your probability of finding a good school that you love and that gives you the aid you need. The Rice violin teachers are among the US’s best and they have quite a good finger on the pulse of music admissions.</p>
<p>By the way, if you want the gold standard for college orchestras, be sure to go to some Rice orchestra concerts to get a good feel for what a college orchestra can do. It may spoil you though, and you will be hard-pressed to find a school with orchestras of similar calibre.</p>
<p>Northwestern generally has a good rep when it comes to music for some reason, but I’ve really only heard negative things from people who are closely connected to the school. </p>
<p>The violin teachers are good, but not the best. My friend is in high school and takes violin lessons from one of the teachers there, and she said if she wanted to major in music she would have to find a more intense teacher, which really isn’t good news for NW music majors. I’m not trying to be overly negative but I’ve just heard that string players at NW don’t have very high rates of success after graduating. </p>
<p>You also have to consider the fact that Bienen isn’t a conservatory, so you’re competing not only against other potential music majors but also kids applying into academic areas of study when you apply. You also have to take a lot of academic classes as a music major at NW, which many music majors aren’t happy about. </p>
<p>Generally when people choose the music schools they’re interested in they know more about the teachers there, so I would ask your current teacher about that, or anyone else you know who is connected to a university.</p>
One person’s opinion. Here’s another. Son is at NW majoring in cello perf. He thinks the world of his teacher and the school.</p>
<p>NW has academic requirements that amount to about one course outside the music school each quarter (12 quarters in four years to graduate - 6 electives and 6 distributional requirements - and you can use AP credit to fill these in many circumstances). For my son, he’s taking 6 quarters of a foreign language and he’ll fill the others with appropriate courses, some of which will have a music aspect to them. That’s not much; if you can’t handle one literature/science/history course each quarter, well …</p>
<p>As far as the “isn’t a conservatory” comment is concerned, NW’s audition process and curriculum seemed identical to the other conservatories we considered. I’m not sure what your comment might mean. There is probably a minimum academic standard to meet at NW (much like Rice, Oberlin, and others). And yes, there are double majors at the school of music, but it doesn’t diminish the experience there.</p>
<p>Finally, while the second hand story about a particular violin teacher might be relevant, also consider that private pre-college instruction might differ from what occurs at the school of music.</p>
<p>Not to say that courtnevort’s comments are not relevant, but our experience is different and my son is extremely happy with his decision to attend NW.</p>
<p>The priority for full-time professors should always be the degree-seeking students, not some high schoolers. What your friend paid is probably little compared to NU tuition. So your friend probably just got what he/she paid for.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, it is not uncommon for the college professor to teach others in their own time. DD’s first real voice teacher was a college professor and he taught others on Saturdays, Sundays and evenings. It just sounds like a poor match or poor match of expectations. Or the teacher may have taught HS students differently. Hard to say. I don’t know anything about strings teachers at NW, but agree that I would not judge the school based on a HS student’s instruction with one teacher.</p>
<p>Northwestern has some of the best string teachers in the US. Some consider Jorgen Jensen to be among the best cello instructors in the world. Ribeiro and the Vamos’s are highly respected violin and viola instructors. I know of a far northeast high school violinist that bypassed the much closer Boston, NYC and Philly to take monthly lessons in Chicago at NW. Certainly teacher fit will vary from individual to individual, but I, like Speihei and others, would be disinclined to write off the violin teachers at NW on the basis of one high school student’s experience.</p>
<p>Many, if not most, conservatories require that students take one non-music course per semester, so Northwestern’s requirements are not really out of line with conservatories. The difference between most conservatories and NW is that at conservatories, there are usually very few options for that non-music course.</p>
<p>Piggybacking on violindad’s comment: I know high school kids who fly in to Northwestern from Texas every week to study with the Vamoses. I know a student, now at Juilliard, who drove 8 hours each way from Columbus OH (he could have gone to Cleveland much more easily) to study with that teacher, and a high school girl who left Colburn pre-college to move to Chicago to study with the same teacher at Northwestern. So, obviously, there is some good coming out of that school. The weather is a lot warmer in Texas, however!</p>
<p>@shosty5- I don’t understand why William and Mary is even on your list! While a lovely campus and a very fine school- certainly has an amazing reputation for its history and Constitutional Law departments- music is very low on their radar. As a violinist, CIM should be on your list of schools to consider- renown teachers, lots of performance opps for instrumentalists (both in school and student initiated), and the Cleveland Orchestra down the street.</p>