Berklee acceptance average rate for this year? :-/
Around 30% but some instruments have a lower acceptance rate.
This has been talked about a lot on here, but I think one thing is worth repeating is that the overall acceptance rate is not always a great way to assess how hard it is to get into a particular program. That is a statistical average, it is kind of like saying the average salary at a company is Y, when most workers make minimum wage but the CEO and a couple of execs make a lot, the average will reflect a lot better reality than what people typically make.
With music school admissions, it also depends on what instrument/area you are in and what teacher you are trying to study with. for example, at my son’s school the typical acceptance rate is about the same as Berklee, but if you looked at certain departments at the top teachers (for example, piano and violin), the top studios only take much less than 10% of those who apply, whereas there are studios that accept a lot larger percent of students.
Obviously the overall rate does say something, Juilliard accepting 6% for example says that it on the whole it is very difficult as opposed to a school that overall accepts 25%, but even at Juilliard if you were applying in certain areas/teachers it could be a lot harder than that (for example, violin students trying to get Perlman or Cho Lin), others might be easier than that. Plus it varies each year, if a studio has a lot of openings it will be easier to get in than a year when there are few.
Your best bet with any school is to do some research on the studio you want to study in on the area you are in. In the end, it isn’t a great idea IMO to look at acceptance rates to determine where you will apply, you are a lot better off doing research on programs and the teachers and applying to the ones you think you would be happy at and teacher who will drive you forward. If a teacher at Curtis interests you, it doesn’t make sense to not apply there because “i’ll never get in”, given the tiny yields, either you don’t think you are good enough to study with that teacher, so you don’t apply, or you think you might be and audition knowing it might be a long shot but if it comes through, well, would be great:)
@musicprnt, Berklee student don’t apply to particular teachers/studios. Teacher assignments for freshmen happen at the beginning of the year, based on orientation week auditions. They also get lowest priority, after upper classmen are assigned. My impression is that the common practice is for students to “move up” into the studios they want and it’s common for them to have numerous teachers during their undergraduate career.
What I’m going to say is politically correct, but here it is. Berklee is a big music school, somewhat of a mill. Their published undergraduate acceptance rate is somewhere around 30% but, frankly, it’s considered an “easy” school to get into. The application process is easy and, because it’s such a world-famous school, the applicant pool is very large with a wide range of applicant qualifications. Every teacher, music professional, etc. that we talked to said the same: if you can’t get into Berklee, you should really consider whether music is the right career for you to pursue.
What other top music schools do in their selection process, Berklee does with their scholarships. If a school like Oberlin, for instance, accepts only 4 applicants for a particular instrument, Berklee may accept 40, but only offer significant merit scholarships to 4.
Mind you, I’m not knocking Berklee at all – my son’s going there in the fall. But I think applicants should be aware of the business model they use because it’s quite different from most music schools and conservatories. I also think their system more closely reflects how popular/jazz music industry operates. Might as well get used to it early on.
Interesting, I didn’t know Berklee assigned the teacher, personally I think that is an idiotic way to do music instruction, because teacher/student interactions are a very personal thing, it isn’t like teaching algebra or calculus. Indiana is somewhat like that in that you get into Indiana, then you find a teacher, at most of the other programs I am familiar with (and won’t claim that as universal for obvious reasons), the studio is part of the acceptance.
Berklee only assigns you for the first semester. The choice is yours after that. I think it would be mind numbing to be stuck with the same teacher/ensemble for all 4 years of college. Where is the growth in that? There are so many things you can learn from different perspectives and playing with different people.
Ensembles are a different story, with teachers working with different teachers has issues that can hurt rather than help. While having different perspectives always helps (it is why master classes, or studying with other teachers at things like music festivals and the like, can be valuable), it also can be confusing, because styles and such can clash, and which do you do as a student? Instrumental music is such an individualistic thing, that relies a lot on the synergy between the teacher and student, that constantly changing teachers would likely end up not working well. Obviously, it depends on the type of music, it depends on the instrument, in classical music you don’t see too many people switching teachers all that often, and there are reasons for that.
It’s Berklee so we are obviously not talking Classical so you can’t really apply the same rules.
You study them all and learn to be flexible, inclusive. The skill set focus for popular/jazz music is different from classical and, so, the learning environment and focus is different as well. There’s really no such thing as a pure jazz “performer” because every solo is an exercise in composition; you can’t separate composition and theory from playing proficiency. And that broad set of necessary skills usually requires more than one teacher or mentor. The teacher who is the most effective in teaching you the necessary instrument proficiency may not be the teacher who is going to help you most in your growth as a soloist (the meaning of which is very different from the classical music one.)
I admit to having been skeptical of the Berklee process but I’ve come around. After acceptances but before committing, my son went back out to Boston and had a lesson with THE teacher he wants to study with. Teacher told him flat out not to expect to get him as an incoming freshman, but that he would be well-served by whoever he’s assigned, and that if he continues on the path he’s on, he could expect bigger things even as early as the second semester. From my view, what Berklee does is accept just about anyone who shows musical talent, maybe give scholarships to some that they feel more sure about. But they all start at the same place as incoming freshmen and are given a semester or two to adjust, buckle down, and earn their places with teachers, ensembles.
Makes more sense than evaluating them on a 10-minute audition, IMO. Also levels the playing field among kids who may or may not have had the resources to study with good teachers, access to advanced playing opportunities, etc.
Our preliminary assessment with jazz bass at the pre-college level is it has been almost mandatory to have multiple instructors to accelerate forward. If we found the ‘ultimate complete’ instructor, I would say otherwise - maybe that instructor exists? Maybe more often in classical? S has been told opposing view, such as lead the beat and let others follow, yet in another group, follow the leads. It was different sounds for different bands. OTOH, some basics are more universally agreed upon, such as weather to use German or French bow.
My son a Jazz Bass student attended NEC and in his four years he studied with multiple instructors, including a class ical bass instructor and a Contemporary improvisation instruction and somebody who did not even play a string instrument. He had to ask each teacher whether they would take him on as his private instructor for that year/semester. He always had his reasons for why he wanted to study with a given teacher. For example one year he felt he really needed to work on his musicality to improve his own solos and improvisation skills. I am not musical but I can tell you that each semester I observed growth and I don’t think he was harmed one bit by studying with different musicians. Instead I think it allowed him to develop artistically and develop his own voice on his instrument.
does anyone know vocal performance acceptance rate?
Not sure of exact acceptance rate for vocalists but it is well below the overall average as there is much more competition.
Thank you ! @rockinmomab