<p>I auditioned for piano performance major and got into few good schools and from those schools I narrowed down to Indiana, Peabody, and Cleveland ...but still cannot decide where to go..
Any suggestion would be very helpful for me to decide</p>
<p>Indiana I received 8000 scholarship/year. I put three preference teachers name on the application..but seems like they do not care about it at all. I had to call every teacher to decide which studio I would be put it. I wanted to go into Menahem Pressler's studio but he answered "no" about a month later. SO i tried different teachers but they said their studios are already full. I'm waiting for one more teacher's response..but seems like it's already too late for asking. This system is putting down my interest in the school...</p>
<p>For Peabody, This was my first choice of schools I wanted to go. I did not receive any grant but my relative lives few miles away from Peabody and willing to support me with room and board which will save lots of money and will make about the equal amount of money needed for the college.
I got into Ellen Mack's studio, but some of friends says that she is such an amazing teacher, but very very very very strik....this makes me very scary..</p>
<p>Cleveland..I received half tuition scholarship and got into two good teachers. But I took a dvd audition and have no idea how their facility is like...practice rooms and others..cannot find out if there are enough practice rooms to practice......and I heared that they do not have good loan services. My parents cannot support me, so I have to spend for paying rents and others with the loan provided from the school.</p>
<p>If you have any ideas for my choices, please help! Thank you</p>
<p>Although this won’t help very much, I must say something about Pressler. He’s more of a grad student teacher. He just doesn’t want to help students with simpler things. His students go into lessons learning one piece every week instead of spending extended amounts of time on things. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Cohen takes on mostly grad as well. Hope this helped.</p>
<p>Fiano, I think undergrads at Peabody are required to live in the dorms for the first two years, so you should check with admissions first to see if your plan would be feasible. Cleveland has a beautiful facility, recently renovated. My daughter received a great scholarship at IU, but is having the similar problems finding a teacher. I don’t think it’s too late for you to find a studio there, but I agree the system is daunting.</p>
<p>something here does not add up. Did any of these colleges offer loans in addition to the scholarships you mention? If not from the schools, or from your parents, where will the additional funding come from? By my calculations, you are going to need something like $27K next year at IU, $35K at CIM and $40K at least at Peabody (perhaps as much as $52K if you are required to live and eat there).</p>
<p>CIM is probably not going to loan money to you to pay off-campus rent, but neither will just about any other school. Even if you do manage to get loans from somewhere, do you have a plan for making loan payments well over $1000 (potentially a lot more than that) per month on an inexperienced musician’s wages?</p>
<p>Did any of the other schools that admitted you have a lower cost of attendance (not counting loans)? If so, maybe you should reconsider one of them.</p>
<p>Actually…most schools will include off campus housing as part of their cost of attendance when figuring out financial aid…including student loans.</p>
<p>BUT the bigger issue is that schools do not give out loans. They are either government loans (Stafford or Perkins) or private. This student would be eligible for the Stafford Loan of $5500 as a freshman in his/her name. Beyond that, any loans would need to be cosigned by someone. The folks giving the loans won’t care if they are used for paying tuition or room/board (on or off campus). The issue is GETTING these loans. Someone will have to cosign…and I’m not sure that parents who can’t afford this will want to do so.</p>
<p>To the OP…do you have any more affordable options in your acceptance list?</p>
<p>To the OP: I have heard more than one story similar to yours about arranging for a studio at Indiana. As that is your best option financially, you might want to keep pressing all the buttons until you find the studio you want. </p>
<p>Regarding moving off campus, I believe it is always possible for a student to live off campus in freshman or sophomore year, but you usually end up having to pay some kind of fee for that which often comes close to the school’s customary room and board. You might want to look into this more closely. Among pianists I know, Peabody has a very strong reputation for piano studies, and you have family in the area so it sounds like the best option among the three schools. Do your relatives have a piano? Being able to live with your instrument would be a definite bonus.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you! You have three great options there. And good financial advice from the wise posters on your thread.</p>
<p>Yeah, I stated that poorly. The school will definitely take room and board expenses into account when determining need, but that should have already shown up in the financial aid package that the OP should have by now. The OP should not expect to be able to get an additional loan from the school that would be large enough to cover room and board (either in dorms/cafeterias or elsewhere) unless that loan is negotiated before agreeing to matriculate.</p>
<p>I am not sure whether this poster is an international student. If so, I don’t think the Stafford or Perkins loans would be available. Any loan that they receive, except possibly from the school itself (and those are rare and usually small), would have to be cosigned by someone living in the United States.</p>
<p>The issue will indeed be in getting the loans. Credit is tight right now and there is a lot of scrutiny on the banks. It seemed to me that the OP thinks that loans are relatively easy to obtain, other than at CIM where there is not good loan service. If so, I beg to differ.</p>
<p>Peabody and Cleveland technically do require you to live on campus for the first two years, but if one has family in the area, that can usually be waived, and CIM does have a lottery for sophs to live off campus, as my D will be doing next year. There is definitely something not clear in what the OP has written- first, a strict teacher is not a bad thing, why would you want to study at the conservatory level with someone who would let you keep bad habits or technique? As for “hearing that (CIM) does not have good loan service”, well, you need to stop listening to what others are telling you and do the research yourself. I can attest to the excellent financial aid service at CIM and to the willingness of it’s director to go the extra mile and do all that she can to help students. Their piano faculty is terrific and the students do extremely well in competitions and grad school admissions.
Money is tight but some schools do have special funding for International students outside of the usual loan programs. Fiano, if you have any questions specific to CIM, it’s policies or faculty, feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>Please forgive me, OP, if I am wrong, but the question of being an international student having been raised, it is possible the OP is not a native speaker of English and may not have expressed herself clearly. I don’t think she fears high standards and demanding instruction, but is understandably concerned about a stringent approach to pedagogy.</p>
<p>I’d like to hear from the pianists about the piano faculty. As someone who started out in college as a music major (piano), given the choice of where to go for piano today, I would choose Peabody. (CIM for orchestral instruments)</p>
<p>CIM also has strong piano faculty. All three of these schools do. It would make sense to base the decision on funding, other things being relatively equal.</p>
<p>wow!
thank you so much for all the replies.</p>
<p>First of all I’m a graduate student who is applying for MM in piano performance, and I’m not an international student.<br>
I took DVD audition at CIM so I do not have any idea how the practice rooms are like. I’m a pianist who is not as genius like others but who needs to put so much time on practicing. That’s the reason I need to know the situation of the practice rooms.
I went live audition for Peabody and Indiana, so I know how their facilities are like. They were better than I expected. </p>
<p>I sent an email to CIM financial aid office and asked about my situation, and they said they already included the room and board in the summary of my Financial Aid letter…but I don’t see them. I see the aid that only covers the tuition. I will probably call them and ask again. </p>
<p>If you anyone knows about the practice situation at CIM, please tell me how it is to get a practice room for a pianist.
Thank you!!!</p>
<p>Ah, being a grad student makes a lot of difference. Most of the students on here are undergrads, so I think most of us assumed that you were talking about a four year undergrad program.</p>
<p>The good news is that you are looking at two years worth of expenses rather than four and will not be forced to live on campus. Hopefully, any loans you are being offered will work out to repayments you can live with in a couple of years. I assume you filed for a Federal Stafford loan (i.e. filled out the FAFSA )? Grad students can borrow up to $20,500 per year, and up to $8,500 of that may be the subsidized variety which is usually a lot better deal than you can get from a private lender. A half tuition scholarship plus the maximum Stafford loan would still leave you somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 per year from covering the full cost of attendance. You can possibly make up a fair amount of that with work-study at school and by working summers and getting some paying gigs when you can, perhaps teaching piano to some high school or younger kids.</p>
<p>The confusion with CIM may be one of terminology. They probably itemized room and board among the costs of attending the school. You received a half tuition scholarship, plus presumably some loans and possibly work study in your package. On the aid statements that I have seen, schools tell you the dollar amounts of the grants, loans and work study available to you, but generally do not specify that the loans apply toward a specific line item of your expenses. The one exception to that is scholarships that are sometimes expressed as a percentage of the tuition portion of the costs. So when you ask about room and board, they are probably thinking about the cost of attendance numbers detailed in the aid package while you are looking for money to pay for housing and meals. </p>
<p>You can certainly go back to the school and ask for more aid, but unless you can show them some information that they did not have when making the determination the first time, they may not be willing to increase their offer.</p>
<p>I’ve known many at CIM through the years, including some there now - all instruments. I understand about wanting many hours available to access the practice rooms - most I’ve known would not consider themselves 3-hour practice per day wonders! I’ve not heard complaints about chronic room unavailability. Prime hours of the day may be “tighter” than at other times, but not impossible. Students can “sign out” certain rooms - I’m sure the Piano Dept. has specific arrangements for this. You could call/e-mail and ask the piano dept or even Admissions might know.</p>
<p>I’m sure BassDad is right also on the COA and scholarship/work study/loans. If you check the full amount of these offered, they should add up to the Cost of Attendence. I know that the Financial Aid office will review their inititial offers - if other schools are cheaper for you, they might be able to take this into consideration in the review and come up with more - but hurry! Your acceptance date is 4/15!</p>
<p>Actually, my point was that scholarships plus loans plus work study usually do NOT usually add up to the full COA, except for a couple of cases:
for students whose EFC is 0 at schools that meet 100% of demonstrated need and,
for those who get very large scholarships.</p>
<p>The way it works is that the student and their family fill out a FAFSA form and perhaps a CSS PROFILE form and maybe even a form specific to the school from which the aid is requested. The result of the FAFSA is a number called the EFC (expected family contribution) that is used to determine eligibility for subsidized Federal Stafford and Perkins loans. Eligibility for an unsubsidized Stafford loan is not based on need, but the terms of the loan are not as favorable as the subsidized version. A school may also use the EFC to determine what it is going to offer through its own refources in need-based grants, loans and work-study, or it may rely on information from the CSS PROFILE or its own set of forms to make that determination. In addition, it may find the applicant eligible for scholarships awarded on the basis of academic merit or talent rather than financial need.</p>
<p>The amount of need is defined as the COA (cost of attendance) minus the EFC. Some schools (and I do not know if CIM is one of them) combine non-need based scholarships with a package of grants, loans and work-study to meet 100% of this need. Other schools may only meet 80% or even less of this number. In most cases, the student and their parents will have to come up with at at least the EFC and, at many school, perhaps a bit more.</p>