Welcome to CC @sssulliv ! Congrats to your D on all those acceptances and Scholarships. With those academic scores your talented D is also a very bright academic student! If accepted, Oberlin Conservatory merit awards will be based strictly on her talent evaluation. However, with your D academic credentials she might get awarded an academic scholarship. I don’t know if the academic awards are strictly for double degree students or if they award them also to students pursuing strictly a conservatory degree (BM), so please don’t take my word on it.
Oberlin is an institution that meets 100% need based on the FAFSA EFC calculation to all accepted students. If there is a gap between scholarship awards and your EFC, the school will cover the difference with a grant. I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask me any questions about my D Oberlin experience. She is presently a soprano sophomore pursuing a BM in performance.
@sssulliv We were told that Oberlin decisions would come out on the 23rd when my S auditioned so you should know soon.
It was a great weekend for my S after getting formal acceptances directly from the professors at 2 of his top choices. He was told after his last audition that the professor would be highly recommending him to the committee but that formal acceptance won’t come until late this week. He has also received formal notification of acceptance at the local state school which he applied to as a backup and one notification won’t come until the very end of March. Now we are just waiting on the financial offers so we can sit down and make a decision.
We are a little overwhelmed at the options he has before him because he honestly really likes every professor at each of the schools. When I asked him if this was going to be hard he said the hardest part will be telling the professors at the schools he won’t attend ‘thanks but I’ve decided to study elsewhere’.
I am a devoted lurker on this thread, and I’ve gotten a lot of comfort from reading about your journeys. One of the reasons I post very little is because I feel like I am on a somewhat different journey. Our music comp daughter has not flown all over the country but applied to seven schools within driving distance, many of them quite close by. And not many of them are on the list of your higher-flying schools. Perhaps Temple, University of Hartford, and Rutgers are on some lists. (I’ve seen Rutgers mentioned mostly as a safety.) We’ve also applied to Montclair, Rowan, SUNY Purchase and University of Southern Maine. We’ve heard (positive news) from all but Purchase, which we should hear from by the first week of April, and are hoping perhaps we will still hear on some more music scholarships. We are hoping to find a place where our child feels comfortable to learn and grow. She has no big first-choice, this-is-the-only-place-for-me school. What she needs is a good atmosphere and a good teacher or two. And I feel more comfortable with her going reasonably close to home because she does not seem to have a strong desire to strike out into far away places. She will probably go farther for grad school some day.
@mperrine NOTHING yet!? How awful - hope you get some great news soon!!!
@coloraturadad I may take you up on that if Oberlin ends up looking like a realistic choice. I ran their net price calculator and it showed me that my estimated net price would be about $28,000. Which is a massive improvement, but we truly don’t have $28k per year lying around and we are unwilling to go into $100K+ debt. She has full tuition from 2 (admittedly lesser) schools so it would be tough to justify. We will see what they come back with!
@LaurelVDW - We are in a similar boat, most of our schools are not super prestigious and we did not fly anywhere for auditions. My daughter doesn’t want to be that far away from home, and I’m glad because that would add a significant financial burden to us. As with your daughter, she may go farther for grad school. We just happen to live within driving distance of CCM, Jacobs, and Oberlin, so we were able to include them on our list.
@TxSker , my son feels the same way. He only applied to schools where he really really liked the teacher. It will be hard to turn some of them down. But i think they are used to it, they know that students apply to multiple places and can only choose one. My son will definitely express interest in a masters degree to the people he says no to, and hopefully his decision will become very clear in the next two weeks.
@sssulliv We did do the "“travel everywhere” thing. We live in CA and most of the schools my D horn player was interested in were on the East Coast. I guess all of the results will come in together, but it is hard to not read something into not hearing…She did get one admit to her lowest choice… but at least she will be going to college somewhere… she also has good stats (4.4 gpa good SAT) so I am sure she will get in at least one other place. I hate to keep asking her to check her portals. I just want to know if and which ones will be financially viable. Oh well I guess I wait some more … waiting on: Vanderbilt, Eastman, NEC, Bard, Rice, and BU
@mperrine Eastman is not notifying until end of the month! So no worries there. Same with NYU, making me nuts.
@LaurelVDW Welcome! It sounds like we live near each other. We didn’t do the flying either … all S’s choices were within driving distance. It sounds like your D has some great choices. For us, Rutgers Mason Gross was definitely NOT a safety — that’s a really tough admit! I worked at Montclair State for many years and that program is amazing as well. They didn’t have a strong jazz department or else S would have applied there. Anyway, congrats on the great offers and hope you will share her final choice!
Welcome to the lurkers turned posters! Congratulations to those with recent awesome acceptances!
I’m jealous of those of you with so many colleges nearby. We have four within a four hour drive. Three of those are our state universities. My son would only consider two of those, so even with his very short list of four schools, we had to fly twice.
He has now been accepted to all four of his schools, on both instruments. The waiting was torment, and I’m glad it’s over. The last acceptance came last Friday. We are now waiting on music scholarship information, and he’s formulating a list of questions to help make a decision. He has a couple of favorites, but the answers to his questions about how he can pursue both instruments and how teacher certification works in the various states will hopefully help differentiate things, along with the final cost information. I think he will be deciding late April.
@LaurelVDW, add us to the list of students that didn’t do any flying and stayed within a 2-3 hour driving distance. My son is also different in that he’s a transfer student with a very non-traditional path. He attended an Ivy League the first time around as a Fine Arts major and lasted all of 10 weeks before coming home and taking basically 2 years off of school as he worked on his mental and physical health. He did not apply to any really selective schools, but after his experience at an Ivy, we knew he needed to stay close to home and needed something where he would not be a little fish in a huge ocean.
Still, it’s going to be very hard for him to decide where to attend. He’s in at all his schools except one, but I expect that to come back a yes in the next two weeks, as the professor has really courted him.
Money will have a large impact on where he decides. He did have a number one (Chapman), but I think he doesn’t so much anymore, and would be ok with 4-5 schools. He’s a cellist and is taking a trial lesson this Friday at one of the schools that gave him a lot of money. We’ll see how it goes.
I messaged my S and asked him to check his portal. He said he was awarded $28,072 for fall semester and $28,072 for spring semester but they were federal direct parent loans. He said when he clicked on it, it said it was a loan and must be repaid. We don’t qualify for any loans so what does it mean?
We just go a invitation to event for admitted students from Berklee today but we have never received acceptance letter. The portal that previously told us decision will be available in March does not seem to work any more and no one is answering phone at Berklee. Anyone else with this experience. I don’t want to assume myself son is accepted without a proper notification. But event is for accepted students only it says?
@pdxtigermom Parent Plus Loans are available to all regardless of income restrictions (I have them for two other kids). The interest may or may not be good depending on a variety of factors. You can always turn them down, of course!
Congrats to all … so many wonderful acceptances and so little time to say congrats to each!
As for the “congrats you qualify for a loan” (at 18 years old with no income)…I remember being really confused on how they could present the info in such a misleading format!!! Was that legal??? Especially when it would insinuate that the loan lowered the cost of attendance (only in the present)…when in reality it increases it…in the future bc you have to service the loan. I believe that at both my D’s school “I” had to decline the loans (yes my D should have done it…but I kept a close eye on the money…as it was MY money) bc they automatically stuck them on her financial amts in some portal where you had to remove them…can’t remember it all now. But if an 18 year old didn’t have a parent watching over it, I could see how they could misunderstand a “loan” and be accepting them without realizing the full implications. Be sure to separate LOANS from other aid. There’s nothing wrong with a loan…but it does need to be repaid with interest after graduation. I assume all here know this…but maybe there are students lurkers reading this. Be sure to keep your debt manageable…bc once you graduate you are on your own…regardless the name of your school. The name can help you a little but the majority of success will fall on your shoulders (ambition, talent, luck and the ability to take on opportunities and not work 40 hours a week to pay back the debt). My 2 cents on that!
I asked earlier if anyone else had received a email from Berklee inviting students to event for admitted students though they have not received acceptance letter. Apparently acceptances come out March 31 but they sent out these emails by accident. No idea whether they sent these to students who will be receiving accepted notice March 31st or to everyone. But if you received an email today inviting you to event for admitted students and have not received admitted letter ignore. They are going to send out a retraction. How disappointing.
