So proud to have so many Presidential Scholar’s in our midst! Congrats on this latest wave of great news! Woo hoo!
@PercussionMama , @highnotes2018 , @lkbux64 , @pdxtigermom Congrats on the Presidentials to USC. My older D is on the Presidential at USC. It’s been great for her and she loves the school. Keep checking your USC FA portal over the next week or so. USC often also awards a University scholarship on top of the Presidential. It’s usually about $2,000 to $3750 a year, but every bit helps!
And to everyone on the thread, congrats on your amazing kids! Best of luck as you wait for additional acceptances and award info! With the acceptances and disappointments hitting the rearview mirror, now comes the fun part: deciding where to go!
I’ve been lurking on this post for quite awhile…reading and learning and following along with everyone’s journey. I’m so thankful I found the site…not sure how we would have managed this process without reading advice from previous years and other parents, My S plays trombone and we went from ‘oh hey, I think I’ll minor in music at the local college’ to getting live audition invites to all the places he applied to. Quite the whirlwind of travel and emotions over the last few months. He’s received several accepts and we have 2 scholarship offers so far but this wait is just tearing me apart. We are still waiting on Jacobs $, Peabody, and UNT. I’m a planner and not knowing how much this is going to cost so he can make a decision is just awful. I can’t believe it’s this late in the process and still can’t commit to a college. I suppose this is yet another one of those life lessons in patience.
Welcome @TwoInCollegeMom! Congratulations on the admits you ahe so far and good luck with Jacobs, Peabody and UNT!
S just received an email from the head of the department at McGill. He’s in and some form of scholarship will be forthcoming. Very excited to have the acceptance (and rejection) part of the journey complete. Now just waiting on $$ and it’s time for the decision-matrix spreadsheet. A nice problem to have. Congrats on all the Presidential Award winners - USC is going to have some pretty special students this year!
WOO HOO congratulations @Lendlees S!!! What great news!! Or should I say, laissez le bon temps rouler!
I am seriously jumping with excitement for all our amazing kids. Let’s get the last bits of March Madness (hellllooooo, NYU? Carnegie? Peabody? MSM? New School?) out of the way so we can dive head first into April Angst!
Congratulations to all the applicants and families for enduring this brutal stretch of acceptances, deferrals and rejections. Keep all your heads up by navigating this sea of emotions. I’m sure the experience of this process will be invaluable and a character build up for all applicants regardless of the schools’ decisions.
This is the part of the process where we have to be very careful in giving advice and opinions to the applicants
choices. Each family and applicant have a different set of circumstances where money might be an issue or not, the student/teacher relationship, where does the applicant feel he/she might fit or any other issues/concerns we might not be aware of and of course, their gut feeling. I will cheer and respect each one of their final choices knowing it was a tough decision and a big weight out of the applicants shoulders. No matter the decision, you are all winners.
@Lendless - I’ve been waiting to hear from you about McGill - yeah!!! Very excited for you and your son. And let’s hope they send the scholarship info. soon!
@coloraturadad - great advice from a pro.
I have a question: seems like so many of the places do a “two step” process - admit and then the scholarship award up to two weeks (maybe longer) later. Why do you all think they do it? Is it that they want to see how interested an applicant is before they award a scholarship? Or, they just can’t do it all at once? Do they understand how brutal that is? (you are in - but you will have to wait for two weeks to see if you can afford to go?).
The weird thing is that for our other daughter (aviation major), both typically came together. Just wondering why this two step process seems to be prevalent in the music world?
I think the 2-step decision is more of an admin procedural thing. So, while professors can decide who they want, the ‘pot’ of money is split among all instruments and has to be done at the very end. One professor specifically indicated that he is not part of the scholarship process. This gets even muddier when you factor in university-wide academic scholarships where they don’t ‘stack’ them.
Either way, almost as nerve-wracking as the initial acceptance.
Anyone heard from mannes??!!
@akapiratequeen I love the term “April angst,” although my S is already experiencing a little of that and March isn’t yet done with us—how to choose between two great schools, with two generous offers, in two very different geographic locations, with two seemingly very different school cultures? If he ever has a free 30 minutes, he’ll make a spreadsheet to try to analyze the choices but this is such an emotional decision for all of our kids too. I’m just thrilled S has two great options, even if one is complicated (accepted to Oberlin College with nice merit aid, waitlisted at the Conservatory).
I heard that Berklee regular decision always is the last to notify (on April 1) - true?
Tuesday is dragging on and on.
I am a bit different here…
I wish all RD schools have notified decisions with financial offers at once on 4/1 or 3/31 (if April Fool can confuse people). My son applied to only 4 conservatories (plus 1 school because we begged him to apply without creating a new essay or live audition for financial reasons). We heard from 2 and 1 which we begged him to apply with a decent financial offer but of course, his top 2 choices are coming last. We can’t make any move with any schools yet until all on our table. So, those emails about Admitted student day / overnight events and “attend” “unlikely attend” “not attend” questions have been ingnored by my son. We could have waited for all to come together until 4/1 since my son’s list is short. Put applications in, see which schools call back, schedule and go live auditions and your, then “forget” until 4/1 for nice several relaxed weeks after hard working months (both musicians and parents who traveled). So, no ups / downs or anxiety because it may not necessary at all at the end.
Anyway, it’s hard for schools, too since they all know all applicants are applying to multiple schools (could be 3 or 10) but they really need to “fill” positions (unless those Curtis, Colburn or Juilliard kinds of schools which attract musicians from all over the world). I can imagine all schools have to guess who most likely attends to fill “openings” from hearing auditions and interviewing. Not all schools don’t give the biggest scholarship just because they want those top talented musicians. Some just give big scholarships to “most likely attend” talented musicians to make sure openings get filled. Too many guessing / games in music schools…
We are almost done waiting.
Hey guys, I honestly can’t believe New School hasn’t notified yet. The only thing I can conclude is it’s possible the delay is because their former asst director of admissions left in January. Quite the blow for all of us because we love the guy. @DrummerDad18 noticed a slight update to the portal that was new today so that go my hopes up for all of you that decisions would be posted today…I guess today isn’t over yet so maybe.
As for admissions and scholarships we found last year anyway that some schools do it all at once (Frost, New School, Loyola, and others stagger the $$ a bit after the decision (NEC, Purchase, William Paterson, Western Mich). Last year the NEC email with money came the day after the yellow envelope.
Hang in there guys, this time next week all will be known!
SpartanDrew——— About The New School decisions, addition to your thought, only The New School in NYC did cancel one full day of live auditions for snow storm. Most of those were rescheduled but about good amount of musicians ended up sending “video auditions” later. This might be causing later notifications.
@JeJeJe that’s a great point. Very possible scenario. In any case send em out already! GEEZ!!! I’m going through PTSD with all of your kids this year. Like last year wasn’t enough for me???
@Lendlees Congratulations! I know it is still one you’re waiting for, but do you or anyone else know how McGill is for scholarships? I know the price tag is better there to begin with, but I was curious about how the scholarships are, especially for non-Canadians. We are wondering if it makes any sense to include on our list for next year. Good luck as you wait to hear more!!
I’ll keep you posted @khill87…If your kid has really good grades they give excellent academic scholarships. Just not sure what they do on the music side. On the whole, it’s super affordable. This year’s music school tuition was somewhere around $23K Canadian but due to increase next year.
@tripletmama Boston Conservatory sent an email yesterday to early action accepted students encouraging them to sign up for Accepted Students events ASAP since slots fill up and (according to them) were sure to fill once regular deadline decisions go out on March 31. Some of the dates were for both Berklee and BoCo combined events and then BoCo had additional dates for each of its divisions (Music, Dance, Theater). So, it’s possible Berklee will release decisions on March 31 as well (while the application processes are separate, it’s all out of one office…).
so I am going to vent a bit… Rice sent out an email saying that after 5 pm their time they would release info… nothing yet… and Vanderbilt sent and email that it would be released 5 pm their time on Wednesday… I feel like the waiting is dragging on so long. Given these 2 choices are long shots as both are taking 1 or 2 horns this year… ugh