I have a high school sophomore, aspiring to be a doctor. He is a pretty talented violinist and has been playing the instrument since he was 4, has been part of one of the top orchestras in the city + playing in his high school symphony orchestra which is highly competitive. Do schools offer any tuition waivers or any scholarship money if you are not pursuing music as a major but would like to continue your passion for music by participating as a member of their ensemble/orchestra program ? If so, does anyone have a list of such schools ?
There are a few schools that have scholarships for non-majors that are by audition. The ones I know about are at Davidson, and Skidmore. Both are pretty generous awards…but you have to submit a preliminary audition tape, and then audition in person if selected as a finalist.
My kid was a state ranked instrument player beginning her sophomore year of high school. She went to Santa Clara University. While there, she played in their orchestra, and also took private lessons at no additional cost to us. She received a $750 per year scholarship for playing in the orchestra.
if kid has a good relationship with a local uni, esp the violin profs there, then very likely. Milk those relationships.
But without that relationship it’s not as likely. On the other hand, lots of privates offer 2k-10k music scholarships for non-majors, but most won’t be cover much of the tuition. just search for them.
My children were in Suzuki from an early age and later, community orchestras.
It got them into their high school orchestras.
No one offered them money to play for their school; it was a volunteer thing.
My son plays cello, but decided not to make a career out of it. He does love it and decided to find a school where he could do a double major (music plus something else). Many schools did not work well with the double major idea (for example, University of Michigan where the music majors are there for one reason and you need a dual-degree to do both). However, we eventually found a school that seems perfect (academics plus music where the music program seems good but not typically for students looking to make a career out of it ). I don’t know if it’s common, but I’m expecting (after talking with the professors in the dept) for my son to receive free music lessons. Those lessons tend to be expensive.
College of Wooster and St. Olaf both offer music scholarships for students who participate in performance on campus. They are not required to major or minor in music. I believe that Wooster tops out at 8K per year, and St. Olaf, 12K.
Susquehanna University, Elizabethtown College, Sacred Heart University and McDaniel College all offer non-major music scholarships for participating in ensembles. The amounts range from about $2000 per year to about $14,000 (at least those are the amounts my son received at those schools).
St Olaf offers music scholarships to non majors. Application with specific pieces have to be in by Dec 1. Students can also be considered for academic merit in addition to music and they offer financial aid. Excellent for music, math, science (for premeds, possible research internships with Mayo clinic.)
@visp I suggest looking into U of Rochester. My D was offered a merit $14K annual arts scholarship for her work in theatre production, which she planned to continue in college. She was going to study biology. Great science university. Not sure how having Eastman there would impact merit music scholarships, but it’s worth a look.
@privateID How about Bard? Tufts? And Vanderbilt says it offers a double major, as opposed to a dual degree (like Michigan). Not sure this would give your son the required flexibility and it’s tough to get into Vandy, but check it out.
Allegheny offers up to 2k and University of Puget Sound offers up to 8K. The scholarship requirements will vary by school. Some schools require one ensemble some schools may require two, some may require a music class as an elective but they also may offer free private lessons as part of the package. For a student who loves their instrument or loves to sing that alone can be worth it.
I know in our case my student plans on playing in college regardless, if he is able to and we deliberately looked for schools that offered these extra opportunities for him to earn a little extra money doing something he would do anyways.
I am not sure if Lawrence was already mentioned but they offer it as well. I just don’t have the details.
Bottom line is it is definitely out there but I would not expect awards to be at the level of a tuition waiver. Still worth pursuing though.
My daughter did NOT want to major in music. When she was looking at colleges, she contacted the head of the music department, the orchestra director, and the instructor on HER instrument (aside…this instructor turned out to be a poster on CC).
First up was to find colleges that would,even allow her to play in an orchestra without being a music major. DD is an oboe/English horn player. I will tell you…that was THE hardest criteria for DD to fulfill on her college wish list. Small schools with one orchestra, and a music major, had to offer that oboe seat to a music major…if they had an oboe music major. So…places like College of Charleston were out. So was Elon. Some smaller schools have strong music departments and no orchestra for non majors…so those were off the list.
Anyway…my point is…you need to target schools that welcome non-majors into their ensembles. Then go from there. As it happens, the orchestra director at DD’s college was the one who recommended for the $250 per quarter performance scholarship. And at DD’s college, she got free private lessons as long as she played in the orchestra there. Over four years, that saved us a chunk of change.
My friend who graduated last year got a scholarship and was recruited for UNC Greensboro’s marching band as a flute. She has to be in at least one ensemble (marching band, pep band, etc) every semester to keep it. Although that doesn’t really help with a string, I suppose…
I’m pretty sure someone from my med school was on scholarship for music at LSU - he was in the marching band. Don’t know if he did any other musical groups and whether his scholarship was marching band specific or not.
Concordia (Moorhead) also offers performance scholarships to non-music majors. The process is similar to St. Olaf’s in that digital recordings are submitted in December; call backs for scholarship finalists just happened this past weekend. Amounts vary from $4k-$16K. Cord has a couple of other scholarship programs as well–the Christiansen is $25K per year, but would supersede other merit scholarships such as the Presidential. For vocal students, if they have made it into a competitive honor choir (All State Choir, National Lutheran Youth Choir, etc.) there is the $1K Hvidsten scholarship, which would cover the cost of voice lessons.
re i-wanna-be-brown’s comment about LSU. Pretty sure they do give 1k scholarships for people in the marching band - not through the music dept, through the athletic dept. they may even have some scholarships that are worth more that are dependent on grades, etc. the music dept has scholarships too.
