Is it possible to double major in MT and biology at Ithaca?
No. MT at Ithaca is already a double major of voice and Acting, with a minor in dance. There is no way to do a double major in something as time consuming as biology. Sorry. At least not within 4 years.
Thank you for the information. Do you think it possible in 5 years?
Probably not. My D is a sophomore MT, and she has 11 classes this semester. And not one of them is a gen ed. They are all required classes…ballet, jazz, music theory, voice, rep, scene study, voice and movement, theater history…you get the drift. So…I just don’t see how one could fit in all the requirements for a double major in something as different as biology. And I TOTALLY get it…if you looked back at my old posts from 5 years ago (or whenever it was), I too, was looking for a school for my D where she could double major in biology and MT (she wanted primatology…hence my username). And, it IS doable at some schools…but I really don’t think Ithaca is one of those places. It really is a conservatory set within a LAC. Maybe 6 years, if your kid (or you) has a bunch of credits in AP Bio and Calculus, etc. carried over. I would urge you to call the school and talk to them to make sure I’m right. But the MT program at Ithaca is so very demanding…between rehearsals (when they are cast), crew duties (all of freshman year), and 9 classes (freshman year) and 11 classes (sophomore year), I just don’t think there would be the hours in the day.
If you or your child (I’m sorry, I don’t know if you are the student or the parent) really want to double major in two things as disparate as MT and bio, look at Northwestern, NYU, or UMich. Or maybe Muhlenberg But, I don’t think you’re going to have any luck at the conservatory type programs. I know UMich encourages kids to do double majors. Also, there are places like Bard that encourage double majors of the arts and sciences…but they don’t have a MT program. They have a great theater program, and a great biology program, and a fabulous music conservatory, but no MT. It’s really, really hard. I don’t mean to discourage you…keep looking. My daughter was valedictorian of her class…intellectual, passionate about animals, but her love was MT. I finally figured out that her desire to double major was really to please us. So in her case, we ended up dropping the biology (which made me, a biologist, really sad), and going with her heart. For my D, it was the right decision. And Ithaca is the perfect school for her. But if you or your child really, really, really want both, I just don’t think Ithaca is going to be a good fit. There ARE schools where you could do it in 4 years…and college is so dang expensive, why not do that if you can?
Anyway, best of luck…call Ithaca and talk to them, but I’m pretty sure it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to do that kind of double major there in a reasonable amount of time.
Thank you for this response. I am a professional musician so the double major is coming from me because I know how hard it is but maybe it is not the right thing? I just do not know and MT is so hard.
Now since it sounds like you went through the whole process did you do unified auditions or individual or some of both? This may seem elementary but I am new to unified auditions. Do they audition for specific schools at the unified auditions or is it one room with many different representatives in it and they audition once? I can see benefits of both kinds of auditions. Sorry to keep bothering you but you sound very knowledgeable.
My D did some campus auditions and NYC Unifieds. There are lots of threads on the Unified auditions, but basically, you have to audition individually at each school (and make the appointments through those schools before you go). So, each school is in a separate room, and you have to juggle your schedule months before hand to fit everything in. Everyone does it differently, but we auditioned on campus for schools that were within a 6 hour drive, and did others (when we could) at Unifieds. Some schools don’t do Unifieds, so you HAVE to do the auditions on campus.
And many of the schools (and more and more each year) require applicants to pass a video prescreen process before granting an audition slot. Ithaca introduced a prescreen requirement last year, so my S (a freshman MT) had to pass it, but @monkey13’s sophomore D didn’t. There are many threads on the CC MT Forum about prescreens you can check out if you’re interested.
We took the same approach to on-campus vs. Unifieds that @monkey13 mentioned: we went on-campus to schools within an easy drive and to those that only offered on-campus auditions, and for the rest we went to NYC Unifieds (we’re on the East Coast). It worked out to about 50-50 for us.
As far as I know, Ithaca College only allows double majoring in Music Education and Music Performance, and thats it