<p>Hello,</p>
<p>My brother is looking at schools next year and is wondering which schools offer full rides for trumpet or music majors who play trumpet. He has won many competitions and has been to State two years in a row in Texas as a sophomore and a junior (probably will be as a senior too). Any help on who offers full rides and which schools are best for music majors would be appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>Moving this to the Music Majors forum, you might also want to ask on the FA & Scholarship forum.</p>
<p>First question has to do with what you mean by full ride - full tuition, full tuition plus housing. Second, what summer activities has he undertaken so that some of the schools (Baylor, Texas Tech etc.) may already have an eye on him. Third, I will say this before someone else does, being all state is nice and something of which to be very proud, but most of the competition for merit aid is as well.</p>
<p>With some exceptions, is not an easy question to answer. Among conservatories, Curtis Institute is tuition free while Colburn in LA is totally free ride (room and board). There may be some other ones that I am not aware of that offer free tuition/full ride.</p>
<p>For the most part, the amount of aid at other places depends on two major factors, family income/need and some portion based on Merit. In many cases the combination of the 2 will not cover all costs, unless family income is that small.</p>
<p>With Merit aid it depends on how good the student is and also how much they need the particular instrument. With instruments like violin it can be a lot more difficult to get merit aid because it isn’t that hard to get good quality violinists (doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, of course), it might potentilally be easier to get merit aid as a viola player because less students want to study it…</p>
<p>The reason it is hard to say is it is all situational. If a school has desperate need for high level trumpet players and there is a dearth of them applying, a talented trumpeter might get a sweetheart merit deal, if they are swamped with trumpets, not so much. At top level conservatory programs like NEC, CIM etc it may be very difficult to get high level merit aid because they get so many high level music students to stand out you need to be really out there, the level depending on instrument, to get a lot of merit aid from what I hear. </p>
<p>In general,it may be better to decide where to apply and then wait and see what comes back out of the audition process. One possible place might be state schools in your own state (U tex Austin, for example), besides the fact that in state tuition and such is cheaper, they also may want to attract talented kids from texas into it so be more willing to make it affordable. Another thing may be to apply to programs that are not quite the ‘top tier’ that are looking for high level students, often those programs will offer serious aid to try and boost the level of students in their program, that especially can be true with newer programs. In the end, it prob will come down to applying and seeing where the chips fall. </p>
<p>I second what Bartok said, be careful about using All State as an indication of relative levels, I realize Texas is a big state and the competition there is probably fierce because of the number of kids who apply, but All State may or may not indicate a student is at the level of the highest level kids (could, of course). It does indicate the kid has gotten to a certain level, but for example, in my area a lot of the really top level music students don’t do all state, for whatever reasons the kids seriously pursuing music don’t generally do it… I would go more by what your S’s private music teacher says, plus it never hurts to get an evaluation from a high level teacher, if your handle means you live in Houston, you could contact a teacher at Rice and get them to do an evaluation of his strengths and weaknessses, which might it turn give an idea of where to apply.</p>
<p>Just backing up what musicprnt said about allstate, my son doesn’t go to a particularly prestigious school for music, just a regular state university, but every single student accepted into the trumpet studio last year was an allstate musician, and none of the four are even performance majors (three are music ed students, the fourth is a music theory major).</p>
<p>That said, he did get almost a full ride at the safety college he applied at (also a state university). Between his state scholarship (lottery scholarship), a small third party scholarship, and what was offered directly by the college (they gave him four different scholarships), he was short less than the $5,500 student loan that he qualified for. That included the max meal plan and dorm expenses. Essentially, if he had decided to go to that college and had accepted the student loan, he could have gone for no money out of my pocket, and received an overage check from his student loan for books, pocket money, and transportation expenses.</p>
<p>At the three other colleges he applied at, his music scholarship offers ranged from $1,500 to $14,000.</p>
<p>Thanks. Yea I am just trying to get preliminary info. He has been invited to Idylwild the past 2 summers. He was first chair their as well. Also been invited to Baylor camps the past 2 years. Keep the help coming please! :)</p>
<p>Baylor will hand out a decent amount of money for folks they want. I know that at least a couple of students from my son’s performing arts high school got at least full tuition at Baylor. As you probably already know houdaddy, the contacts from all-state are important for the Texas schools. Keep up with the contacts from the schools. I also think that TCU shows a great deal of interest in all state kids.</p>
<p>Check into the music school at Columbus State University. The cost is reasonable before scholarships, and they have some excellent scholarships. My d’s roommate had a free ride plus $5K per year. Her roommate was an outstanding percussionist who had her pick of graduate schools, so you must be exceptional for the total scholarships. My d is a vocalist. Her music scholarship and honors scholarship paid all tuition and fees plus about a month’s worth of living expenses each semester.</p>
<p>Has your brother checked out the “schools” forum at Trumpet Herald? If he browses that forum, he might be able to gather a pretty good list of schools that are strong for his goals. Does he want music ed, performance, or some other area? Then he can look into how scholarships work at his top choices. Some schools will stack music and academic awards. Some will be upfront about the amounts that tie to specific GPA’s and scores. Some schools will crunch their own version of his GPA (I think Arizona State is one of those, but they are pretty clear on what they use for automatic scholarships), others will take it at face value (such as Indiana University). </p>
<p>Be aware that the FAFSA now requires students to rank their schools, and that the schools can see their ranking. That might affect how departments offer scholarships, I don’t know. I do know that at some schools, if the student doesn’t choose that place, the professor can’t simply re-offer that amount to a different student, so they can be skittish about putting $ on the line if they’re not confident they are a top choice.</p>