<p>Anyone have any info. about Furman's music school? Number of students? How the program is regarded? Anything specific re: piano?</p>
<p>It’s a very small music school, the curriculum is not quite as concentrated in music as in most schools of music (more liberal arts based), but from what I have personally seen, they have a lot of very high level students and teachers.</p>
<p>I have seen the Furman marching band, a couple of choral ensembles, and the orchestra, and they were all top notch. the orchestra was particularly impressive, performing at a level higher than I would have expected.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about piano, my son auditioned at Furman for both piano and trumpet, he was rejected as a piano performance student but was approved to take applied music private lessons in the piano studio. We was accepted in the trumpet studio as a performance major and received a nice scholarship offer for trumpet. </p>
<p>He was a very late starter with piano (and music in general), but he is a fairly decent performer. He suspects that he was rejected as a piano performance major mostely due to his weak piano sight reading skills.</p>
<p>The music composition professor at Furman is world famous, and is a key selling point for furman as he also teaches music history classes and every music student will get some exposure with him.</p>
<p>All of the instructors are very qualified, with degrees from famous conservatories and Ivy League schools. While the academic qualifications of the overall student body isn’t quite up to Ivy League schools, and the music qualifications of the music students probably isn’t quite up to top conservatory standards, I suspect that the overall quality of education is probably comparable to any top college.</p>
<p>Furman has a reputation for being very academic and has been accused of grade deflation - meaning that a B at Furman might have been an A at most colleges. I’m not so sure that is true though as I have looked at some grade distributions and find that they look pretty normal to me.</p>
<p>Furman is usually considered the most prestigious college in SC, it has a very beautiful campus and supposedly an Ivy League feeling. The tuition is all inclusive, meaning that there are few extra fees tacked on. Even the study abroad program (most music students spend a semester in Italy) is included in the sticker price with no additional expenses.</p>
<p>Last year Furman went to an open enrollment program, basically everyone who applies get’s accepted. the exception to this would be acceptance to specific programs, like the music program, which still requires an audition. top academic and music students are almost always offered large financial aid packages, but the school has an Ivy League sticker price, so the bottom line price can still be quite expensive.</p>
<p>Furman probably sets itself apart from most colleges in that the instructors seem to be very interested in their students success, and in the students as individuals instead of just names on the roll. </p>
<p>At the audition you’re family will be invited to have lunch with the other school of music applicants and the faculty, and there will be assigned seating that will seat you at the same table with the studio professor and other applicants for your same instrument. You will have the opportunity to ask questions directly with the studio professors and current students.</p>
<p>The audition at Furman is a little more comprehensive than at many colleges and will likely take longer. There will be a music theory written test for music theory placement purposes, and a private aural skills test, in addition to your audition. It can be quite intimidating, but they do an amazing job of keeping things organized and trying to make you feel comfortable. it’s very classy, and scary at the same time.</p>
<p>In both of my son’s auditions at Furman, he was asked questions from the auditioner and was expected to actively engage in discussion. Again, I think that is part of there philosophy of wanting to treat each student as an individual and trying to determine if the goals of the individual can be best accomidated at Furman. </p>
<p>Furman was origionally my son’s top choice of schools, but in the end he decided to go to the U of South Carolina, mostly because Allen Vizzutti is a trumpet instructor there and he is considered one of the top Trumpet players in the world. Finances also played a part in this decision, my son’s scholarship at USC was much smaller than he received at two of the other colleges that he applied at, but the net price was much lower than at Furman.</p>
<p>Wow! Thanks for such a thorough answer! I am a bit surprised about the open enrollment part - that they accept everyone? I understand not in music, but it’s hard for me to get my head around that in general.</p>
<p>Interesting about the composition professor as well.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for taking time to answer this!</p>
<p>On the open enrollment thing, that is a new policy and this years freshman class is the first to have that. </p>
<p>I was shocked when they went to an open enrollment policy last year.</p>
<p>Until this years class, they were highly selective. I guess they figure that if some family values a Furman education enough that they are willing to pay over $50k/yr, then maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense to exclude them. The school can then take part of the “profit” from the additional students, and fund larger scholarships for those who have better academics.</p>
<p>The average SAT and GPA for students applying at Furman has always been fairly high, much higher than average, so most potential applicants without outstanding academics, in a way, “self reject” by not applying.</p>
<p>Furman does not have an open enrollment. Perhaps the writer above has confused it with SAT optional. Furman became SAT optional this past year, placing more emphasis on grades, community involvement, references and personal interviews.</p>
<p>Imagep is correct about the audition and gives a great overview. It was one of the nicest auditions my son went to. The process was very much like the audition process at conservatories, music schools, music high schools.</p>
<p>My son chose Furman over several other options and has not regretted it. Don’t let the sticker price deter you from applying. There are very generous music scholarships depending on instrument need and skill level. We were lucky-my son plays an instrument they had a need for. I guess he is fairly competitive. He has attended summer music festivals for several years and has been playing his primary instrument about 8 years.</p>
<p>Academically, my son finds Furman no harder than UNC Chapel Hill was. The professors are very helpful as are the other students.</p>
<p>Thanks, Hornet! I was surprised to see this thread back near the top. </p>
<p>I am having a hard time getting ds to do much looking these days. 
I think he would really enjoy Furman from what I know of it, but he just doesn’t seem to have the sense of urgency that I have at picking out schools.</p>
<p>I was 100% certain that Furman had announced open enrollment last year, but now I can’t seem to find the announcement.</p>
<p>In this [Class</a> of 2015 Largest Ever - News - The Paladin - Furman University](<a href=“http://www.thefurmanpaladin.com/news/class-of-2015-largest-ever-1.2550805]Class”>http://www.thefurmanpaladin.com/news/class-of-2015-largest-ever-1.2550805), it indicates an acceptence rate of 80%, so maybe they didn’t go to a totally open enrollment, but pretty darn close.</p>
<p>I suspect that they really did go to an open enrollment system, but they don’t want that publicized, so they are essentialy claiming that they rejected 20%. thats still not very selective, not nearly as selective as even branch campuses of our flagship university.</p>
<p>Doing some more research, I found that several sites lists furmans acceptance rate at 83%-94%. Again, I am pretty sure that they have gone to an open enrollment. It’s possible that they might not accept students who were in learning disabled classes in high school, or who never graduated high school, but I didn’t imagine what I read about their open enrollment policy. And it’s also possible that they reject late applications, or every student who applied after they already had accepted enough for their target class size.</p>
<p>I live near furman, and since I have a recent high school graduate, I know a heck of a lot of students who applied at furman, every single one of them was accepted.</p>
<p>Again, I suspect that furman just doesn’t want it publicized that they are an open enrollment school.</p>
<p>I recently transferred from Furman much because of the quality of students they have recently been letting in. The school had professors who were extremely knowledgable and skilled in their fields, but any discussion in class was generally exceptionally basic. The student body isn’t very intellectual, and I ran into few students willing to discuss topics brought up in class. I’m now at a university that accepts ~30% of students, and have found the difference in academic interest of most Furman students versus my current school’s to be astoundingly different. Bottomline: Furman’s new push for money by accepting almost all applicants has severely depleted the school of students with much merit or academic interest.</p>
<p>Wow. All very interesting.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the Furman Alumni magazine. Click on the Fall 2011 issue and go to page 17-an article about the admissions change and the rationale behind it.</p>
<p><a href=“Furman University | Top Private Liberal Arts University in Greenville, SC”>Furman University | Top Private Liberal Arts University in Greenville, SC;
<p>I don’t live in SC so I don’t know anything about local acceptances at Furman. Schools do strange things with acceptance rates. My daughter graduated from Grinnell College. Their acceptance there sits at 43%. The school sits in the middle of as cornfield; only someone who loves research and hard work would go there, thus the high acceptance rate (they are not SAT optional). My state’s flagship, UNC Chapel Hill boasts a 27% acceptance rate. What they do not tell you is that the acceptance rate of just instate kids is about 50%. The numbers are driven down by the acceptance of out-of-state applicants which is around 9-10% (state rules that only 20% can be OOS). The school is popular on a national level and ends up with a huge national applicant pool which greatly lowers the average.</p>
<p>I can’t argue the academic population at Furman as all I have is my son’s report. My son says that Furman is no harder or easier than UNC and that the average student is similar intellectually. He transferred in with AP credit and is deep into the music. Most of his gen eds were out of the way so I don’t have a sense of the “average” Furman student. The young men (all juniors) he lives with in an on-campus apartment are all bright, motivated and have been there since freshman year. All of these men are involved in music and indicated that the music department has its own world socially.</p>
<p>Furman accepted a lot of music transfers last year. One of my son’s new music friends transferred from North Texas (good music school);another from a SUNY school. Both of these kids wanted to play in a orchestra that was exclusively college students. Many schools will take HS kids that are good to boost sound. Both of my kids were accepted in 10th grade to play in the UNC symphony. Great for the high schooler but can be depressing for a college student. </p>
<p>As with any school, I would visit and sit in on classes. An overnight in the dorms would also be very valuable. My older child turned down both Vassar and Oberlin after attending class and spending the night in the dorm. Both of these schools have much lower acceptance rates than Grinnell (Vassar 17%?) but were no better academically.</p>
<p>Hoggirl - My son was unmotivated to look at colleges as a junior in HS. We selected a large pool of schools via common ap and visited the ones he auditioned at or offered a good scholarship during his senior year. We visited only when the colleges were in session. My son’s last two years of high school were not stellar. He is one of those kids where the SAT was useful for his admissions to college. Once in college, he took off academically.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me about colleges and music. Between my two kids, I visited roughly 20 colleges. It is so important to dig deep into a school-look at where alumni go and the health of the endowment. My older child is a violinist. She did not major in music but had a Julliard grad teacher at Grinnell. As Imagep mentioned, the teacher is a huge factor in selection. My daughter is now at NIDA but is playing in Peabody conservatory groups for fun. She has met two Furman alum at who are at Peabody for grad school. She found both to be bright and competent with their instruments. Best of luck! There are many wonderful schools out there.</p>
<p>Moylan- congratulations with your transfer to Wake Forest-great academic school but no scholarships of any size to lower the costs.</p>