<p>Ive been playing violin for 8 years, take private lessons and have been a member of the empire state youth orchestra for 4 years. I want to major in music in college, and am struggling to find a school with a good solid music program, also with more than one music major. I'm just really trying to find a good, arts oriented school where a music major could thrive. (also accepting sole music conservatory suggestions</p>
<p>There are many great music programs in the northeast, depending on your level & ability and what you hope to get out of it. What do you mean by “more than one major”? What year are you in high school?</p>
<p>Have you been working with your private music teacher on college planning? Your private teacher should be your first stop for advice and audition preparation.</p>
<p>Essentially the same questions I would ask as well. When you say “more than one major”, does this mean you’re potentially interested in doing a double- or multiple-major (e.g. violin/piano or even a performance/composition double concentration), or are you looking for a school that offers more than just a general “music major” with individual concentrations for specific instruments/musical disciplines?</p>
<p>The Northeast is the cradle for most conservatories in the United States, along with very high-quality university music programs, so as far as location is concerned, you’ll have a lot of great schools from which to choose.</p>
<p>I’m a senior, and yes I have been working on music for auditions with my private teacher. And withies than one major, I mean more than just a general music major.</p>
<p>Some many choices! In New York, as you’re probably aware, there is SUNY Potsdam, SUNY Fredonia, SUNY Purchase, Ithaca College, and a host of great schools in or near NY City (Juilliard, MSM, Mannes, NYU, Bard etc) that have excellent music programs. Depending on where you’re located in NY, you could include the Cleveland area schools (CIM and Oberlin), Connecticut (Hartt, Yale, Wesleyan), Massachusetts (BU, NEC, BOCO etc), Pennsylvania (Curtis, Gettysburg, Susquehanna, West Chester, Temple), New Jersey (Rutgers, Westminster Choir College) Maryland (Peabody) or even Canada within a reasonable driving distance. Can you give us some idea of what you’re looking for - urban/rural, types of other majors (e.g. are you looking at performance/music education/composition or music/science/art as double majors), strictly classical or jazz/contemporary, etc? Is your teacher aiming you at any particular schools now?</p>
<p>I’m a classical violinist, and I was looking at music performance, education, composition things of that nature. As for an urban or rural setting, I’m not sure it really matters to me, I just want to get the best education.</p>
<p>Do you want to get a BM in music, a BA in music, or a BA/BM?</p>
<p>This essay on the Peabody website might be helpful:
[Peabody</a> Institute - Conservatory Admissions: The Double Degree Dilemma](<a href=“http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/doubledegree]Peabody”>http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/doubledegree)</p>
<p>If you want to go to conservatory/music school. 3/4 of your classes will be music and you will get a performance degree, the BM. Most students focus on an instrument, or theory/composition, but some conservatories let you do two areas for a double major. Since you are working toward an audition, it sounds like this is what you are after. Is that true?</p>
<p>If you are interested in a BA, then music classes will be 1/4-1/2 of your classes if you major in music, generally speaking. Auditions are often not required for a BA at a college or university, but you can send in a supplement with a DVD or CD anyway.</p>
<p>For state universities’ BM programs there are auditions. Are finances an issue? Your own state university might be a good place to look. Often a state university will have a good music ed program.</p>
<p>I recommend a book entitled “Creative Colleges” which I bought online. It lists quality music programs at all the different types of schools. Many college music programs are excellent and offer performance through extracurriculars, and also private lessons. Within a BA, you often study history, theory, composition, ethnomusicology and music/technology.</p>
<p>Let us know a little more about what you are thinking of doing. Also, it is okay to apply to all different kinds of programs, BA and BM, and decide in the spring.</p>
<p>Stradmom offered a very thorough list. If you want more info on what the schools in that list are, or a few more ideas, let us know, including your preferred location in the Northeast.</p>
<p>It’s important to know your ability level above all because there is a vast difference- especially for a violinist- between say, Julliard and Rutgers or CIM and a SUNY school. And what do you want from the degree- a performance career, teaching, etc?</p>
<p>I think the answer to your question is going to be what you want to do and fortunately/unfortunately you are going to need to make some decisions, it can be very different to major in music then a standard college course of study. </p>
<p>If you are talking a stand alone conservatory like Juilliard and NEC, you would be going for a BM degree (performance), and the study there focuses almost entirely on music, which besides the obvious study of the instrument, you would be doing chamber, orchestra, other kinds of performance, taking courses in theory and ear training and music history and other electives, with a limited number of humanities courses. The admissions is based entirely on an audition (usually a pre screen on dvd/cd, then if you pass that, an audition that last roughly 10 minutes or so). It is very focuse on music.</p>
<p>Other programs, like Indiana, Rice, USC, require you to get admitted to the music school via audition and meet the academic standards. Some of them may allow you to do a BM degree along with something else like a BA, some will tell you to stick with music (a lot of them, from word of mouth, seem to discourage double majoring, because the BM is that intense plus practice.</p>
<p>Bard requires its students to double major in the music school, you get a BM degree while getting a bachelors in something else (friend of our’s D is getting a degree in music preformance and in neuroscience…). It is a 5 year program because of that.</p>
<p>There also is the option of getting a BA in music, which if I understand it correctly is a little less intense then the BM and also I believe has the core courses other college students take.</p>
<p>Music education is a different track and is taught differently then performance from what I know of it, and not all schools offer that degree (for example, Juilliard and several of the other conservatories don’t offer that degree). A music ed degree is designed to teaching in public schools, plenty of music teachers are not music ed trained. Music ed requires learning about a lot of instruments, not the primary, and has courses in education and such required to get teacher cert. Unless you are thinking of heading into teaching in a school, you don’t need this kind of degree (and may not be for you, if your primary interest is playing the violin).</p>
<p>Composition as far as I know requires a portfolio of work when applying, I don’t think it is something you simply decide to take in college (I could be wrong about that one, just throwing that out, the comp parents can talk about that), it isn’t like going to college and saying “I think I’ll switch to accounting” when majoring in ancient greek:)</p>
<p>As the parent of a violin student, I recommend strongly working with your teacher to figure out what to do. Violin for admission to any decent program is going to be competitive, at the hypercompetitive schools like NEC, Juilliard, Rice, Colburn and the like, it is even more so. Everything boils down to that audition…among other things, you need to have your audition repertoire decided, which means you need to lock down where you are applying because the schools can have different requirments (though fortunately, many are the same…for example Curtiss requires a whole concerto, most others require movements, Juilliard wants a 20th century piece, others don’t)…</p>
<p>Hopefully this helps, I wish you luck.</p>