<p>Transferring after a year at my local state college. </p>
<p>GPA: 3.7/4.0
Declared Major: Music Performance, also Pre-Med
Extra Curricular Activities: Shadowing local doctors, performing as a church musician, volunteering for local music organizations, Biology Club, Math Club.
Other: Stellar letters of recommendations.</p>
<p>College Requirements: Liberal atmosphere, preferably a small to moderate population (doesn't bug me much, though)</p>
<p>List of colleges so far: Binghamton, Reed College, Bard College, SUNY Purchase, Amherst</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads up on Amherst. I wasn’t aware of that fact. I don’t know much about Reed’s music program, but I haven’t really obtained any kind of tangible information on their teachers and ensembles.</p>
<p>Reed’s acceptance rate for transfer students was 14% this year.</p>
<p>Its music program is probably not world-class. I think the department is quite small, with few professors and fewer students, and most music-related extracurricular activities are pretty laid-back. That being said, I’ve had the privilege of working under one of the music professors, and she impressed me immensely with her knowledge and command of her subject.</p>
<p>I know Reed considers expanding its performing arts programs a high priority, and is currently devoting a lot of resources to that. New music and theatre professors are getting hired every year, a new performing arts building is being built, and the budgets for these departments are going up. So the future of the performing arts at Reed looks bright. But right now these are pretty small majors, especially music.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for a top-notch music program at a school known for its liberal bent, I’m sure Oberlin has caught your eye at some point. DePauw University in Indiana is another, much safer option. It is not a very illustrious school, but its music department is very solid–the strongest program at the school by far, if I’m not mistaken.</p>
<p>Are you planning on transferring for your BM in performance? Just a heads up, but transferring music credits can be very very tricky. Many schools will not take transfers for everything from performance classes to music theory. Or in most cases they will take the transfer, but the classes will not be applied towards their particular sequence of music theory requirements.</p>
<p>You might want to search on the Music Majors forum under “transfers”. An admissions rep from the Bard music department periodically posts there.</p>
<p>Is music your primary interest? The Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins accepts a lot of transfer students. You could get a Bachelors of Music (B.M.) from Peabody, or you could try to get a double degree (B.M. / B.A. or B.M. / B.S.) from Peabody and the main undergraduate program. If you went for the double degree, you’d have to be accepted to both programs separately which is hard to do. </p>
<p>I believe that even if you enroll at the Peabody Institute, you can still take undergraduate classes in the other schools, which could help prepare you for pre-med. However I’m not sure if medical schools would be hesitant to accept someone who doesn’t have a B.A. or B.S.</p>