Help with college list for a kid who wants music and computer science

Of the 10 on the “most segregated” list, only 4 are in the midwest? The other 6 on the east and southern coast. And Chicago the most populated. The data piece that stands out more is the geography of being east of the Mississippi (or directly on; Missouri & Louisiana) The racial divides of the east have a more entrenched history than western regions. And read the third paragraph under the chart:
“A few cities actually get pretty close to this ideal of complete diversity. Oakland, California, is not far from being evenly divided between whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians; its citywide diversity index is 75 percent. New York’s is 73 percent. And Chicago’s is 70 percent.” … (not the discrepancy I was expecting)

We could interpret “data” points all day long. And the literal segregation of neighborhoods, does not tell the whole story of race issues in the US. This is from 2015. I think events of the past few year, the most recent involving increased violence against Asian Americans, has illustrated our country as a whole has some reckoning to do regarding racial division.

Thanks for sharing your list. Our list is far from done. We have dropped many schools and added new ones. It already looks very different from the list we had at the beginning of this post.

In case someone someday is looking for dual degree friendly schools, I wanted to share my son’s full list. The list we had earlier in this post is very different from his final list.

We originally thought my son was a “Jennifer” (read David Lane’s essay) but after lots of thinking, soul searching and research he realized he was closer to an “Alexander.” He originally thought all double degree programs were too stressful but then he realized that is not always the case. If he is OK with 5 years of study, then his course load in each term can be normal (this does not mean “easy,” just normal).

At the end he decided he wanted places where he could get a BM in percussion performance and a BA or BS in comp sci. They had to be schools with strong music programs for percussionists.

He started with a very comprehensive list. Then he deleted the schools that were not “dual degree friendly”. Many top conservatories have agreements with universities so that it is possible to get a dual degree. However, after talking to some students it seemed that some faculty and students look down on dual degree students. Also, there is zero coordination between the two institutions. So those places were deleted. Some top music schools are part of a university but they discourage students from getting a dual degree (especially in the sciences). One example is Rice. Other places seem to support dual degrees but it you look at the numbers and ask around, almost nobody does it (why?). Other places were deleted because my son did not like the percussion program they had.

Anyway, after deleting all those places I believe his list looked like this:

Rochester/Eastman
Northwestern/Bienen
Michigan/SMTD
Vanderbilt/Blair
USC/Thornton
Boston University
CWRU/CIM
Oberlin
Bard
Miami/Frost
Minnesota
Colorado at Boulder

He then scheduled virtual and in-person sample lessons with most percussion professors at these schools. These sample lessons were very useful. He not only got an idea of how it would be to work with each professor but the professors also gave him a lot of important information about the music program.

One more thing that may be useful to students interested in a double degree: most of these schools have separate applications for the music school (with different deadlines!!) . Sometimes the application was a short basic form with the prescreening recordings but other times they also wanted 1-2 additional essays, resume, etc.

Good luck to everyone.

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