Honest Info on the Dual Degree Programs?

College Majors Music Major
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<p>I'm interested in pursuing a BM/BA dual degree. The schools that are currently at the front of my list are Boston University, University of Michigan, Oberlin, Northwestern, and UMass Amherst, possibly also USC and NYU. I've heard a lot of stories about how grueling the dual degree is, and how for most people, it's unmanageable. I have a low threshold for handling stress, and I'm scared of putting myself in a program that will not set me up to be successful. I'm looking for honest accounts of how much work it was beyond that of the typical college experience, and whether you found it to be manageable or too grueling. </p>

<p>Also important: my BA major would be English, which would obviously be a bit easier than any other pairing due to requirement overlap.</p>

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<p>This is the best place to start exploring the implications of a double degree. <a href=“http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/conservatory/admissions/tips/doubledegree.html”>http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/conservatory/admissions/tips/doubledegree.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>What overlap are you referring to? Not sure there is that much overlap between music and English, honestly…but I could be wrong.</p>

<p>The Peabody essay posted by Singersmom07 will be really helpful.</p>

<p>Why do you want to do a double degree? Is it because you think music is not practical in terms of earning money, or is it because you absolutely love both music and literature?</p>

<p>Doulbe degrees take 5 years, which helps with the stress…you might want to check out the different programs particulars in terms of curriculum requirements.</p>

<p>You could also check out Lawrence, Bard, and Peabody…</p>

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<p>No personal or parental experience. DD dismissed this possibility, much to my parental chagrin, because the conventional wisdom is that few dual-degree majors pursue performance after this course. Music is much more present in their lives than had they not gone that away, but they do not remain competitive with those who do it as conservatory-only students.
How dual degree affects the academic degree I just don’t know.
I chime in because of two cases I know personally. One dropped the music after two years, the other completed the course, but went to academic graduate school. Music is a hobby for them now.
At Oberlin I was told by the admissions director that they invented the dual degree, and are proud of it. I think it is very appealing for the practical side of, specifically, those who are paying the tuition. (That’s us parents.) It’s only an extra year, and tuition is the same for the first four. But musical training is a full-time (and then some) occupation.</p>

<p>You can always try, don’t let my nay-saying (or anyone) get you off-course. I hope someone who lived through it will chime in.</p>

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<p>My daughter started out as a dual degree student at one of the universities you named. She believes that more than half of her classmates are doing that. She lasted about 3 weeks and immediately told us there was no way she could do a dual degree, and has stuck with music performance.</p>

<p>Music, as stated above, is really a more than full-time major. The friends she has who are doing dual degrees are indeed stressed-out a lot. Some of them also attempt to have small part-time jobs and/or cultivate personal relationships while they are doing this. Serious sleep deprivation and lack of self-care are common. Taking a 5th year helps, but can be expensive. Also you may be spending your summers doing course work rather than doing music festivals. Nevertheless, plenty of people seem to do this successfully and seem to be pretty happy that they did. A few people can continue to maintain very high level musicianship despite the extra work load, going on to grad school at very prestigious places. You probably know some of these people: passionate about multiple interests and always seem to do well at everything! However, I am not sure of the exact statistics, but my daughter says that most of the people she knows who are doing dual degree do indeed plan to pursue the non-music interest after graduation, as suggested above.</p>

<p>For the general job market, a music performance degree is generally looked upon as being the same as any other liberal arts degree. For liberal arts degrees, we are finding out that it is not so much the content of your course work, but what you did for your extra-curricular activities that will put you in the job market. For example, if you developed leadership skills, responsibility skills and organizational skills either through work or major extra-curricular activities then those are the types of skills employers will be looking for, and not care so much about what you actually majored it. Therefore, a dual degree in English and Music may not necessarily get you ahead in the job market. There may also be the option of minoring in a related or unrelated subject. It helps to know what you think your ultimate career goals may be.</p>

<p>But you also have to allow for some flexibility of self-exploration. If you attend a university, you have to allow for the possibility that you might actually love Astronomy, once you take an introductory class, for example. And you might find that your initial career goals will turn 180 degrees. </p>

<p>You could always start out as a dual, then drop one depending on how it is going for you. One thing might be to examine your current study habits/learning style/skills. If you are the type of person who thrives on learning new things, has to read things only once or twice to “get” it, can manage your time well, can progress admirably on your instrument while carrying 3+ AP’s etc, then you will likely do fine in a dual degree. Otherwise it will likely still be do-able, just more challenging. And you will have to decide if it is worth it.</p>

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<p>You don’t have to decide about pursuing a double degree going in at many of the schools, if you start with music. You can add an academic BA later. (Bard actually requires conservatory students to do a double degree.)</p>

<p>If you really love both music and English, and are trying to decide based on interest rather than job prospects, you can just go on campus in the fall of freshman year, take classes in both, and decide later as things become clearer.</p>

<p>Another option is to go to a university or college and do music privately, and outside of school, with or without a music major.</p>

<p>Some feel that a double degree signifies lack of respect for a music degree, an attitude that a “backup” is needed. Job prospects and admissions to grad school for music majors are excellent: hard work and discipline are respected everywhere.</p>

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<p>Thank you so much for all of the helpful responses. Just wanted to clarify some things:</p>

<p>The overlap I was referring to was in required courses–at most of the informational sessions I’ve attended, they’ve said that most of your non-music requirements are English foundation and elective classes, which makes sense, and means that perhaps it’d be easier to find courses that satisfy requirements on both ends.</p>

<p>These responses are affirming my previous suspicion that a dual degree will be too much for me to handle. I probably should have originally mentioned that I have a learning disability, so schoolwork doesn’t come easily.</p>

<p>I sometimes feel that perhaps I should pursue a BA instead, but the problem is that I’m not a very strong BA candidate, due to the aforementioned learning disability, but I’m a strong BM candidate (summer programs such as BUTI, national and international awards, connections to teachers at a few of the schools on my list.) </p>

<p>Overall, I don’t think that I’m pursuing BM programs because I want to build a career solely in music, especially in the academic sense…I’m doing it because music is what I’m best at, what comes easiest to me, and what my teachers and parents are pushing for (yes, ironically, my parents are pushing for BM over BA), so it’s a natural path. I need to rethink things. Thanks so much for the input!</p>

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<p>I am so glad to hear that your parents support a BM. And that you feel like you might have a little more clarity on pursuing a music degree as well. Good luck!</p>

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<p>Funny at first I thought I had nothing to add to this conversation but then you mentioned that you have an LD and THAT IS SOMETHING I KNOW ABOUT!!! More importantly I understand the feeling that you are not a good enough student to do academics and figure that since music is something you ARE good at that this is what you should pursue.</p>

<p>I am not sure what your specific LD is but all three of my kids have LDs and all struggled in their own way in HS with academics. College academics are totally different than HS academics. There is less focus on volume of work and more focus on actual in depth understanding and mastery of complex concepts. And if one goes to a college that is not necessarily a top tier school or ivy league school but instead to a small school where students form strong bonds with faculty you might find that you can indeed excel at academics in a way that you never did in HS.</p>

<p>Let me tell you about my son. He struggled horribly in HS. In fact by his senior year he had yet to pass a HS Algebra class. Our son was a talented guitar player and he did Berklee’s 5 week performance program. That summer he realized that he even though he liked music he did not want to go to conservatory. But an administrator refused to listen to him (partly because she was refusing to offer him the services he needed to help him pass a HS math class) and wrote in his IEP “Johnny is well on his way to becoming a successful music student and doing what he needs to do to attend Berklee School of Music.” This made our son mad and was hurtful.</p>

<p>Our son struggled but eventually got some very targeted cognitive therapy to help him learn how to learn. After a gap year doing a program called SEA (<a href=“http://www.sea.edu”>www.sea.edu</a>) our son learned that to be a good scientist one needs more than classroom smarts. He went on to a small private liberal arts school that is not officially an LD college, but happens to have a large percentage of kids with LDs. Keep in mind our son still was quite behind in mathematics due to his LD issues. Last month he graduated Suma Cum Laude, winning all the mathematics prizes the college offers, Phi Beta Kappa and was admitted to many top rated graduate programs in Mathematics. He will be attending graduate school to get a PhD in Mathematical Biology this fall.</p>

<p>He still plays the guitar. It is what he does to relax. He even took lessons at his college and plans on seeking out lessons in graduate school if he has time. The University where he is going to study has a top modern music department, which is a genre of music our son likes. </p>

<p>Let me tell you about my daughter. She decided she was not cut out for academia after struggling in HS. She went on to Conservatory to study theater and dance. She was obsessed with ER when she was a child and told us that she wanted to become an actress of TV who plays a doctor. Where is she now? She is becoming a real Nurse Practitioner!!! She is not playing at grand-rounds on TV, she is going on them. Her patients are not actors (although they do use paid volunteers when learning differential diagnosis) but are real. She talks about getting her PhD in public health in the future. The girl who told us she HATED science in HS will talk about how much she is enjoying her pathology class. </p>

<p>So PLEASE do not write off future careers based on premature judgement about what you think you can and can not do. If you want to pursue something that you are not necessarily the best at, then pursue it. Your motivation and determination might result in you leapfrogging over those who may have natural ability but who are not as motivated. And also seek out mentors who can help you learn how to learn given your disability. If you are smart and hardworking then there is no reason you can not learn skills that will help you compensate for what ever disability you feel is getting in your way of pursuing your dream.</p>

<p>The worse thing you can do is pursue a career simply because that is what you are good at. I know because that is what happened to me. Math and computer programming (this was in the early days before the web and personal computers) came easily to me. Writing and reading were hard. Everyone pushed me in one direction based on what they thought I enjoyed and was good at. Problem was what I loved more than anything was art and art history and the materials of art and education. I still carry a lot of sadness about mis opportunities and time I spent doing work that I was good at but did not enjoy.</p>

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<p>Wonderful post, StacJip. I am going to share it with one of my kids.</p>

<p>Hbassplayer1, are you considering a music degree because you love it or because you think it is the only way for you to get a degree? If you love it, then great, you can hopefully now move forward without worries that you “should” be doing a double degree.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if you really want to do English, or something else, or go into a college (versus conservatory) undecided and just explore, then read and keep StacJip’s post. I could tell similar stories from my family.</p>

<p>You might want to look at a college like Bennington, which is very small and supportive, and has a good music department as well as literature and other humanities classes. You make your own major, often mixing disciplines. I mentioned this and Lewis and Clark as examples of small liberal arts colleges with music, to another poster recently.</p>

<p>Whatever you decide, people on this forum can suggest schools. It sounds like you have a pretty good list already, for music. You can apply for both options, music and liberal arts, college and conservatory, and then decide in late senior year if you need more time :)</p>

<p>LIfe is flexible and tends to zig and zag a bit. You cannot make a wrong decision!</p>

<p>Again, thanks StacJip!</p>

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<p>I can’t speak to the issues of learning disabilities, haven’t had to deal with that, but one thought I had is with others, I would be careful about getting a BM because “music comes naturally” or is doable. While a BM degree obviously centers around performance, besides the core courses required if you go to a music school in a university, there also is classwork as well, courses like music theory, ear training, music history and the like may be difficult for someone with an LD…it isn’t just ensemble work and practicing for lessons, there is a lot with a BM degree as well. Summer music festivals and the like are not mirrors of a BM degree program, so be very careful about what you choose to do, make sure you find out what a BM entails, what kind of classes are involved, and what a typical student’s days are like…I suspect you will find it doesn’t match what you think it is.</p>

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<p>Indiana
Miami Frost School of music </p>

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<p>I did a dual degree at the University of Hartford/Hartt School many years ago. (I think I was the first person that had done this - others have done it since) and it took 4.5 years and 3 summers and was very stressful but it was exactly what I wanted to do. After reading more about you, I think you should look at a school with a strong music department that allows you to participate in the ensembles( please check on this!) and has the support you need in your non music major - probably smaller is better. University of Hartford/Ithaca could be possibilities. Both have an LAC feel. Susquehanna had extremely welcoming and a vibrant music department when we visited. You will probably be happiest in a school that has strong music options for you to participate in at whatever level you wish - you may change in the four years you are at school but at least the music will be there for you. Visit the schools and listen to rehearsals and concerts - it really helps,</p>

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<p>Miami/Frost is a double major, not a dual degree. So while you could still get the BM, your second “major” in English would not be a second degree. IU does have a dual degree path. So do many other schools.</p>

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