I know that Juilliard for undergraduate is notoriously difficult to get into having an acceptance rate of around 7%. I was wondering is there masters program that difficult to get into as well? Are there any good music schools in NYC that are good but not so intensely competitive to get into? This is mainly for vocal performance, piano performance, and music composition.
Juilliard is just as tough grad as undergrad, if not more so, lot of students that didn’t go there undergrad try for it in grad school. As to the second part of the question, it really depends on what you mean. Mannes for example is generally not as competitive as let’s say Juilliard or MSM, but in voice it is incredibly hard to get into from what I hear, so it is a hard question to answer. MSM and Mannes are less competitive than Juilliard for the most part, but that doesn’t mean they are easy, either, so a lot of it depends on how good the student is. There are programs at Queens college that is less competitive than MSM or Mannes, NYU is easily as competive as MSM or Mannes…I am sure there are others.
Look at CUNY’s. Brooklyn for example. Scroll down on this list:
http://brooklyn.cuny.edu/programs/index.jsp?div=G