Ideas for high school sophomore just starting; interest in marching band, video/film/web design majors, small to medium school

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US domestic
  • State/Location of residency: PA but open to other states and regions
  • Type of high school: public, small suburban
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity: white
  • Other special factors: marching band, wind ensemble, vocal performance

Intended Major(s): film, video, graphic design

  • HS GPA: 4.125
  • Class Rank: NA school doesn’t rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: NA haven’t taken yet

Coursework
*AP History, Spanish,

Extracurriculars
marching band, wind ensemble, TSA, theater, choir

Just want to get some ideas to help narrow down!

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How much can your family afford to pay annually?

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I’d wait another year to seriously think about specific colleges. You have just one year of grades & ECs and no standardized test scores. You also need to speak to your parents about any financial or other restrictions you may have.

If you want, look through some good guide books (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review) and you can get an idea about some of the different types of colleges out there.

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I would start by filtering for marching band as I suspect that will be most limiting. The biggest band programs tend to be associated with big football programs.

Some schools have scholarships for band, and if that’s a factor, start by seeing if they are of interest.

If you are interested in pursuing your music interests in other ways besides marching band, there are many more options.

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The original poster is the parent

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How serious is student about marching band? Some marching bands are by audition only and take a huge time commitment for travel. Others are “just for fun” and range in quality and time commitment.

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Impossible to narrow down if the student has no preferences. Now – or, actually, in a year, before and during junior year in high school --is the time to visit an assortment of schools (big/small, rural/urban, religious/non religious, more artsy/more preppy etc). That will narrpw things right there. Then figure out what your budget is, which can also narrow the pool. And then come to us for suggestions :slight_smile:

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Weighted - or unweighted?

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$50-60K without loans/scholarships/grants

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It is weighted (all major subjects were honors courses, all As except 1 B). Grades are weighted for honors = 1.125

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Generally the U/W GPA is of higher interest (as each school will have different weighting schemes). Sounds like your student could be in the 3.8x to 3.9 range for the four years (which of course is excellent), depending if the school awards A+, and how A vs. A+ are calibrated on their 4.0 scale.

Ohhhh, it just clicked: a rising sophomore? So that’s just the freshman grade!

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There are many schools that might not have marching bands but will still have pep bands that play at games and spirit events. So if you’re flexible on marching band (or maybe just want to have fun with band without a really serious commitment) that might open up more possibilities with small/medium schools, or schools that might have basketball and hockey but not football.

I know a lot of marching band kids who want a break after four years of HS marching band – so the level of commitment could well change. Too early to know.

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To follow up on the comments of @cinnamon1212, the Spring semester of my kids’ respective sophomore years in high school was when we started taking a few college visits, always trying to visit a campus when the college was in session (to see the real, live student body there). Over the next year we visited large, medium, small, urban, suburban, and rural campuses; in order to give the kids an idea what they might want in terms of a college. Then, based on those impressions, we would focus on schools that fit so that we could really narrow things down for the final round of pre-application visits in Fall semester of the senior high school year.

Of course, my son swore up and down that he wanted to go to a university in a big city, and we spent most of his college visits looking at those types of schools. He ended up going to college in West Lafayette, Indiana – not exactly an urban megalopolis.

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It is, of course, very early, as other posters have said. But I understand the value of having a few “proof of concept” schools to try on for size.

The one that comes to mind for your criteria is the University of Miami. It’s on the larger end of mid-sized (12K undergrads) but it’s hard to find small schools with robust marching band programs, so this is probably a good compromise between small and huge, as many big-football + marching band schools are. UMiami has a great, but reasonably inclusive, marching band program https://bandofthehour.miami.edu/ as well as great music in general through its Frost School of Music. The School of Communications has majors in Cinematic Arts (multiple tracks) and Interactive Media, and the Art department in Arts & Sciences has Graphic Design, Illustration, & Multimedia major. Admissions are competitive, with a 27% acceptance rate, but median stats aren’t sky-high, so it’s likely a realistic target if your son keeps her grades up as he has been. As such, it’s a good level of school to develop a fondness for at this stage of the game - not a highly-rejective “Hail Mary” reach school, but one that does require the kind of strong credentials that are attainable if she keeps up the way he’s going.

What you’ll need to figure out over time is whether your son aspires to programs that are ultra-competitive in one way or another. There are the schools that are just hard to get into in general. (Example: Notre Dame - 9000 undergrads, serious football & marching band, and has both visual communication design and film/television/theater majors) There are the schools where film in particular is extra-competitive and would require a strong portfolio to even apply (Example: U of Southern CA, which is also not an easy admit in general… 20K undergrads, marching band, multiple design and film-related majors.) There are schools where, as mentioned above, getting a spot in the marching band isn’t guaranteed. (I knew one kid through CC who chose his school for the band and then found out he didn’t get a spot. Happily, he ultimately got a spot off the band’s waitlist after all, and ended up having a great experience, but there was a period of big heartbreak before that came through.)

The other consideration, if he wants one of these creative majors, is whether he wants an intense/immersive BFA program or a BA program that operates like other “normal” academic majors. The former can make it harder to make other time-intensive commitments like marching band… but if she’s super-serious about film or design, a BFA could be the way to go.

So, lots to think about.

One more thought would be Belmont University in Nashville. (Caveat: this is a Christian school, and opinions differ on how comfortable an environment it is for non-Christian or less-religious students - YMMV.) Belmont is very highly regarded in music and other creative fields, and it has both film and graphic design programs. It has only about 5500 undergrads and no football, but nearby Vanderbilt University has a marching band that welcomes participants from Belmont and several other area schools. Vanderbilt Spirit of Gold Marching Band | Vanderbilt Athletic Bands | Vanderbilt University So that’s one way to attend a small, artsy school and still get the football/marching band experience!

Good luck with figuring things out over the next few years!

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I’ll bite. From your username, I suspect you know how early this is in the process and that ideas at this stage are more for testing ideas and possibilities out rather than looking for the X number of schools your kid will end up applying to. But, I was always interested in colleges from a very early age, and it’s not unreasonable to include a college visit while on vacation or taking a road break or similar.

First off, I’ll indicate that I’m a strong believer in first looking for schools where a student is likely to be admitted. For some, those can be harder to find. Alternatively, schools with more modest budgets can have a much harder time competing if all the schools a kid has been exposed to have endowments larger than some countries’ GDPs.

With that said, here are few schools I’d start off with that are in Pennsylvania or a neighboring state:

  • Temple: Large and very urban and seems really aligned to some of your kid’s interests
  • Penn State: Huge and rural
  • U. of Pittsburgh: Large and urban

Baldwin Wallace (OH): About 2700 undergrads in a suburb of Cleveland with a marching band. The Digital Media & Design major has both a Graphic Design track and an Interactive Design track. Its Film Studies major has lots of hands-on work or there’s a minor in Media Production if that ends up suiting your kid’s interests better.

Bowling Green State (OH): About 14k undergrads in an, ahem, suburb of Toledo also has a marching band. Some of the majors that might be of interest include Film Production, Graphic Design, Media Production and Studies, as well as Digital Arts.

Montclair State (NJ): This school of about 17k undergrads is about a half hour outside of New York City and has a pep band but not a marching band. But it also can give food for thought as your kids interests further develop, as there is a BFA in Filmmaking as well as a BA in Television and Digital Media. The Communication and Media Arts and Visual Communication Design majors may also be of interest.

Stevenson (MD): This school with about 3k undergrads in a suburb of Baltimore has marching and pep bands and majors in Film and Moving Image and in Graphic Design.

Susquehanna (PA ): Though there’s not a marching band, there is a stadium band for home football games. It offers a major in Graphic Design as well an interesting major in Broadcasting.

Ohio U. (about 18k undergrads) and Syracuse (NY, about 15k undergrads) are two other schools in nearby states that could be worth checking out. (Ran out of pep :wink: to link the relevant majors and ensembles.)

I agree with @gardenstategal that marching band and/or pep band could be among the hardest parts to coordinate, as there were some schools that I thought would have been great fits for the academic interests but didn’t have those kind of musical ensembles (like Rochester Institute of Technology).

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Ohio University has a fabulous marching band! Really terrific. (And I mean the college in Athens Ohio). The school has great school spirit, and the college town of Athens is really great! Says this proud alum!

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Good question. I don’t think super competitive where they audition each week. But schools like Syracuse don’t require auditions to join (just previous experience). You just audition for your part. Definitely not interested in a huge Big10 type school. More like in between liberal arts and comprehensive university.

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Thanks! I forget that Ohio U is different from OSU!

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This is amazing – very helpful! And yes “it’s early” but … there are 3,000+ schools and narrowing things is so helpful! Plus all of these visits need to be organized… Great list with schools I didn’t even know of or know they had band!

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This is very helpful – yes, just looking for some reasonable starting points – outside of our immediate area, with which we’re pretty familiar (SE PA has lots and lots of colleges, but I think getting away even an hour or two is good). Belmont or Vandy wouldn’t have come to mind immediately, so having the names as proof of concept, like you said, is a good starting place! Of course, USC! But … I don’t think it’s realistic, so let’s add more to the mix and have options – reasonable options. Not looking for ultra competitive, but definitely a strong overall academic experience with room to add/change majors. Thx!

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