Is there an "average" music merit $ award?

College Majors Music Major
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<p>As I ran the NPCs at a variety of schools today, I am shocked by what our EFC is at various schools. So shocked in fact, that I am thinking that DD needs to eliminate several schools from her list, because they are simply not affordable to us, which would certainly make audition travel much easier, BUT would disappoint her! She is planning to major in Composition, and where an audition is required, she would audition on viola. </p>

<p>U of Miami for instance, needs to knock about $30K from their price tag to be affordable (their NPC shows our cost to be about what we hope to pay for TWO kids and is completely out of line with every other school I looked at! Her ACT scores eliminate her from the academic scholarship $). Michigan is another place that needs to come down quite a bit to be affordable for us. So, how much music merit $ is reasonable to expect from schools if they like her?? Are awards like $5K or more like $20K?? Or does it vary dramatically between schools or even in the same school??</p>

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<p>Music awards are all over the place.<br>
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlrYKCkVJdIBdGQ2XzdTTWJ6YVFrZ3BnTGxhYldHMHc[/url]”>2013 CC Music Major Data - Google Sheets;
This is a link to the spreadsheet that BassDad compiled for this years acceptances. Some users also posted the scholarship awards. Scroll through the list and check out schools to see if any awards were reported from schools your twin might be interested in. Some schools are historically more generous than others. You can also look through previous years’ acceptances, too.<br>
Try to cast a wide net and include financial/musical safeties and some reaches on your list. You never know.</p>

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<p>Awards can vary widely from school to school, concentration to concentration and even from year to year. Then, add in the fact that some years are packed with prime auditioning talent while others may not have such an outstanding crop of applicants and the answer is…it’s a crap shoot!
You can also apply for local scholarships and awards which may help out with the cost of the first year at school. There is also work-study, which at some schools is internally funded.
Also look at the cost of living in the locale- for instance, it’s a lot cheaper in Cleveland than in NYC and in Madison, WI vs Chicago. Then add in transportation to and from home- air fare, driving, train or bus, and how many trips each year, books, food…there’s a lot more than just tuition to consider.
If there are schools that you are certain are going to be totally non-affordable, better to discuss this now with your D and have her be disappointed, than to have her get in and not be able to accept. There is nothing to say that she can’t work, even while attending school, and help pay for some of her education either. Good luck to you as you begin the journey!</p>

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<p>I have 4 kids, 3 currently in college, and, like Momofbassist, one thing I’ve learned is that you cannot predict financial awards (except in some rare instances, such as state universities that give merit awards on a predetermined scale based on GPA, etc.) For that reason it’s probably a good strategy to cast a wide net. You really won’t know until April, or even later, if you appeal awards. Of course there are some ways to narrow the field-- schools with small endowments may give less merit award. But if you read this forum closely you’ll see that awards are hard to predict. Mezzo’sM makes a good point about cost of living, travel distance, etc. When one of my kids lived in Cleveland, the huge 3-bedroom apartment she shared cost $300/month. A place like that in New York-- well, it doesn’t exist for the lower 99%. It’s also true that workstudy and other student employment opportunities vary widely from school to school. Juilliard, for example, has self-funded workstudy, available to anyone who wishes to work, and opportunities for high-paying fellowships. At other schools, you need to qualify financially for workstudy; the wages are low, and it’s hard to find work at all. </p>

<p>My advice would be not to eliminate a school based on the EFC calculator unless there other factors, such as small endowment, large travel costs, an expensive-to-live-in city. If you cast a wide net, you may have more leverage for appealing aid next spring, if necessary.</p>

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<p>Agree, you do not need to eliminate a school now except under unusual circumstances. Make sure you have a wide variety of schools including financial safeties. Let her know that if she auditions at financial reaches and they do not come through with enough merit awards she will not be allowed to accept the offer. We were surprised at the variety of offers and in the end it all worked out. Even though her favorite did not come through with enough merit awards for her to attend, the one she accepted turned out to be perfect for her. </p>

<p>Many schools use merit and need to award financial aid. Many use their own calculators for need. Some use merit alone. It is very hard to predict.</p>

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<p>It can vary from program to program in the same school, and can vary from year to year and so on. But I agree that you just CANNOT know where you sit until you’ve had all your offers in. </p>

<p>Eg. Michigan is expensive for OOS, but with its residence cost, it still ends up being about $10 k cheaper than comparative PRIVATE schools (and obviously substantially more than most public schools given its stature.)</p>

<p>Stats are germane at UMich because you can stack academic and talent awards – my son attended 2009-2013 and was one of the lucky ones whose merit aid offset his (instate) tuition. Many of his peers are OOS, and their awards or lack thereof are all over the map. Some high EFC students will not receive much, if any merit (as it can be to some extent need-informed) but some students will receive well into the $10,000 - $20,000 range, particularly if they’re a “double” threat – extremely talented and very high academic stats.</p>

<p>One poster on here who was very competitive and admitted for Michigan, for example, received $20K at Miami but nothing from UMich. In general, Miami seems to have some very strong, equalizing merit awards and a track record for giving them.</p>

<p>Others, however, have said over the years that at the end of the day, Michigan often ends up being on par in terms of cost with several other options.</p>

<p>So again, the devil is in the details and sadly the details are nowhere to be found until the 11th hour. </p>

<p>Even the old saw about NYU being completely unaffordable to some will turn up instances of $20k awards, or CMU, also notoriously expensive and allegedly stingy, will now and then cough up a surprise.</p>

<p>So it’s a bit of a crap shoot.</p>

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<p>So, from what I’m reading, I guess our travel calendar is going to stay full this winter! ;)</p>

<p>Thanks for the link, momofbassist. Found it quite interesting.</p>

<p>The academic merit $ piece may be just as random for her as the potential music merit…highest ACT was 29, but takes rigorous classes, has 4s on 3 APs, and has a 3.98 GPA uw (Top 10%). I guess that if a school REALLY wants her, those stats will allow the school to offer academic $ in addition to music $, even though she doesn’t qualify for most automatic awards, due to the ACT.</p>

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<p>We told our son to disregard stated tuition when developing his initial list, because you cannot tell until you get the award letter what the actual price will be. That said, we also encouraged him to develop a list with some financial safety schools as well. It is vital that you have at least one financial safety school on your list that your kid won’t see as a distance second choice, because that’s where he or she may end up. </p>

<p>Also, not all schools will give talent awards in addition to academic awards. My son goes to Hartt, and because he got a talent award, he was automatically excluded from consideration for an academic scholarship even though he met the requirements. </p>

<p>Definitely make your kid aware that if he or she may have some high cost colleges on the list that an acceptance from that college does not necessarily mean that he or she will be allowed to go there. </p>

<p>My son did audition at the University of Miami, and it was the only school where he got no merit award. He and the professor with whom he auditioned did not click, and I think that had a lot to do with it.</p>

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<p>I would consider getting a tutor for your D in order to retake the ACT’s. Her GPA is definitely high enough, that with a high ACT score, she could definitely get some nice academic scholarships. I did this for my D, and her ACT score rose quite a bit.</p>

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<p>Sadly, after she got a 28 and a 29, we hired a private tutor…and her score DROPPED to a 27!!! Complete waste of $500!! Her math score went up to a 30, and her science score also went up to a 28…but English and Reading plummeted!! And, I’m not convinced that her math and science scores wouldn’t have gone up just due to 6 more mos of Honors Precalc and Physics…</p>

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<p>Collegefortwins,
Does your daughter have a diagnosed LD. If so you can have a neuropsychologist or the school psychologist write a letter explaining that your daughter does not test well and her scores are not a reflection of her academic potential. </p>

<p>Most colleges acknowledge that the ACT and SAT have issues and that some bright children simply do not do well on them. It is not unusual to have a child who no matter how much they are tutored their scores on these types of tests remain low.</p>

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<p>I would think that spending the time practicing for the audition or taking extra lessons might be a better use of time than a SAT/ACT tutoring session, since music programs hand out merit aid pretty much solely on the basis of the student’s performance on audition day.</p>

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<p>AP course earning grades of 4 or 5 on the exams can cover gen ed courses at some schools, which can save $$ and open up schedules. My D only had to take one required gen ed course which allowed her to take classes that she wouldn’t have been able to fit in otherwise and moved her up in “time” so that she was able to register for courses with upperclassmen as a second semester freshman so she had “first choice” of sections that filled quickly.</p>

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<p>Although it depends on the school. Some won’t let you pass out of any gen eds. If you had a crystal ball and knew where you were going, you could decide whether to take those AP tests!</p>

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<p>glassharmonica - you are so right! None of my D’s AP classes will help her at UMich. Luckily, she only took two, and only took one AP exam. We never even bothered to check her score, because it won’t help her pass out of any classes for her major anyway. That crystal ball sure would have been appreciated a year ago!!</p>

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<p>Yes, it’s so hard to know what to do in advance. My daughter did not take any APs (her school didn’t offer them.) If she’d gone to IU, that would have put her behind with so many gen es. Same if she’d gone to CIM. But she went to Juilliard where APs have no currency at all. You take a couple of placement tests during orientation, but otherwise, everyone is at square one. A younger daughter went to Fordham for theater and learned that her APs would only count as electives, which is kind of useless in her overpacked schedule, due to their core requirement. But if she’d chosen a slightly different, comparable programs, those AP scores would have had a lot of purchase.</p>

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<p>Yep, glassharmonica, that’s why I said “some” schools! If a program does require gen ed courses spread across disciplines, the AP’s can help, but AP Music Theory is the one class that will almost never be counted within a strong performance major (but they just might “test up” on the initial placement exam and not have to begin in 101 or pre-con theory).
D’s program required an elective in Social Studies/History, Math, Science and the ubiquitous English Comp course (which could only be exempted by a 4-5 in AP Eng Lang & Comp, not Lang & Lit). She used her AP classes for those and also tested completely out of French because she is fluent- she still had to take Italian and German and all of the diction courses. It’s also somewhat different for VP majors as opposed to instrumentalists because they can have differing schedules.</p>

<p>And now, it’s back to all of that placement testing again before grad school classes begin!</p>

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<p>Don’t forget about CLEP tests to pass out of gen ed requirements. They can be taken at any time (unlike the AP). My DS took US History part 2 and now has 3 college credits. All the schools he is considering take the CLEP credit and require one semester of history(most public schools do). His top choice school requires 2 semesters of history, so if he ends up going there he will prep and take the part 1 test. He took the Music Theory AP but as previously stated, that will not count in his major. He got a 5, it made him happy. He also plans to take the CLEP for College Algebra because he hates math class but does fine on the tests.</p>