When visiting music colleges (that is colleges within universities, not conservatories), they all touted merit aid for students in the music college. Many said they were based on scores/GPA and some on audition. Doing some research on college confidential, it seems that almost all the merit aid is given to students who qualify for financial aid and the aid is divided (in some fashion) between merit and financial aid (so the school reaches the total financial aid granted). In other words, it sounds like there really isn’t any stand-alone merit aid given to students who don’t already qualify for financial aid. Is that correct? Which colleges actually give merit aid independent of financial aid needs?
We did not qualify for any financial aid but DD received merit award offers from all of her schools. She only applied to music schools within universities. Some combined academic with music but some were music only.
It all depends on the school.Conservatories, in general, tie merit aid to financial need (I know Juilliard does this, NEC does it, I believe some of the other big conservatories do this), it also depends on the music school, the instrument you are on and the studio/teacher IME. I know Juilliard pretty well, and one of the reasons they tie merit aid to financial need is because the level of playing at the school is so generally high, they generally aren’t faced with a situation where they really want to get a kid to come to the school and even though his family is well off, they offer a ton of money to attract them there. Whereas a program or a teacher who really wants someone, who are looking to boost their image/level of playing, will offer merit aid to try and attract the student there even if they are otherwise well off.
My experience with all this, and take it for what its worth, is that with music merit aid if a kid wants to get it without it being tied to need it would require finding a program that really wanted them. Conventional wisdom is it depends on the instrument, too, that for example something relatively rare like an English horn player might have a better chance at good merit aid, but my take is generally that will apply to a program trying to bring up their reputation as well, that Juilliard would not offer an English horn player from a well off family (or what they see as well off) any more merit than they would another instrument, in part because with a school like Juilliard, they can pick and choose among a lot of top level students on any instrument. One of the best pieces of advice someone gave on here a long time ago would be to apply to programs at various levels and see what ends up coming out in terms of aid, financial and otherwise, and make a decision with the one that seems to match at all levels.
There are good programs that offer pretty decent aid, I seem to recall UNT for example offered kids things like in state tuition for out of state students and decent aid. There are programs like Colburn in LA that is totally free ride (and tough to get into ) and Curtis (free tuition).
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Which colleges actually give merit aid independent of financial aid needs? I think many, if not most, do. My impression is that music merit is awarded first and then financial aid "makes up" the difference for those who qualify for financial aid. At least for two (and maybe three, I think, just can't remember) of the schools, my son received his acceptance and merit offer well before financial aid was awarded.
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We did not qualify for financial aid. My D received music merit rewards from a number of schools. My impression is many do give music merit aid depending on their needs and the audition.
The offers were from conservatories within universities and LACs. Some were combined with academic aid too. Some were straight music aid.
My impression as the parent of a wind player (based on what she tells me about her friends from summer programs) is that merit aid opportunity generally varies from one instrument to another based on supply and demand. For example, a stellar (french) horn player has a better shot at merit money than a stellar flutist. I have the impression that you can’t necessarily generalize merit aid patterns from one school to another 100% because certain professors may have more pull to influence merit money decisions than others within the same school.
Just an aside @musicprnt – I wouldn’t use English Horn as an example of a rare, in-demand instrument at the college audition level. Barring specific physical difficulties, 90% of oboe players who would be auditioning for top-level programs can play it well, and hardly any of them own one or consider themselves specialists in it (yet). The instrument has some quirks, but the fingerings (as read) are the same, and it’s generally more cooperative and resonant than the oboe. I’ve heard more than one fair-to-middling high school oboist sound better on the EH than the oboe (virtually the opposite of what you hear from kids making the flute-piccolo transition… Not that I’d suggest anyone rely on the piccolo for money, unless they can find someone to pay them to stop that racket. 
)
For the couple conservatories that I applied to, I was offered merit scholarships of some kind at most of them. Oberlin is generous with merit aid. USC has a couple scholarships available for each instrument / discipline at Thornton. McGill gives merit, though their tuition is pretty negligible as-is.
@noviceatoller:
That is what I get for mentioning an instrument I would think is rare lol.
Yep, the kind of instrument would matter, as well as the relative level of the player to the level of the school. A kid who would be offered a token merit award at Juilliard on violin (it isn’t that they don’t offer merit awards at all, many schools will give at least token merit aid) could very well get a large merit award at the X school of music, because there is a teacher at X who likes the student a lot and/or the student is high level and the school wants to boost their reputation and level of playing. Every school is different and the thing to keep in mind is there are no formulas. I know of one case where a Violist got merit aid large enough to make a program practically free one year, and people assumed this would be true, and were disappointed that in following years the aid was scarce (the story was that an influential teacher wanted the kid at the school a lot, and the happened to need viola players that year). In the end it is like admissions itself, you really can’t guarantee that a school will or won’t give a good merit package.
There are some general guidelines, you are more likely to get strong merit awards from the second tier schools then you are from the first tier ones IME (and that is all it is), the top tier programs because they attract the top tier talent, don’t have to offer inducement to get top tier players to go there as much as that ‘up and coming school’ does. There are certain schools, like Juilliard, that if you are not in the area where you will get pure FA, you likely will get little merit aid (there are always exceptions, but if you applied on flute or violin there, your family is well off, you likely would not get very much merit aid), whereas if you applied to a program considered second tier in terms of admissions, you likely would get more. The only way to really know is apply and see what happens with schools, pick some you think would be decent with merit aid, pick some you would like to go to but aren’t sure, and see what happens from there.
Thanks everyone. He is only applying to music schools within universities and while he is probably good enough to get into many on his “rare” instrument, he wants to do composition, not performance. We won’t get an FA, but merit aid would be helpful. I was really just curious given what the schools said and what I read later (which implied merit aid wasn’t likely without a FA need, or when it was given was a tiny fraction - like at NU).
My D got merit at 6 schools (conservatory and university ) and we do not qualify for FA. She also got academic scholarships and several allowed stacking while others let you take the greater one.
Son received merit music awards from 6 schools. In addition, in-state public schools came through with the best over all packages. 3 privates did bring their overall costs down to on par with in-state public tuition. Some schools did combine academic, leadership and talent dollars. We only looked at schools offering music ed so we were not in the Juilliard pool.
One of the problems with “rare” instruments is that the need for those instruments is diminished as a matter of scale. A conservatory might need 25 violins in a given year (to replace 25 graduating) but one or even zero tuba players. Specific cases can be too nuanced to predict. It sounds like beaglemom has gotten her question answered, but FWIW I’ve seen students with clear financial need offered nothing in terms of scholarship aid at major conservatories whereas students with a far better home situations, applying on the same instrument, may be awarded more scholarship because they had a stronger audition. In other words, it is not always as cut-and-dry as receiving aid in relation to need once you are admitted. The Juilliard financial aid office told me that for undergraduates awards tend to be informed more on financial need than merit (but there is no specific formula.) For graduate students, scholarship decisions are based more on merit.
The whole merit scholarship thing is also confused by the variation in tuition. Oberlin’s merit aid to our son appeared to be quite generous. But it’s tuition is also quite high compared to say NEC. So it’s tuition was still more than NEC, whose merit aid package was smaller.
Also even if you do not qualify for Financial Aide you still need to fill out the FAFSA in order to be eligible for Merit aid from may schools.
Some schools, such as University of Rochester (which has connections to Eastman) have special scholarships for students who plan on minoring in Music.
This.
My D got merit from almost every school she was accepted at last year ( 9 out of 10) The music merit was separate from the academic merit and that was all separate from the FA she qualified for. D applied to Conservatories and Private Uni’s for VP. At 3 of the schools shee could stack merit & academic scholarships with FA for 100% rides.
One note on what @coloraturakid wrote, generally aid is broken down the way she describes, ie there are merit awards, FA awards and academic awards. One thing to note is that while they are seperate, that doesn’t mean that for example a merit award (or an academic one) may not be tied to financial need as well. So a student who came from a modest family background might get X in merit aid, but if they came from a well off family they might only get a fraction of that, same with academic.
In the end like anything else with college admissions you don’t know until you apply and see how the kid does, financial aid whether FA, Merit or Academic, varies from year to year and depends often what the school decides is need, some schools are generous with aid of all kinds (Ivies for example), some are horrible (NYU), all depends, also depends on the school’s desire to have a student, you generally will get better merit aid if you have something desirable, whether it is a student who stands out from the rest of the students (a first tier student in a secondish tier school), a rare instrument or voice type, and so forth. Schools that want to ‘move up in the world’ of music schools generally give better offers than those who make it (subject to all kinds of caveats). In the end it is like applying to music schools in terms of getting in, you apply, audition, then let the chips fall where they may:)
We aren’t eligible for FA so our 3rd daughter (soprano) was looking for merit scholarships right from the start. In general, I can tell you it’s harder to find merit scholarships now than with our older girls a few years ago.
In the end she received merit aid from each of the schools she applied to, including a surprisingly generous offer from NU which was competitive with other offers (and put it solidly in the top two,) and a full tuition offer from our state school. In addition to her audition, she had excellent grades from her public high school and high test scores. Her academics definitely seemed to mean something for merit - but that goes a little against the grain of what you’ll typically hear in this forum.
Voice types mean little or nothing when one is an undergraduate and it’s extremely competitive for graduate school also. It certainly helps to have as much as you can going for you, and I am in full agreement with the comment made by @buoyant about grades being taken into consideration when it comes to merit aid. They can also factor into admission- when it comes down to committees considering relatively equal candidates, especially those being considered in VP, where academic subjects will come into play ( languages, diction, music history, opera workshop with those pesky papers every week, etc) they will look at grades as a measure of determining potential success in the program. I’ve seen merit aid, sometimes quite substantial amounts, awarded on the same basis, taking grades and very high test scores into account, and those students turned out to be outstanding in their college classes as well.
It never hurts to present the best possible transcript and test scores that you can to an admissions committee, under any circumstances. undergrad or graduate.
@Mezzo’sMama :
Don’t want to hijack the thread, but was curious, conventional wisdom used to be that with voice, that a ‘rare’ type (for example, a contratenor) would make it easier to get in/get merit money…has it gotten to the point with voice that that doesn’t matter any more? Kind of sounds like instrumental music, where the concept of, for example, being on a bassoon or oboe would get you more money/easier admission has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Back to the regular thread:
The only thing with test scores and grades (and I agree totally it never hurts to have them, though it will mean less with a conservatory then a program in a university), is what has been discussed on here before, that if achieving those high grades and test scores (taking, for example,honors and AP classes) comes at the expense of music preparation, don’t go crazy with the academics because if you don’t get into the music school, the grades and such won’t matter. Not saying tank the academics or not prep for the tests, just saying take the road that allows for high grades and test scores but doesn’t hurt the music side (and obviously, all depends on the kid, how good they are, teaching, there is no magic rule). Only thing I know for a fact is that having the high SAT/GPA/AP classes won’t get you into a performance program if you aren’t good enough…(
@musicprnt - No, not at the undergraduate level, there are no “rare” type voices because voices at those ages develop and change so it’s difficult to know what you’re going to end up with in four years much less six or even farther on. Countertenors are no longer unusual but a lot of guys (and they are baritones, not tenors!) don’t realize that they have that ability before they get advanced training. But please note that I have seen conservatories, and top-tier ones, use grades & test scores in these cases, so singers, take notice, please- it can give you an edge depending upon where you apply.