<p>Does anybody know if McGill has the same academic standards for music majors as the rest of the university ? It is difficult to ascertain from their website.</p>
<p>I have seen inconsistent answers to this question. In general, yes, I think the academic standard is lower. I have seen on their website that you need a minimum of a B+, I have also seen an average of an 80. My son asked admissions this question and they indicated there is some flexibility. Your best bet would be to call the head of Music Admissions and ask him.</p>
<p>cello-mom: I assume by “academic standards,” you mean entrance requirements rather than “academic standards” (which in the absence of any reference to entrance or admission normally refers to standards imposed by the university on its professors and its students rather than on prospective students). </p>
<p>Does “McGill have the same academic standards for music majors as the rest of the university?”</p>
<p>First, the rest of the university does not have a uniform standard policy on admission standards. Each school, college or faculty at McGill has its own academic standards for entrance–the standards are not uniform throughout the university since students apply to specific schools, colleges or faculties. The Canadian conception of a university is somewhat different from an American one–in Canada, a university is a collection of colleges and schools which are relatively autonomous in many regards; when students apply to a Canadian university, they normally must select which college or school they wish to apply to.</p>
<p>I think that music is fairly flexible (and its entrance requirement is probably lower in regards to academics than some of McGill’s other entitites). I have known quite a few students who have attended McGill for music (and other disciplines). Most of the music students were excellent scholars, so there was never any concern about meeting the academic standards; however, I have known several music students that were not good students and they were admitted (and helped keep the class averages in their Schulich classes at an acceptably low level!). </p>
<p>Because McGill draws a much larger international group of students than possibly any other North American university (and certainly larger than the Ivies), it is difficult to set hard rules regarding academic entrance standards–a 90% means very different things in Canada versus the US (and something different yet in Hong Kong or India), and a 4.0 is meaningless in much of Canada (since most provinces do not use GPA’s). </p>
<p>Short answer: As VMT mentioned, call Music Admissions. If an auditioner plays very well, academics are unlikely to prevent admission to music (unless the academic weakness is so pronounced that it is clear the student would not survive academically).</p>
<p>Thanks, I’ll check with admissions.</p>
<p>I wasn’t sure if this school was as competitive as say Rice or Northwestern for the academic admission.</p>
<p>Of McGill, Rice, and Northwestern, I believe that for music student admissions, Northwestern keeps the academic bar the highest and most rigid. I would have assumed that Rice was next highest (since for non-music students Rice is a tougher admit than McGill or Northwestern), but my son’s experience sitting in on Rice music classes suggested that Rice has considerable flexibility with the academic bar for its music students, some of whom appeared to my son to lack rather basic academic and intellectual skills.</p>
<p>Once admitted to the Schulich School of Music at McGill, the non-music course requirements for completing a degree are much less rigid than Rice’s or NW’s: Rice has all kinds of gen.ed./distribution requirements that all music students must satisfy, whereas McGill has almost none and even those few are very wide open. While McGill does allow considerable freedom in selecting courses, the grading standards are quite tough compared to Rice and NW–American students (both direct-entry and transfers) frequently complain about having to achieve at a much higher level at McGill to get an A than they would have had to at a comparable US university. Canada, as usual, is behind the US by a decade or two–in this case (grade inflation), not necessarily a bad thing:)</p>