<p>Check this one out, </p>
<p>[Top</a> Music Schools Ranking in 2010 | U.S. College Rankings](<a href=“http://www.uscollegeranking.org/music/top-music-schools-ranking-in-2010.html]Top”>http://www.uscollegeranking.org/music/top-music-schools-ranking-in-2010.html)</p>
<p>Well, their stated methodology has nothing to do with music. I don’t think anyone who knew the schools would put the Shepherd School of Music at Rice in #21. And Yale does not have an undergrad performance degree. They are also mixing types of music and degrees. I have never seen a successful attempt to do a global ranking. It depends what you are looking for.</p>
<p>A) do your research based on your personal needs
B) audition and gain entry to the best school that fulfills those personal requirements
C) google the name of the school you have chosen and “top ten music schools” and SOMEWHERE on the internet your school will appear on a top ten list. And now you have the ranking handy, so that when Uncle Bob asks, you can point out----“Hey it’s number three!”</p>
<p>Those rankings are interesting, they remind me of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” where Arthur Dent asks for a cup of tea, and he gets something that is almost but not entirely unlike a cup of tea…this ranking is like that, almost but not entirely off the point about what a good music school is or isn’t. Happens there are some great music schools on here, but some of them are head scratchers…</p>
<p>More importantly, their methodology is basically hashing up the rankings in US News, college guides and so forth and making claims it means something. As others have pointed out time and again, a great music school is one that works for the student, and things these measures use, like SAT scores, GPA, etc, generally mean very little about someone going into music (if we are talking performance). They are lumping together it looks like performance with academic based music degrees (musicology, for example) and applying rankings that mean nothing about how good the school is. Juilliard is probably #4 because it tends to attract students who also did well in their academics, for example, but because the audition is all that matters, the GPA and so forth basically means squat in terms of how good Juilliard is, or any other performance program. There is one school on the list, University of Illinois/Champagne, that is a top notch academic school but as far as I know isn’t distinguised in performance, if it even as one (I suspect it may have an academic music program). </p>
<p>The key to the school is not in rankings, it is in making your own rankings, which means seeing how good the teachers are, how much performance opportunities you can get, and also how you feel you fit in…for some kids, CIM is the cat’s meow, other kids might consider cleveland the cat’s litter box and Curtis the mecca, and so forth…there are things that the great music schools have in common, which would be excellent faculty, performance opportunities and a proven track record of kids coming out and actually doing things, good facilities and so forth…and actually, the rankings may not be the school, but the program you are in, School A might be paradise for UG violinists, but be less desireable for singers (because UG singers are treated second class), another school might treat UG singers as gods and goddesses, and violin students are at the back of the bus:)</p>
<p>I was wondering when that silly list would finally show up in the music majors forum! And any organization that engages in ranking without explaining their methodology is is not worth a second glance. In reality, rankings for schools, aside from quantifiable measures such as applications vs admissions (and even those numbers can be tweaked and fiddled with) is pretty pointless. Sometimes there isn’t even a best school for <em>you</em>– just several good potential schools, all with pluses and minuses.</p>
<p>Like a boil, it keeps coming back.</p>
<p>Good for a laugh or two.</p>
<p>Amused at how many of those schools don’t offer jazz at all. I guess jazz isn’t music.</p>
<p>well the list posted a few posts up is certainly laughable. Ranking Shepherd any lower than the top five or six obviously shows a serious lack of knowledge. And Eastman so high? Sure its great but above IU, Juilliard, Curtis, and Shepherd…not so sure. Regardless, music school rankings are preposterous.</p>
<p>And please do not respond to this comment saying that my opinion on music schools is right or wrong. This is merely an observation!!!</p>
<p>Don’t take the bait musicmom84! The minute you start sending out your own rankings, they’ve gotcha! ;)</p>
<p>We’re list-oriented. </p>
<p>Eight months ago, as a parent without first-hand knowledge of music degrees, music schools, music careers, I looked for lists and books and guides - to help me make sense of it all. Lists, such as the one attached, provided a starting place.</p>
<p>Today, having been thru the process a bit, it is easy for me to see the drawbacks of such a list; certainly I’ve learned that ranking has no meaning.</p>
<p>Most of the schools my d applied to are, in fact, on the list. And she certainly considered several of the others. Most (if not all) are the very schools that appear on CC’s master list of acceptances each year.</p>
<p>@JamesBrook - thank you for sharing the link</p>
<p>I didn’t see where that arbitrary list drew its data from at all – but based on what it had listed in the top 5 positions, we should let viewers know that parts of it MAY have come from a dated, 16-year-old peer evaluation of GRADUATE Masters in Music programs, which is not necessarily directly connected to undergrad programs, as well as possibly having an academic bias as another poster noted that might not treat conservatories evenly. The tip off for me was the inclusion of UIUC.</p>
<p>The source material I’m referring to is a 1994 USNWR ranking of grad programs that was “divined” using this particular form of magic (because really, this is nothing more than a popularity “top of mind awareness” contest):
Surveys distributed to: “Deans, top administrators and senior faculty at accredited schools” asking to rank on reputation on a scale of 1-5 for MMus degrees: (which again, speaks nothing of particular departmental strengths, etc.:)</p>
<p>I personally do not have a problem with peer evaluations – they can be meaningful – if they are gathered in a highly transparent way and well constructed surveys – but you can only “make” them mean so much 
There is a 1997 evaluation that although arbitrary, made a more cogent attempt to do so.</p>
<p>But the thing to note is that among the 8 named in the 1994 roundup which I think may have been cribbed into part of that non-transparent ranking list posted in the link, is that there is not more than a .4 weight spread in “reputation” – 4.4 to 4.8. </p>
<p>– Those differentials are MINUTE when you consider the subjectivity and inherent bias of the audience surveyed.</p>
<ol>
<li>INDIANA UNIVERSITY AT BLOOMINGTON 4.80</li>
<li>JUILLIARD SCHOOL (N.Y.) 4.80</li>
<li>UNIV. OF ROCHESTER–EASTMAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC (N.Y.) 4.80</li>
<li>UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 4.70</li>
<li>CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC (Pa.) 4.60</li>
<li>NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY (Ill.) 4.50</li>
<li>YALE UNIVERSITY (Conn.) 4.50</li>
<li>NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC (Mass.) 4.40</li>
<li>OBERLIN COLLEGE CONSERVATORY (Ohio) 4.40</li>
<li>UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 4.40</li>
<li>UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 4.40</li>
</ol>
<p>What I find laughable is that “music” is not just “music.” Schools with the best voice programs don’t necessarily have the best violin, cello, trumpet, etc. etc. etc. programs. Someone relying on that list for any help at all could be completely misled based on the instrument. Another issue is that a program can change drastically within a year or two when certain teachers leave since the most important aspect of fit is the teacher.</p>
<p>mtpaper—if as you say “ranking has no meaning” then what’s the point of rankings? We probably all began our search, one way or another, with some faulty list. I look at discussions and criticism of such lists as a help to others who might help themselves by skipping this flawed starting point.</p>
<p>musicmusica – that is very true in that case I will post my list. I am a current masters student in cello performance. Here is my list:</p>
<p>1) Indiana University – Bloomington (Jacobs SOM)
2) Juilliard School
3) Rice University (Shepherd SOM)
4) Curtis Institute of Music
5) Rochester University (Eastman SOM)
6) Yale University
7) Northwestern University (Henry and Leigh Bienen SOM)
8) New England Conservatory
9) Oberlin College
10) University of Michigan – Ann Arbor</p>
<p>I certainly know that when I was an undergrad these lists made you aware of what names to listen for and to research. There are certainly a number of other fabulous programs out there besides the ones that I have mentioned above. And remember, as Cartera45 has said, some schools are better for certain programs than others. </p>
<p>IMPORTANT!!!
Don’t rely only on a flawed top 10 list because there are some schools that may not be in this list but still have one of the best programs in the country. Also, lists are ever changing and ALWAYS ambiguous.</p>
<p>@musicamusica
Discussion and criticism of such lists is great. My post was not a criticism of lists. I love lists.</p>
<p>Poster was trying to be helpful and sharing. </p>
<p>If I had posted a link to that list 8 months ago as my initial post on CC-Music Major forum, and received comparable reactions, I think I would have been put-off from participating in the forum. Then again, I tend to take things very personal and can over-react; hopefully the poster is not as thin-skinned.</p>
<p>I didn’t read the OP’s post to suggest that he thought it was a great list. I guess I read a little levity into the “check this one out” comment. </p>
<p>I guess we can love the poster/hate the list?</p>
<p>
I agree that numbers are easily manipulated in ranking efforts. But I would add that peer assessment is generally meaningful, or at the very least, meaningful if you care what a professional insider thinks of peer programs to which they are professionally exposed. Yes, at the end of the day it is highly personalized FIT, FINANCES, TEACHER, INSTRUMENT/DEPARTMENT – but it doesn’t necessarily hurt to evaluate qualitative aspects such as PA (peer assessment) – AS LONG AS YOU CAN SEE THE METRIC BY WHICH THEY’RE ASSESSING IT.</p>
<p>So I don’t know that I’d call them pointless so much as imprecise to student/talent matching.</p>
<p>I think that these lists are merely a starting point for people researching where to study music at the college level. It’s easy to forget that most mere mortals know NOTHING about studying music as a major. The only school that most folks have ever even heard of is Juilliard. Until I began researching schools for my D, I never knew that U Mich, or Indiana or Oberlin or Northwestern or… had any sort of quality music program. So it’s reasonable for someone to look for a list somewhere as a way to start the search. I don’t see why anyone gets worried about this. It’s a research tool, nothing more. The same schools come up on these lists, in different rankings all the time. Choosing one acceptance over another based upon any of these rankings is not useful, but as a starting point for research, why not?</p>
<p>I agree that a list can be a useful starting point. I do not think that many parents or students are so naive as to take any list as definitive: i.e. that because school X is higher on the list than school Y, that every student at school X will learn more than they would have if they had gone to school Y. </p>
<p>Because there are hundreds of colleges with music programs (and most of those programs have many proponents that claim they are excellent), it is helpful to have lists that narrow things down a bit; very often one of the initial posts that a person makes to this board is for a list of recommended schools (and, of course, if they haven’t specified their instrument, their ambitions, their background etc. very few suggestions are usually forthcoming–which is as it should be–no list can meet the needs of all music students); and we all look at the lists of places where students have been accepted. </p>
<p>I do find the list in question worse than most that I have seen, and I can’t determine what criteria were used for ranking the schools. Colburn is not on it, but surely if one judges by the calibre of instructors and students, it should be near the top of the heap.</p>