<p>I'm currently in the process of looking for a college to go to. What I wanted to do is Double Major in Music Performance with my violin and Music Education. I'm having a hard time finding good schools that offer the program.</p>
<p>I found that Ithaca College in NY and The Hartt School of Music in CT offer these programs and they are schools I'm interested in.</p>
<p>Maybe I'm just a little incompetent of whether only a few schools offer this program or if most schools offer it. I've still got questions to ask my teachers, but I thought it'd be nice with the reinforcement of other people.</p>
<p>What I'm looking for is help on what schools are good for music, if they offer this double degree program, and possibly the intensity of studies and the tuition. </p>
<p>Just a few words or a simple link would help. Thanks so much and I appreciate the help</p>
<p>I’ll add more once it’s been moved. There are search-able data bases at Strings [All</a> Things Strings: All Things Strings for: Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass](<a href=“http://www.stringsmagazine.com/]All”>http://www.stringsmagazine.com/) and Strad [The</a> Strad - Degrees](<a href=“http://www.thestrad.com/Degrees.asp]The”>http://www.thestrad.com/Degrees.asp) Magazines. (I quickly looked now at the Strings updated version, and found it sorely lacking from their prior versions. You would be better served to get your hands on the hard copy issue. Ask your teacher, fellow string players, musical peers to borrow a copy.) </p>
<p>Without knowing more of your musical training and background experiences, and a bit of your academic profile, it’s difficult to be specific, but you can add SUNY Potsdam/Crane, Lawrence U, Shenandoah, IU/Jacobs, UMich Ann Arbor (and any number of solid programs at state flagships) to name but a few.</p>
<p>The performance/ed combo is one of the most time and credit intensive degree combos, and many are designed as five year programs. UHartford/Hartt is one. There are also programs such as Oberlin, that are five year, but are designed as BM/MM offerings.</p>
<p>Costs will vary considerably, but a number of factors will be in play, including talent awards offered as a result of audition results.</p>
<p>As I see the thread has been moved, a bit more detail.</p>
<p>A title search on “music education” will yield 43 threads, 35 for “music ed”. I honestly urge you to read them all, as you will see common questions and themes oft repeated, including the performance/ed dual conundrum. Understand what a music ed degree is designed to do, which is to train and establish a student for initial licensure/certification to teach music within a k-12 public school setting. It is not required to teach in a private school, or in studio settings. Don’t look at ed as a fallback position. </p>
<p>Mine was a double candidate, spent five years in the program, and ended up deciding he does not want to teach in a public setting. His first love is performance, and while he has a tenured orchestra chair and continues to take pro auditions, he was torn. He still teaches, privately, in studio settings, and as longterm faculty in a summer adult program. I’ve recounted his story numerous times in the threads that will pop up.</p>
<p>Try and determine what it is you really seek. </p>
<p>Hello, my son is a senior and interested in colleges in the northeast that offer a double major in oboe performance and composition. Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. So far, he has found this double major at Hartt and Bard.</p>
<p>tripsue, one way to approach this is to attempt to identify the primary focus: is it oboe performance and music composition, or music composition and oboe performance?</p>
<p>May seem like picking nits, but can make a difference in how you look at and evaluate specific programs. Without knowing the amount of reading or lurking you’ve done here, the private instructor is often the foremost consideration for a performance aspirant. For composition, the style of the instructor/department, and the ability to develop or work within one’s own compositional “voice” can be paramount.</p>
<p>As a reference point, there is a pretty large disparity between the minimum academic/stats of UHartford and Bard, and depending on which end of the spectrum your son is at, there can be a great number of programs where the combo is possible. Possibilities include Lawrence, Oberlin, Eastman, a number of others.</p>
<p>Just a thought on Bard… the conservatory mandates another academic degree for those within a performance discipline. Bard composition BM is an extremely competitive admit, and it’s my uneducated guess that you’d be looking at a BA in composition within the college as the academic degree, and the BM in oboe perf within the con. Perhaps SpiritManager (son at Bard for comp) or N8Ma, Bard’s Director of Conservatory Admissions can clarify this further. </p>
<p>Tripsue - at Bard he would need to do a BM double major in the conservatory at Bard, and a third major, BA non music, in the college (they do not allow music for a BA to conservatory students.) There is a composer who had three majors - not sure if he’s dropped one senior year or not. On the other hand, all conservatory performance students are required to study composition as part of their general requirements. </p>
<p>2nd thought - at many of the BM Composition programs - study on a primary instrument is required. Michigan SOM is one such place. He would be required to take private lessons in one of the main studios. This is NOT true of all BM Composition programs so you’ll need to check deeply into it school by school.</p>
<p>^ but herein lies the rub. While study on a primary may be required as a comp major, the faculty options, lesson times, and performance opportunities for a performance major can differ significantly from those that are fulfilling a performance aspect of a degree requirement in another discipline. </p>
<p>Again, these are program specific, and harkens back to my comment of trying to determine a primary focus.</p>
<p>SpiritManager, thanks for the clarity on Bard.</p>
<p>My D is a senior this year at Miami U of Ohio. If we were starting over today, we probably would not be chosing this school, although it has served D’s purposes well enough.</p>
<p>She intended to double degree, and we were assured this was possible. However, each school has their own requirements, and it turned out that her first choice second degree (linguistics) was not going to be doable due to the high number of extra courses required. She then switched to doubling in German, but again, the extra core courses required knocked that out of the running as well. Instead, she is earning minors in both German and Chinese.</p>
<p>But the reason why we would not do that if she were applying today… Miami has decided to charge students additional tuition for every credit hour over 18. I am not sure my D has had a single semester with fewer than 19 credit hours. I’ve quoted their recommendation below - note that they won’t be charged for excess credits that are required by their major - which is good, because music majors are often over that amount. </p>
<p>But any efforts at double majors or degrees, or double minors even, would become expensive. The whole idea of using college years to explore and discover is being discouraged. It is almost like they are encouraging the kids to take light schedules (perhaps to maintain their party-school persona?) Since my D went in to the college application process pretty sure she wanted to double major, this would have been a turn off. But they aren’t, of course, advertising this, so look carefully!</p>
<p>Okay - part of this post is pure rant. But part of it is cautionary. Every school does things differently, and you need to ask lots of questions. The devil is in the details!</p>
<p>Michigan SOM is one of the few places that welcome double majors in music, be it composition and performance or double performance. Composition majors do have the choice of taking lessons with faculty or GSI. The trick is to contact the faculty as soon as possible once being accepted. Some composition majors prefer to study with GSI because they do not want to spend too much time in instrumental study. As for large ensembles such as orchestras and bands, they are audition based (blind audition). There is no rule to exclude non-performance majors from participating. SOM does discourage non-music major (different from non-performance) participating in SOM orchestras and bands due to time commitment. But there are a campus orchestra and a campus band for non-music majors. At Michigan SOM, it is quite doable to double major. D is a good example and it will only take her 4 years. There are a few in composition and performance, a few in string and vocal.</p>