I can’t really tell from the website, my son is planning to call admissions, but here is my question: If my son auditions for ED Bienen and gets rejected, can he still be admitted to NU as either an early admit or a regular admit? If anyone knows I would be grateful!
Yes, if he applies for the dual degree program.
Your son should confirm this with admissions, but this is the way I understand the process from my D’s admission in 2016. If your son applies only to Bienen ED, he is accepted, deferred or rejected from NU. He is considered only for Bienen. He can’t go back and re-apply for another school during regular decision. If he wants to pursue a dual degree from 2 of NU’s schools, he would apply and be considered independently for each. He would receive a separate decision from each school. My D applied to both Weinberg and Bienen and her letter stated her acceptance to both. At another dual degree program, she was accepted to one school but not the other, so at that Uni, she would have only pursued one degree. A long answer, but I hope it helps.
Thank you it does help!
Got an answer from Bienen: “When you apply as an undergraduate, you are applying to Northwestern University and a particular school within NU. So, if your son applies to the school of music only and is not admitted, he is not admitted to the university. There is a dual degree option in which you can apply to two of the schools on campus simultaneously. In that case, it is possible to be admitted to one school and not the other.”
Are there any parents of dual degree kids on here? Is the course load horrible?
My D is a current dual degree Bienen and Weinberg. She knows some dual degree kids in Engineeer/Theatre and Engineering/Bienen (non-performance). I believe it is also possible to apply and be admitted to Bienen and then add another degree later. Check the website for that. Dual degrees at NU are slated to take 5 years (o boy) but I imagine some summer work may help whittle that down. Is the course load horrible? It’s a mixed bag: NU is sensitive to dual degree students in that my D was assigned to a dual degree peer group in Wildcat Welcome and Bienen allowed her to participate in a non-freshman choir when the freshman University Singers conflicted with her humanities seminar. But the music course load is very time-intensive (lesson, solo class, diction, aural skills, theory, etc. 10 classes in all) so that she found herself in music classes 7 hours 3 days a week and not able to make her other profs’ office hours. That has been a little stressful, but she has managed. This structure is very important to her. There are several other colleges that offer possible dual degrees: Boston U, Michigan, Tufts/NEC, USC are others that come to mind. If your son is interested in a certain arrangement, Bienen could probably put him in touch with a current student who is doing it.
My D is entering her senior year at Michigan and is dual degree BM (horn performance) and BS (biomedical engineering). As @momzhood said, it is time-intensive with music (and engr labs for my D) and takes some careful planning and tricky scheduling. My D tried to speak with current dual degree students everywhere she applied to see how they managed and found that very helpful.
My son was dual degree at Bard and the planning and scheduling was easy. The only conflict he had was with the baseball schedule. But, yes, it was a five year program. Some schools like Bard, Oberlin and Lawrence are all set up for dual degree students. At others the time management may be more complex.
My son is attending Bienen in the fall. One of the things that impressed us was the “nobody does just one thing” philosophy. We met a large number of music students doing a dual degree, double major, or the ad hoc second major. The music school seemed to value that aspect of the student profile and the students felt that it allowed them to bring more into their music. Two degrees, one being music, is certainly not easy. But I feel like NU will work with my son on this.
I’m not sure if the Bienen students can do a major outside of the music school – could my son do a math major or minor while at Bienen?
I’m not sure if NU would allow him to “do a major outside of the music school”. Majoring in Math would mean pursuing a degree from Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in addition to a BM from Bienen - hence, a dual degree. I don’t know about a Math minor outside of Bienen - ask Bienen about this. My D is thinking about a French minor, but she would pursue that through her matriculation in Weinberg - so that’s why I don’t know about a “stand alone minor”.
It would be a dual degree because it wouldn’t be part of the BM.
However, Bienen offers an “ad hoc major” option. This is a second major within Bienen, but students piece it together from different schools. We met one student who was doing something with industrial design I believe. So you could create an ad hoc major that is heavy on math, but still just get the single BM degree. It would make sense to talk to an academic advisor about exactly how this works, because I am by no means an expert.
I will tell my s to ask about the ad hoc major, thank you!!!