Looking for information from people who have had experience with the music composition department at Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music. How has your experience been? Did you choose NU over a conservatory? Also, did you do the dual degree program with Weinberg? If so, in what?
My younger brother’s friend is a freshman composition major at Bienen right now and as far as I can tell he loves it (and he loves to nitpick so if he loves it, I think anyone would). That said, I can’t give you much in the way of specifics.
Hi, I’m a freshman dual-degree student in Bienen in voice performance and engineering. Although I’m not composition (or in Weinberg) I have a lot of friends in the dual degree program who are. The program is great because it is well established and many students participate, but it’s also very intense (depending on your non-Bienen major) which is something to consider. I would say a lot of dual-degree students in Bienen chose not to go to conservatories because of how great the dual-degree program is here, including myself. But generally, Bienen is a conservatory-style environment anyway. If you have any questions feel free to PM me!
You might consider e-mailing Bienen (or a faculty member) and asking for student contacts in the comp department to talk with directly. The acceptance letter usually says “contact us with any questions” or something like that, and they mean it!
A music school is a conservatory, basically. Both conservatories and music schools are different from a music “department.” These terms cause some confusion I think. Often people use the term “conservatory” to describe freestanding conservatories but some are part of colleges and universities.