@BassTheatreMom - Don’t beat yourselves up! My D applied dual degree to JHU/Peabody and several other places three years ago. JHU was the only university where she was rejected for engineering, though she got in Peabody. Her stats were stellar (4.0, ~10 APs, 35ACT, 2370SAT) AND her grandma went to grad school at JHU and her grandpa taught there for a while. Who knows why JHU didn’t accept her! I am glad your D has other choices he is excited about. My D was briefly upset about JHU, but she is so happy where she ended up.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve led to believe that the admissions standard for double-degree applicants is tougher, particularly from the academic admissions side. The admissions folks know that it’s hard to maintain a quality progress in two separate but demanding fields. When they’re evaluating such applicants, I’m sure they’re looking for certain assuring qualities, i.e., top percentile in a high school with very rigorous course loads, top percentile in test scores, and other extra-curricular qualifications that evidence the ability to succeed in a stressful, multi-tasking environment.
As MomOf2TeenGirls indicated, even the outstanding stats like 4.0, ~10 APs, 35 ACT, 2370 SAT is no guarantee nowadays to any top colleges, let alone a double-degree program.
My S once did consider a double-degree program, but he dropped the idea because he didn’t want to continue on living a very stressful “double life.” Although he also did consider a conservatory, he dropped that idea, as well, opting, instead, to experience a regular, traditional campus life. This was even a tougher decision to accept, because he had a good shot at any of the top conservatories in the nation with the exception of the Curtis. Our college search strategy was pretty straight-forward: we targeted those traditional colleges with a good music department with performance opportunities, both solo and ensemble. This way, he does have an option to apply for an MM degree upon graduation while exploring other viable options, as well. A four years in a traditional college life should, I hope, offer him a clearer direction.
His high school junior and the first semester of senior year were extremely stressful, beyond what mere words can describe. One stupid mistake that we made was attempting for both ACT and SATI (and SATII), not once in each of these tests but multiple times – all the while striving for academic excellence in a highly demanding IB program, many extremely time-consuming extra-curricular commitments (not because we felt he needed to but his genuine interests were all over the place – parental objections were useless) AND pursuing music with daily practices, auditions, recitals, concerts and competitions that seemed to come up almost twice a week! Because we’re not in a major city with better music resources, I had to drive him to a major city about an hour away, 2-3 times a week, for his private instrument instructions, youth symphony rehearsals and concerts, solo recitals, etc. – for years. Was I so glad that we didn’t have to fly all over the country for required auditions at various conservatories on top of all these!
None of us know what direction is truly the best for our kids. We don’t even know whether a lack of current success is not a blessing in disguise. The only thing we can do is to support our kids the best that we know how and allow them to make the best of the opportunities that come their way.
HI @TiggerDad You bring up a really great point when you talk about your son’s junior and early senior year. The way the college situation is (not just for music, not even primarily for music because we have the audition to speak more loudly than any achievment or activity), the kids are working themselves into a worn out mess. It seems like every year they feel the need to take one more AP class than the year before, get involved in one more activity, volunteer more hours, always seeking that edge in the college admissions process. It’s unhealthy and something really needs to change because this is detrimental to their well-being. A kid shouldn’t be burnt out BEFORE they go to college!
Fortunately we were able to convince S to lighten the load senior year when he made the final decision to go the music route in the middle of junior year (he had waffled between music and engineering for a long time). Maybe his senior schedule hurt him at JHU, but it was worth it. This year has been a delight. He actually hangs out with us in the living room some evenings - last year he was buried in his room trying to get through his AP courses.
@compmom Your flexibility comment is SO appreciated. I keep heairng about the “top” schools, and I get it, they are great. But at the same time I see so many bios of musicians working in high level positions who went to some state school or another and then went on to graduate programs at top conservatories and now are among the best in their field. There is clearly no single path to achieving musical success and it’s important for everyone to remember that!
@BassTheatreMom :
I agree with you with the insanity in schools, especially high schols, when I hear about kids in grade school and middle school worried about GPAs, and the insanity with AP classes and such. I don’t know who to blame for that, if it is parents or if it is the colleges themselves enjoying the “Lord of the Flies” admission process to their schools, sadly we have recreated what is common in many places overseas, with tremenedous pressure on the kids and a ton of ills that go with this pressure, including being afraid to take chances on things like music.
As far as flexibility goes that, too, is one of those “it depends”. Ask Mezzo’s Mom when people talk about Renee Fleming and how she couldn’t afford to go to Juilliard and instead went to a state school. While the idea that you have to go to “a top 10 music school” to be able to make it as a musician is not true, and yep kids go for example to an academic college for UG and then get an MM, you have to be careful about all the factors. For example, from my experience with my son at Juilliard pre college, a lot of the kids there end up going to an academic school (mom and dad basically saw music as a great EC for an elite school), but some of them then go on to do an MM and so forth. However, keep in mind those kids were already at a high level and they likely studied with high level teachers in college, too. The “okay player” who goes to a second tier school is going to face tremendous obstacles if their goal is to get into a strong MM program. I have caught heat for it, but in the most competitive areas, like the solo instruments, you don’t have to go to a top level school to succeed, or even do music UG, but you darn well better be at the level where you potentially could get into one of them,or at least are close, the compeition is too fierce, the level of playing is too high for a kid who is just okay to ‘make it’ (and obviously, this depends on the goals, what 'making it" means, if someone sees music as a joy and is looking to doing gig work and local music and even teach locally, will be very different than if they want to make a run at a major orchestra, chamber group, and so forth). There are no rigid rules, couldn’t be given how nebulous this all is, but I recommend keeping it in mind that whatever path you take the ultimate goal (if you want to do music at a high level as a goal) is on playing at the highest levels possible)
You have to be very careful looking at the bios of working musicians, too, and look at how old they are. Once upon a time the level in music wasn’t that high necessarily, and someone could for example start late and later achieve, but in recent decades it has changed a lot and what was once true may not be.
@musicprnt and others. This may be a string unto itself, but since we are new to music, here is a question about paths. Do you have to get an MM or PhD. What if you don’t and want to go straight to a job (or maybe a job first)? What are the limitations if you are planning on going to an MM - although of course that might change once you get into the music world. If you have to get an MM to really work (and I am looking at composition, not performance), then there are two approaches to picking UG. One is to pick the best UG possible because that opens the most doors - everyone knows you have a strong foundation. The other approach is to go to a school that can give a foundation, but may not be as strong, but you just like it better - the location, school, faculty (or the intangibles). Ideally, one school would fit meet both criteria, but if not it makes the choice much harder. Sigh.
@beaglemom - no, you don’t need to continue to grad school for composition - IF you already have the connections, the skills, the network - otherwise grad school is very helpful. It also gives a composer a safe place to experiment without worrying about the marketplace. It can also help financially for composers, to give them a few more years when they needn’t make a living. If you want to teach composition in a university setting, then unless you’re a wildly successful composer, you’ll need a higher degree. But there is no requirement to have any degrees at all to get your music performed - only great music!
About these AP courses that certainly stress out our kids… I can’t speak to all colleges but USC and U Miami
are very strict about the classes/scores for which they will give you credit So for my son who has Thornton and Frost at the top of his list, taking 8 APs in high school was overkill
As for ACT/SAT testing, I’d strongly suggest a stronger academic kid start taking them as a sophomore and be finished with them in the early spring of junior year. This gives him 6 months to focus on his music for auditions. It also helps that sophomore year math is closer to the questions addressed on the test than junior year when he may have Calc or Stats
@jerseyparents:
Some things never change, by the time I took the SAT I was taking I believe trig/pre calc, I think I would have done better Sophomore year as well:)
To lessen the craziness and the stress of the college application process, it certainly helps to prepare things in advance. We did prepare just about everything in advance. Still, it’s been crazy, stressful and brutal, an experience I’m so relieved that I, as a parent, don’t have to EVER go through again. There is NO solution to the way the current college application process works. The bottomline, though, ultimately, is that it rewards hard work and sacrifice. The question is how “hard” and how “much” sacrifice that each family wants to put into it. My son’s friend is heading to Harvard (EA) and also accepted to NEC and is now waiting to see whether she’s been admitted to the Harvard/NEC program. This young lady’s family has made the kind of sacrifices that put my sacrifices to shame, and I believe I made more sacrifices than the most. Does this mean she’ll be “more” successful than other student-musicians in the future? Who knows what the future would bring.
Each individual family has to know what’s good for the child and go with that. I never liked the word, “success.” I prefer “fulfillment.” I think we all want our children to lead a very fulfilled lives and there are many paths to lead them to that point.
My son, by the way, is going to take a gap year so he can do all that he wasn’t able to do due to crazy life he’s led. He wants to learn to cook, make a YouTube video music channel, travel, learn his parents’ native language, learn to sing, etc. I’m all for it.
Let’s call it what it is: FEAR! Fear of not getting into the “right” program, the right teacher, the right environment, the right dorm!! Graduate school was a lot easier. She and many of her friends went in different directions without the sense of competition, high stakes decision-making and pending doom that really permeated the UG decision.
I don’t have good advice on how to deal with the madness. We lived through it too. I did have a few lines drawn however on money, time and family dinners that I just wasn’t going to let go. If an AP course was going to cause misery she wasn’t going to take it. And if we couldn’t sit down most nights to a family dinner and have a little time together she just wasn’t going to be a Broadway star (this was in her MT days).
Yes, her “dream” was to be a Broadway star…and that’s not her dream anymore. Thank goodness I didn’t put too much time and effort into that!. My dream was for something smaller…a family dinner…which was doable most nights. I think it’s OK for parents to prioritize family time. I think if you don’t, it can communicate that “high stakes” feeling. I mean seriously…your kid is just going to college…they aren’t curing cancers or sending a satellite to Jupiter so they can sit down to a family meal … and listen to mom drone on about her boring day…
Another comforting thought, you aren’t alone, everyone has dealt with this craziness in different ways, the angst about where to apply, worries about time pressures, standalone versus music school in a university, dual degree, is majoring in music performance crazy, is it better to have to fork over the debt of a small country to go to that elite program or is it better with a solid teacher at a school willing to make it more affordable? Grad school is a bit different than UG, but a lot of the same things still apply, how much can the family afford to pay (if anything) for grad school, or is the kid on their own with that? What is the best teacher and program, my S has choices where it is a great teacher (he thinks) but the level isn’t that great, or facing a great teacher at a great program but faced with financial limitations, is this teacher as great as they are supposed to be, or will it be an exercise in ego worship? One of the big differences with grad school is outside of paying for our S to fly all over the place for auditions and hotels and such, the process is pretty much entirely him, other than where we needed to do something like fafsa or css profiles.
@TiggerDad What a wonderful year your son will have!
Thank you @glassharmonica. He’s already making music during the spring break. That’s his passion. His gap year is going to be filled with music making… ah… the sound of music! 
Funny to read all this thread with all three of my kids on the other side of undergrad and two in grad school and one graduated from grad school.
I am going to say what I said to them: THINK LONG TERM. What is better for your brain as a teenager. Test-prep for an SAT or practicing music. My guess is focusing on music is better for your brain. Stress we know is NOT good for your brain so that would speak against doing high stakes AP courses. Undergraduate education is NOT an end point. It is a beginning. When my middle son who was clear he wanted to go on to graduate school in science asked professors at various schools about his prospects (this was a kid who failed HS and did horribly on the SAT) all the professors told him that many of the courses he would take in preparation for the career he wanted would be the same whether they were at an ivy league school or at a state school or a small liberal arts school. Courses taken in addition to conservatory training are still courses and whether you actually end up with a dual degree is probably not that important for your future as you might think. Certainly if you met the course requirements and had a BM you could certainly apply to a desired graduate program.
The reality is most of our kids will need some form of education beyond undergrad. So what is most important is to keep them sane, healthy and make sure they continue to love learning and stay motivated. Just my opinion but I happen to think I am right!!!
I didn’t realize John’s Hopkins offered merit scholarships.
@suzyQ7 - JHU offers about 20 academic merit-based scholarships/year. See http://finaid.johnshopkins.edu/prosp_stud_scholar.html.
StacJi[ always nails it. And it is really really helpful to realize that undergrad really is, as StacJip says, a “beginning, not an endpoint.” Regardless of the undergrad path chosen. So well put.
^True. But lots of people don’t realize that until either (a) everyone has graduated or (b) it’s a younger sib. All that spring drama about “where did you get accepted” won’t matter come October…
From my ds experience at Peabody, academics matter. As detailed in a previous post (circa 2015) she was sent a rejection letter from Peabody and subsequently contacted by the prescreen review assistant explaining that they were not able to view her prescreen. After the initial confusion, my d explained that she had already received the rejection letter. The individual on the phone then said that my d was disqualified due to her test scores (my d has severe discalculia and dyslexia which make test taking problematic).
Nevertheless she is at a program which is perfect for her and she loves…so it all worked out in the end.
Morale of the story, some schools have baseline qualifiers that have nothing to do with the actual audition. Don’t know which ones, but if I had to guess…NYU, NEC, USC are a few that come to mind.
I don’t think that is true of NEC. But maybe the admissions person is still lurking and can correct me.
Sguti40 I hope your daughter had accommodations for testing. And for a student with those challenges, a test-optional school is always a possibility. http://fairtest.org/university/optional It seems your daughter has safely landed so just posting that for others reading this.