Parents of music majors: is the degree worth it?

College Majors Music Major
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<p>Thank you all, the comments here have been so very helpful, and my thought process is much calmer.</p>

<p>As many of you have pointed out:</p>

<p>Auditioning with national level competition will be a reality check, especially when up against kids who have been more serious for longer, practiced more, more innate ability, etc. </p>

<p>If he puts the work in and gets accepted, he has earned the spot. If he doesn’t, then an alternative plan and safety schools are necessary. </p>

<p>Double majoring or taking a full complement of liberal arts classes in a non-conservatory setting will provide options should this not work out or should he change his mind.</p>

<p>Giving our children the best possible start and support as they try to figure out their future is all any parent can do. The consequences of their choices lies with them.</p>

<p>PS - @kmc13mom thank you for the creative financing idea. LOVE it.</p>

<p>PPS - @ mamenyu, what school is “NU”?</p>

<p>Anyone - how realistic/ challenging is double majoring? If your child did it, what did they give up? social life? summers? did they take an extra year?</p>

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<p>NU is Northwestern. Sorry about that.</p>

<p>Double majoring is realistic for a motivated kid. There are some good threads here–search for “Double major” here and you’ll find some.</p>

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<p>Tufts, mentioned above, does not have its own double degree program as Tufts does not offer a BM degree. Their double degree is a joint program with NEC in which one gets a BM from NEC and a BA or BS from Tufts. It requires splitting time between the 2 campuses, which are a distance from one another. This is very different from other double degree schools mentioned such as Northwestern, USC and Oberlin. Boston University offers a double degree option (BM plus BA or BS) which takes 5 years, as do most of the double degree programs. There are many, many others, with varying degrees of competitiveness for admission both on the music end and the academic end so it should not be difficult to find one with the right combination of musical and academic fit. Also, at many schools it’s possible to complete a minor outside of music. My daughter plans to do at least a minor and at her school that would be quite feasible.</p>

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<p>Leon Botstein, president of Bard College discusses the state of education in the US with particular emphasis on the importance of studying the arts and their relevance and essentiality to making a complete citizenry. <a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;

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<p>@Spiritmanager, I didn’t know anything about Botstein or his views, thanks for that link</p>

<p>@ sjth and @dfbmd1 thanks for the info on double majors</p>

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<p>^Also check out dual degrees – eg. at University of Michigan School of Music (nice percussion program, actually, may be worth checking out – super academics as well; my son attends there) the BMUS perfs <em>CAN</em> “dual degree” but it does often take 5 years all in. One popular dual degree is BMUS plus Engineering. But it’s no cakewalk – really takes quite extraordinary organizational skills to manage the sked. But it’s a great option in terms of future-revenue-producing-capacity ;)</p>

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<p>Daughter is currently playing with about eight established groups, ranging from indie rock to bluegrass to Klezmer to folk music to Early Music to a very popular wedding band, as well as freelancing. She is supporting herself in a major city, averaging several paid gigs per week and has recently been able to quit her non-musical day job to concentrate entirely on practice, performance and recording. I think she has done well for herself just two years past her BM degree and would have to say that the degree was worthwhile in her case.</p>

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<p>Good to hear, BassDad! Thanks for sharing.</p>

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<p>^^BassDad, Bravo to your daughter!! Great to hear.</p>

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<p>Typed a long answer this morning and deleted it. The gyst is that the answer will be so individual. Guarantees are hard to come by with any major, and music perhaps worse than many. Boiled down, my answer is: If your son isn’t at the top of his game in terms of practice, talent, ambition, and passion, then adjust your expectations as to what he will get out of a music degree, and then decide if you can life with that.</p>

<p>I have two children with music performance degrees. One has the talent, drive, and passion to make it as a performer, and the other doesn’t. No surprises - we knew what we had going in.</p>

<p>For one, he has moved seamlessly from school to work. He hasn’t “landed” yet, but is enjoying the ride. He isn’t rolling in money, but he is blissful nonetheless, doing what he loves. He says candidly, “I like my life.”</p>

<p>For the other, she had the opportunity to spend four years “being allowed to practice.” Something she admits she never felt she had when confronted with the pressures of academic life outside of music. She is grateful for all she learned along the way, and now is turning her attention to other things.</p>

<p>With both children, we did not spend too much time saying “what will this get him/her” in terms of career or finances or guarantees? Instead, we asked, “Is this something that will do them good” in terms of their education, their future, and their souls. </p>

<p>Especially with my daughter, we considered whether it was an appopriate detour along the way to the rest of her life, or if it was a legitimate and logical part of the rest of her life. When we weighed her options, we felt that music was actually giving her opportunities that she would not otherwise have. We, as a family, value music, and that helps. We do not see time spent pursuing the study of music as “wasted” or trivial.</p>

<p>I suspect my husband will always be a bit sad that no one followed his engineering path, and I guess I’ll never have a doctor in the family. But the education my kids received is part of the fabric that is them, and I’m happy that music is woven in there.</p>

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<p>BRAVA BassDad’s daughter! What awesome news!</p>

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<p>Binx, that was really eloquent!</p>

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<p>Binx, that was beautifully expressed and BassDad, it’s nice to hear that your D is doing so well!</p>

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<p>Binx - I agree - so well said.</p>

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<p>Yay for Binx and your two kids. Two very different examples of they types of people that study music in college.</p>

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<p>Congrats to your daughter, Bassdad–so glad her passion and dedication have paid off! And Binx, exactly–what we always say to our kids (Computer scientist, jazz musician and…DJ?) is that we want them to be happy, productive members of society. Society needs all of these things…and I have always felt that if you can do what you love–even if its outside of “work”–you are a lucky person indeed!</p>

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<p>thank you.</p>

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<p>My daughter has finished her 2nd year at a conservatory in a major city. She is learning many of the life lessons she would learn with any other major. </p>

<p>She has learned street smarts. She has learned to research housing options, make appointments with realtors to see them and found herself a place to live that she absolutely loves…after making mistakes/and learning from those mistakes with her previous choice. She has developed a network of friends who are there to help her if she needs help…such as when she moved…we live in the middle of the country and she is on the west coast…so she has had to learn to be self sufficient. </p>

<p>As a music major she has had to work very hard…Theory is hard, music history is hard…singing in foreign languages is hard…and all of this builds discipline…and the need to manage her time.</p>

<p>During her two summer breaks she has been very fortunate to have had opportunities to be involved in wonderful summer programs. Last summer she was in NY and had the opportunity to learn from high level professionals the ins and outs of the business. This summer she is in France doing the same…She works hard and is recognized as doing so…There have also been frustrations, difficult people to work with…and that too is a learning experience that will help her in life.</p>

<p>So, yes…for us it is worth it. </p>

<p>We have no idea what the future will hold for her, whether she will ever sing professionally…but she is being prepared for life…she now knows that if everyone gets up and leaves the subway platform when an overhead announcement is being made…perhaps you too should leave with them…(just have to throw this story in)…you see this summer my 2 daugher’s were in Paris…traveling a bit before the music major’s summer program started…They were waiting for the train in a subway 20 steps down…an overhead announcement started…was going so fast that my DD, with her limited French, was not able to catch what the announcer was saying…everyone else got up and left leaving my 2 dear daughters alone in the subway…with their luggage…not wanting to drag it back up the 20 steps…they decided to wait awhile and see what happened…about a half hour later a nice young man happened by (only person they had seen in that 1/2 hour)…he was nice enough to translate the announcement for them…seems that the station they were at was under a bomb threat! Fortunately they were still in one piece and the nice young man helped them locate another subway to get them where they needed to be…</p>

<p>We are letting our children follow their dreams…we are making sacrifices to do so…the vehicle I drive has 175K miles on it…multiple dents from children’s mistakes…but it runs well…I will continue to drive it until it no longer does.</p>

<p>It is right for us…now it is your job to decide what is right for your family.</p>

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<p>It depends on what you mean by worth. If you mean that majoring in music/music performance is on the road to an easy path to make a living, it may not be considered worth it because music like most performing arts is a tough way to make that living. I am saying this as opposed to let’s say studying accounting or computer science or studying whatever to become an investment banker, those kind of have more of a translation. I suspect music is more like studying sanskrit or something like that, degrees that might </p>

<p>I have to agree with others, it is all about the passion of the kid, I totally agree, unless you can see yourself only doing that, may be wise to not do it as a profession. However, the other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people come out of college and do something not related to their degree, or semi related. My degree was comp sci, but my career was not programming, it was in a hybrid of business and tech, and i have coworkers who majored in all kinds of things and got into tech jobs, including music types. I think my answer is a music degree is worth it, in performance, because it teaches a lot of life lessons as someone else said, it teaches discipline, it teaches a lot of things that employers would find attractive. And keep in mind that no matter what you start in, when you get out of school the first thing you realize (least I did) was how little I really knew:). What you do is not entrenched in concrete with what you got a degree in from school, that is one of the blessings of the US, that the culture allows people to re-invent themselves, often several times:)</p>

<p>And as others pointed out, someone could double major if a BM didn’t work, friend of mine at work majored in music at Indiana with a BA in another discipline, figured out he wasn’t cut out for music, and is a successful quant. </p>

<p>As far as whether the student should go forward, I do think there is a line between aspiring and having any kind of chance andd frankly somewhat delusional, I have seen kids in music programs who though they appeared to love it, probably had a snowballs chance in Guam of making it. In this case, it depends how good he is, he need to get evaluated as to where he is and how possible it would be to get into a decent program and such…If he were on violin or piano I would probably be saying to think twice about a career in music, with drums, since I know nothing about percussion, he could have a chance, but get an expert to evaluate him. </p>

<p>Someone asked about Leon Bottstein, he is a conductor (American Symphony Orchestra) as well as the head of Bard College. His approach to things tends to be holistic, with Bard’s conservatory program students have to get a BA in something as well as the BM, it is a 5 year program and he says it is to round out the kids, that music is partly in how you experience life (not going to disagree with him on that one)…he also believes that conversely people not into music should have exposure to it as part of being a rounded person (though to be honest, the music he programs with the American Symphony Orchestra would drive people away from music <em>smile</em>).</p>

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<p>Binx - what can I say – there are no words to sum it up better. thank you.</p>

<p>Bassdad – love a happy ending:)</p>

<p>Opera mom - Thank you for sharing your daughter’s life lessons. We prepare the child for the path, then they will create their own life … and it sounds like your daughter is well equipped to do exactly that. </p>

<p>Well, my parental angst turned into a great thread. thanks again all for sharing!</p>