Hi everyone!
I have a friend who applied for Berklee. He plays the viola, and he’s really really really good. His audition went very well except for the part where you have to recognize chords, and his interview was pretty good too. He’s from Venezuela, but fortunately our high school must be well known in Berklee since they’ve already accepted some people from there (it’s a music-focused high school). I’m sure he can get in, but how much could he get in a scholarship? He can’t afford going there without a outstanding scholarship so I’m pretty worried.
Google still works. https://www.berklee.edu/scholarships Probably even in Venezuela.
Does he know how much money his family can kick in? I’m looking through their list of scholarships and are a lot of them are really specific; some of them are U.S.-only, others are specifically for Koreans or Canadians, and some are only for people who attended a specific summer music program or are from a specific town in Massachusetts. Most are also full-tuition or partial-tuition only as well, which makes it tricky if he doesn’t live near Barklee College since he will have to come up with room, board, transportation, books, the required laptop, etc.
The best one I found was [Presidential Scholarship](https://www.berklee.edu/scholarships/presidential), which covers tuition, a laptop, room and board. There are two slots open for international students (out of seven in total for all students). You said your friend is really good, but for these then he has to be among the seven best high school musicians applying to Berklee in the entire world (or rather, one of the top two if he is not a U.S. citizen). You know him better than I do, and I personally have no understanding of music, so you guys should probably get together with a counselor or something and figure out how realistic it is.
Thank you so much! He has limited possibilities for being an international. I’m gonna ask him if he was nominated for the Presidential Scholarship, but I’m not sure if he qualifies since he is applying for Summer Term, and we are not sure what happens if he starts in summer instead of fall or spring.
I really appreciate your help! Hope you have a great day!
You might want to post this in the music majors section of this forum.
Berklee scholarships are merit based, and are based on the strength of your audition relative to others. In other words, they give their best awards to their top admitted students based on the audition. It’s an exoensive college, plus living in Boston is expensive.
In my opinion, he is very unlikely to get enough scholarship money to,cover even half of his attendance costs at Berklee.
But I could be wrong.
Has he auditioned and applied elsewhere too?
Yes, he applied to New England and a to a university in Spain. However, someone told him that New England wasn’t giving scholarships due to budget cut. He didn’t know that before. Thanks fr your help!
It’s good that he has other options. One thing that he can do now while he’s waiting is to nail down how much his parents can pay each year. The big scholarships are risky for any student, but he may be able to get partial tuition which would be good. Thumper1 points out that living in Boston is going to be pretty rough in terms of cost, and they talk a lot about the scholarships for a “required laptop” which means that he probably has to get one if he doesn’t have one that is up to their standards.
Yeah… He told me that a Mac is necessary to study there. I know that if he can indeed go it’s gonna be tough for him. I already have a friend who is struggling there. But I also know that he will overcome it. He has so much potential.