@MusakParent Your rationale makes sense. It’s just confusing here because he received his financial aid letter on March 1 and it didn’t mention anything about a music scholarship, but it’s been nearly 3 weeks now and he also hasn’t gotten any letter saying he didn’t get one. I would hope that if you weren’t going to get something that you flew all the way up there for, and the whole expense of it and everything, that they least have the courtesy to tell you that they didn’t select you.
@MusakParent One thought I had, is if the caliber of students of the other school might not be as high as the caliber of students at Saint Olaf? Again I really can’t speak to a music major with any knowledge because my son was a non-major string player, but it makes me think to the fact that he was also accepted to Case Western where he didn’t even apply for a BM major. He submitted his video for the non-music major art scholarship, and when he was admitted they offered him as well automatic admission into the music major (“based on the caliber of your playing “). I sort of thought to myself I don’t know if my son is really that great or if their program that weak? Same thing happened to him at another much smaller LAC that he crossed off for other reasons. The faculty there actually called and spoke to him and offered him direct admission to the performance major even though it wasn’t the major he had applied for. My husband and I began to think perhaps they needed more string players and this was their way of enticing them??
No I don’t think so @TytoAlba these are large research universities with schools of music and grad programs and no shortage of applicants. I suspect that would be fairly rare for VP anyway over an experienced instrumentalist because there are a typical over abundance of VP applicants at most audioned programs. VP acceptance rates are pretty low at most schools . Olaf is the only LAC on the table for him in terms of auditioned BM programs.
If anyone has insight/vibe to the music program of Olaf (especially VP) I’d welcome them. PMs are great!
And I bet you will hear on music yet! Maybe some departments are slower than others!?
@MusakParent I wrote a Vibe report on St Olaf that was basically an ‘interview’ of my D who is at St Olaf. It was done during winter of her sophomore year.
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/vibe/st-olaf-college/4129201.html
She did Great Con(versations) for the full 2 years. That was really good, hard, but good.
They have a summer research program (called CURI) and she did that after sophomore year. That was great! They really provide a lot of good mentorship for the students in that program—giving talks, writing abstracts, writing up their work as research papers/posters, ops to go to conferences. etc.
It’s official, I didn’t receive a music scholarship! Just got a “rejection” letter for the scholarship in the mail today.
No scholarship here either ?
Wow - weird. Maybe they have to stock up on exotic instrument players or something this year.
St. Olaf is one of my DD’s top two choices. She was invited to the music scholarship audition day last month and was able to take a private lesson the next day with one of the instructors and came away with a very positive feel for the program and the college in general.
She received a letter yesterday saying that she was awarded a saxophone scholarship as a non-music major. Not really an exotic instrument! Super proud of her, but now that I read about the 50% rule, we are a bit concerned…she was also lucky enough to be awarded substantial merit aid too. What does Olaf consider the cost of attendance for this 50% rule? Is it tuition only or the full cost of tuition, room and board and such? We were so excited because the combination of the two awards made Olaf very attractive financially. We still have not received a letter from them with her proposed FA package. They are the only college that has not sent the formal offer letter yet.
@mom2jnk I think it is 50% of the comprehensive fee which is Tuition+Room+Board. So, if that is 55K, then the merit can’t be above 27.5K. If the financial need is above 27.5K, that will be covered by need based aid. At least that’s how I understood it. My D got a Buntrock, but, didn’t get the music. Congrats to your D.
Thanks @EganAg! I do not believe that we will be eligible for any need based aid. Website says that “comprehensive fee” is just under $61K, 50% of that would be 30.5K so it looks like she won’t be eligible to receive all of her awarded merit aid. That is disappointing. I wonder what their rationale for this is? This is the first time that I have seen the potential for merit awarded by the college being limited by the college. I know that sometimes colleges take away merit if you are awarded outside scholarships but this seems a bit like a shell game…now you see it, now you don’t. I guess we just wait for the FA letter…
Congratulations @mom2jnk to your dd! I was just kidding about exotic instruments. My kid got a music scholarship and is definitely not an exotic instrumentalist. I just assumed they’d probably give at least a small scholarship to most that traveled in for a music audition but evidently not?!
I think tuition is 60K for next year. My kid did get very close to half merit so I guess we cannot complain at all!
How did your daughter get set up with a sample lesson? Did the teacher reach out to you. We’ve had no luck attempting to do that and for me as a parent it’s concerning (my kid is not concerned lol). Other programs my kid is looking at (including more competitive ones) have been more warm and welcoming in this regard.
Congrats to your potential future Ole too, @MusakParent!
After DD auditioned, the saxophone instructor met with the small group of saxophone students that auditioned (I think it was just six or seven) and he told them that if any of them wanted to meet with him for an individual “get to know you” lesson on the following day that they should just email him and he would try to set something up. DD had some bumps in her formal audition and was feeling like a bit of a mess, so she emailed the instructor and asked to meet for a lesson. She ended up spending over an hour talking and working on some of her current music with him and came away with a much better feeling overall. He did say at that time that students invited to audition were pretty much guaranteed to get some music scholarship money. I don’t know if he was just speaking of the saxophone students or all music/fine arts students that were invited to the audition days.
That being said, at DD’s other top choice (another small LAC), the saxophone studio head reached out to her and invited her to campus for an informal audition.She loved the time spent there too, so it is going to be a tough choice!
@EganAg, I wanted to update…the 50% limitation on merit money is based upon 50% of the sum of tuition, room and board, so merit aid is limited to half of just about $61K this year. We received a really nice phone call congratulating DD on her music scholarship and explaining her FA package. Basically, because Olaf is a 100% Meets Need school, they have to balance that aid and the merit aid they award in order to ensure that they are able to offer opportunities to a wide variety of students. One positive thing is that the entire award stays available to the student (given satisfactory progress, of course) for all of their time at Olaf, so if tuition rises, so does the amount of the merit aid applied to that semester’s bill, up to that 50% mark. I continue to be impressed with the friendly and welcoming folks that we encounter at Olaf.
@mom2jnk merit aid does not increase over time. It remains constant even if tuition increases. My DD is there now and this has been the case. Tuition increases EVERY year to the tune of 3%. Your merit will NOT change.
Update that DS did not receive any violin merit. He’s very disappointed. We should have just sent a video and saved the $$$ expense to fly him there.
I’m sorry to hear that your son did not receive music scholarship money, @TytoAlba. That is so hard after putting forth such time and effort (and money) to attend the audition days. What a disappointment for him. This process is so challenging.
I think that my message about merit aid was probably confusing. Sorry about that. I know that DD will not get “more” merit aid, as in another or higher dollar amount award, in subsequent years. But this year the combination of her merit and music awards are greater than 50% of the current comprehensive fees, so she can’t utilize all of it this year. But her awards stay constant if she maintains academic progress. So each year, she can use an increasing portion of those awards if tuition rises, up to the total value of the awards. Same awards, but different payout in subsequent years, if that makes sense?
This post is for the benefit of future applicants. Hello future St. Olaf applicants!
As my child was going through the application process, we were curious about the timeline of merit award notifications. This is how it played out in 2019 for my child:
My child applied Regular Decision, which was due on January 15. (You’ll notice by the compressed timelines for merit award applications that you probably don’t want to be turning in your application on January 14.) The Early Decision II applicants started getting their acceptance letters just before Feb 1st. Our status page was updated on Friday, Feb 1st indicating Buntrock Scholarship Finalist. Yay! (We never did get an email notification to go check the status page–we just kept checking the web page.) Buntrock Scholars are notified early because finalists are expected to visit campus on either the last Friday in Feb or the first Friday in March with air travel covered up to $500. It was a wonderful day on campus (8:30am-6:00pm) as St. Olaf gave a hard sell on all the amazing things that campus has to offer! To the best of my knowledge, all “finalists” who attended the campus event were automatically given the award. This wasn’t clear in the notification, but for at least the last two years all attendees won the scholarship. I’m not sure if it is that way every year. It appeared that during the first week of February AND BEYOND (don’t panic early), others started to hear about Presidential and other merit scholarships, well before the RD notification date of March 15. For us, the full financial aid package was updated on Friday, March 15th but these seemed to roll out to different people on different dates.
Good luck to all future applicants!
Echoing what @schoolfan2023 said – I believe we got an e-mail on/around Feb. 1st, though those e-mails seemed to have been staggered. My memory is that people were posting here that they got in at least a couple hours before my D19 got her e-mail. And, yes, the Presidential/other scholarships were rolled out after the Buntrock notifications. And we, too, did not get the full financial aid package until the previously-promised Friday, March 15th date.
One other minor point, the $500 air travel reimbursement is for students only – parents have to pay their own way for travel and accommodations. WHICH IS TOTALLY FINE. 
Just wanted to point that out in case someone in the future is thinking they can get there for 2 $300 plane tickets and only pay $100.
My D stayed 2 nights for Buntrock Scholars since she was coming from the West Coast. She actually visited Carleton the 2nd day after ‘checking out’.
Finalists were not all given merit award for Fine Arts weekend. My son did not. So it is not a guarantee. He did get a Presidential merit award.