<p>hey everyone,
im planning on applying to schools such as new york university, university of michigan, and university of miami. Im applying there because they seem to have great music engineering or music technology programs. Im veryyy interested in this sort of thing and also very good at it (not to brag). The only thing that bothers me about this is that i get very good grades and ive always worked hard in highschool so that i could get into a great school. Im not 100% about any of these schools in departments other than music, so how do they rank in academics? and do you think its dumb that im worrying so much about a schools academic reputation? or maybe i should apply to schools like johns hopkins or yale who also has music tech departments (ive heard not as great). give me your thoughts please</p>
<p>Jkidster, New York University and University of Miami are both private universities, not state schools. They both are very selective schools. Have you toured any of the schools? Looked at their requirements for admission? What year in HS are you? You need not only great grades but great test scores and a rigorous high school schedule jam packed with AP courses to gain admission the highest level schools and most will require an audition to enter the recording technology programs.</p>
<p>There are many threads on this board about the same subject. Do a search and read through the threads, lots of information available!</p>
<p>NYU and U of Mich are certainly highly regarded and competitive schools. For example, at U of Mich 84% of the students were in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes–that is not that different from Ivy Leagues like Cornell and Dartmouth where 90% of the students were in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes. The big difference is that because U of Mich is so much larger, it actually has far more highly intelligent students and far more opportunities than the individual Ivy League schools do (yes, the Ivies win proportionally but their reputations are greater than what is deserved at least relative to excellent schools like NYU and U Mich).</p>
<p>Most people would not consider Johns Hopkins to be that different in quality than U of Mich–it is merely much smaller and so as with the Ivies, people confuse small size with exclusivity and quality.</p>
<p>So to answer your question about “worrying so much about a schools academic reputation,” I would say that certainly a school’s academic reputation should always be a strong consideration, but once you are at the level of NYU, U of Mich, and the Ivies, the differences are small enough that other factors like the programs offered and personal fit should be more important.</p>
<p>jd, if you look at the academic admissions profiles of each school you will get a better sense. There is nothing wrong with your thinking about overall quality of the school, especially when you’re heading into a field that rewards highly rigorous math and science students. I can’t speak to the others directly, but Umich’s academic admission has become even more rigorous this year because they’ve switched to the common app and had almost 10,000 more applications as a result. Academically, Michigan accepts about 6% international students and about 35% out of state students (the ratio of OOS is much higher at the school of music since it’s talent-based admit) and as such, it is not unusual these days to see kids with a 4.0 and strong ACTs rejected if there is not something else outstanding about their application or if they did not take the most advanced courses available. </p>
<p>The College of Engineering, where at the Umich PAT eng program you would be taking some of your music tech courses, is outstanding and among the top ranked programs in the world. In short, as far as applying to UMich, your hard work in high school will absolutely not be wasted. Eg. one of the profs in the music school also teaches c+ programming at the COE. Get the idea? You won’t find academic slackers here ;)</p>
<p>The privates you mention also have strong reputations, so I don’t think you can go wrong.</p>
<p>Umich, NYU and Johns Hopkins are very competitive schools academically and while they don’t have the Ivy “Cachet” (whatever that is), they are tough schools to get into. U Miami is uneven, some of their programs are top notch, but they are not quite as competitive in terms of admissions as the other schools.</p>
<p>If you are thinking of going into music engineering/music tech, what is going to matter is how good the program is and about having graduates out there doing it. With those kinds of jobs, it isn’t like for example investment banking or certain law firms, where if you don’t come out of an Ivy or ‘top x’ schools, you can pretty much forget about getting in there. Doing your degree at a top notch program within a school can help you get your foot in the door with the first job, but it is very different then with investment banking and such. One of the things to look for in a program is not only how hard it is to get into (which is supposed to be a sign of how good it is), but about what comes out, because especially in a field like that, connections can matter. If for example NYU has a lot of grads out there, there is a strong chance you might run across one applying for a job, and it might improve your chances, or help you find leads (or U Mich, or whatever). Once out there, what you do is going to matter more and more then where you went to school, unlike the Ivy tied jobs, once you are out there where you went to school will start to matter less and less.</p>
<p>My recommendation would be to try and find out what the reputation is out in the real world, try to do searches of working music engineering/music tech students, and see where they went:). For something like music engineering or music tech, going to an ivy might influence someone outside the field like a perspective in law, but I suspect in the world of me/mt it might buy you less then a top program like NYU, USC, etc…</p>