<p>Honey, the list of the prescreens you passed indicate that you are quite talented! As you know though, there are a lot of piano majors and only a very small number of them go on to be soloists. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make an excellent living as an accompanist after taking a Masters in collaborative piano- check the salaries if those who play for major opera companies.
Double majoring will not be easy because of practice time but done schools, like CIM/Case Western and Oberlin make it more doable just because of their physical layouts.
I’m going to take the other side of the coin here and state that some parents are far too controlling Andalusia never come around- that was the case with my D. A brilliant student, she turned down Princeton and Wellesley to pursue her passion at a conservatory. She chose one with heavy academic requirements as well and could easily go into history or law, which also interest her, at good grad schools. Her father was vehemently against her music-he’s a computer engineer- and has literally disowned her over this. He has never heard her sing and never attended anything she’s been
in during the 8 years that she’s been
performing. His loss. Children are on loan to us, we do not own them, and I don’t understand forcing a youngster to follow in one’s footsteps or threatening them in order to control their lives.
I wish you the best of luck and urge you to get an application into Case, if you haven’t, to go along with your CIM app, but ONLY if you feel that you truly want to double major and want to take the extra year it requires.</p>
<p>Perhaps not as a solution for our OP, since her mother doesn’t value liberal arts colleges, but for others considering a double degree, don’t forget Bard Conservatory & College where my son attends. It requires all students in the conservatory to get a second major in the college - it takes five years, but they make sure it’s financially feasible. And the piano faculty is stellar: Richard Goode (master classes), Peter Serkin, Jeremy Denk, Jeffrey Kahane and Matti Raekallio.</p>
<p>Mezzo’s M:</p>
<p>I don’t understand it either, to be honest. It is ironic, we have the parents who basically are indifferent and kind of assume the kid will raise themselves, find themselves, with the help of everyone else, and then we have the parents who think if they don’t control every little thing their kid will end up a disaster, and both IMO are bad, if in different ways. It isn’t that the parents don’t love them, it is because they have the view that they “know the ways of the world” and therefore can help their kids ‘find success’…the problem is it is of course success in their terms. I have seen brilliant music students who would give their right arm to be able to go on in music, who are forced onto the academic track because that is where the money is, I have seen kids forced into music who would probably rather do something else.</p>
<p>What concerns me is something I have seen, high school age kids, high level musicians, whose every moment of every day is charted and planned by the parents, 17 year old high school seniors where their parents sit in on music lessons, argue with the teacher, and otherwise run the kids life…what will happen to these kids when they are at school and have to make decisions for themselves? What happens when mom (and dad) aren’t there telling them every minute of every day they are awake is work time?</p>
<p>It isn’t that the parents don’t love their kids, they do, perhaps too much, plus more then a bit of it is the parent living through their child what they couldn’t do, which you see with dad’s with their kids playing sports, musicians who never achieved much with their musically gifted kid, the high level lawyer who thinks all in life is being a lawyer, the person whose family built a business and assume that the kids will work there, too, because that is the ‘best’ choice…or because a profession to them is ‘worthwhile’ because it will allow (in their eyes) a lucrative lifestyle. The problem isn’t love IMO, it is because they are talking from the perspective of “I” and what “I” want/wanted, rather then what they want:)</p>