Rejected: Thornton School of Music-Music Composition
April 20th, 2018 6:10pm PST
STATS
College transferring from: Pima Community College
Trojan Transfer Plan (TTP): No
Entering as: Junior
GPA: 3.8
Units completed: 60
Units in progress: 13
Pre-reqs completed: All
GEs completed: All except the Physical Sciences and Social Analysis (in progress though)
SUBJECTIVE
ECs listed on app: Concert band, marching band, jazz band, orchestra, choir and WGI from HS. Anywhere there was music I was there. I focused all on GEs while at CC but I did study privately and extensively with composition/orchestration teachers
Job/Work Experience: Bank Teller (1y), Food Courier (1y), Office assistant at a law firm (on and off for about 4 years).
Essays (subject and responses): Wrote about why I wanted to attend USC, goals I had etc. Also wrote about something I was interested in outside my major (personal finance). Had all my essays reviewed by professionals.
Letters of Recommendation: Two very strong recommendations from private teachers. One from a professional film composer and another from a professional orchestrator (he worked on tons of Pixar films).
OTHER
Other schools applied to: Arizona State, NYU, and CCNY. I got into ASU and CCNY. Still waiting to hear back from NYU.
Comments: I’d say I was pretty shocked when I learned that I didn’t get in to USC. It’s a very competitive program as I understand they only take on average 6-8 students a year. I wrote a ton of music for my application portfolio (80+ pages of orchestral music, totaling 12 min.). I had worked on my music since spring of 2017. Can’t tell you how many all nighters I pulled. I had (still have) awesome teachers that really critiqued my work every weekly lesson. Both felt confident I’d get into USC.
I’d say what may have hurt me is not taking formal music classes for about a year at university (I was doing a ton of self-study and like I said meeting with professionals) and my pieces weren’t live recordings, but rather midi realizations (only way to get orchestral music performed is if you have decent connections with your university-my CC hardly had a string orchestra-or pay a ton of money to get it performed).
I moved from a 4y university to a CC to save money and get my GEs done. The plan was to take the rest of my college music classes at the uni I transferred into. I could have submitted smaller pieces that were recorded by a string quartet, but I didn’t feel like that represented my knowledge of orchestration. I wanted to show everything I knew (or thought I knew) to the faculty. I even emailed them a year ago and asked what they wanted in a portfolio. The chair said live recordings are preferable, but midi is fine too. Other faculty members said larger works would be more impressive than smaller ensembles. Felt like my scores were also carefully prepared, well-notated etc.
Anyway, feel like I’m rambling here, but I write all of this for future composition applicants (who can hopefully do better than me haha). I don’t have any regrets about the pieces I wrote (maybe a few notes and chords here and there), but I really feel that I left everything on the table. I did learn a lot more about composition and the orchestra through this whole process. If any future composition student finds this post early on here’s a link to my rejected portfolio, just so you can sort of get an idea of what didn’t get accepted. https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/user-652328044/sets/olympus-suite-for-orchestra.
Best of luck to all of the other applicants current and future.
