What are my opportunities of getting scholarships for oboe and NOT majoring in music?

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>Hey everybody. I'm a Junior in high school who plays the oboe. I consider myself a good oboist for my age. I've done music programs and competitions for several years now and have done very well in them. I'm auditioning for All-State this year. </p>

<p>Anyways, I know that a lot of colleges are looking for oboists, and I've been told to no-end that playing the oboe will get me scholarships. However, I do not want to major in Music at all! So are my possibilities of getting these scholarships punctured if I do not major in Music? Thanks!</p>

<p>BTW, I'm a good student overall. 3.8-4.0 GPA</p>

2

<p>When looking at schools, come right out and ask the music department if they are in need of oboe players in the coming year (s). We have a neighbor whose son plays the viola, and he went off to school to study Physical Therapy. His roommate just happened to be a music major and mentioned they needed viola players in the orchestra. This kid had his viola sent to him and he approached and auditioned for the director. He’s now first chair viola with a half tuition scholarship! Also, my (hs) daughter plays the oboe and just made area all-state freshmen year. If she chooses not to study oboe, she will be looking for scholarships and a chance to continue playing as well. One down side is I’ve heard many people have taken up the oboe in an attempt to go after scholarship money. But I’m not saying they all play well! But 25 years ago the Oboe was in huge demand as it was a much more rare instrument to be playing. It still is, but not as much anymore.</p>

3

<p>I don’t know if it will help you get a scholarship, but I do remember an Admissions Officer talking about one year the Orchestra Prof said he needed a french horn player, so the Admissions Office scoured all the applications looking for someone who played the french horn. In that instance, I could see them giving a scholarship conditioned upon the student being in Orchestra, but not needing to be a music major.</p>

<p>Also, in my state the flagship school has a program that awards full tuition scholarships to very talented HS Seniors who commit to playing in the Orchestra, but do not have to be Music students.</p>

4

<p>The University of Missouri-Columbia has said that most music scholarships are for music majors, very little for music minors.</p>

5

<p>I think it would be unlikely to get a scholarship (oboe or any other instrument) for a school with a large/good music department which attracts a good number of instrumentalists. You would run a better chance in a smaller school. I bet a school trying to establish a music department would be your best opportunity for an oboe scholarship.</p>

6

<p>For a scholarship? That would be difficult. You would have to find out if the music department has any leverage in scholarships. The only way I can see to do that is to call the departments and ask if any such possibilitiy is there. If the department chair tells you that they do have any input as to who gets scholarships, then you are done. It’s like wondering if you can get a merit awards specifically for being a prize classics catch. </p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that your oboe playing prowess will be getting points in some merit award considerations. Though some schools do give merit money purely based on SAT scores, most have some other holistic factors like geographics, gender (if a school is trying to keep a stable ratio), extra curriculars, home life challenges, URM, first generation, etc. Being an oboe player would be an item of interest if the school has an active music program. It could increase your chances at getting a merit award. But these things are often done in a “fuzzy” way and there is no way to tell for sure.</p>

<p>If you are not going to be a music major, it won’t mean a thing at those schools that have great departments and whose orchestras and bands are made up of music majors. An oboe player at CMU or Oberlin,where conservatory programs are in place, there are many musicians among the students in other programs, but there is no need for them to have an active orchestra. You have to look for where you are needed and can be used.</p>

7

<p>Oboe players are a dime a dozen in our area. Certainly the northeast USA is saturated. Maybe look at a smaller school away from big cities? I know that an oboe player my daughter was in orchestra with a year ago got some scholarship at Davidson College, non-music major.</p>

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<p>I think it is very, very difficult to give a definitive answer, conventional wisdom is often not very accurate when it comes to information like this, you hear that if you play the bassoon or oboe it is easier to get into a music program, or get a scholarship, and that may or may not be true, it depends on the program (a program with a strong oboe department may get a ton of people, plus keep in mind that maybe they take a couple of oboes a year…it is true I suspect that it is easier to get a scholarship for oboe, english horn or bassoon or viola then a violin, for example, simply because of numbers…</p>

<p>A lot of it is going to depend on need. Given that a typical college orchestra probably has 2 oboes, maybe 3, there may not be a lot of demand, it all depends as others have said</p>

<p>I think playing an instrument can have impact on admissions, in terms of scholarships it depends on the school and their need. It isn’t all that different than academics, often schools have special scholarship programs if you major in certain fields, and if they have need for a specific instrument you may get lucky…but I don’t think you can count on it, to be honest, I think as a non music major you would be better targeting schools that you think you can afford and then wait and see what comes back if you are accepted and decide where to go at that point; targeting schools for potential scholarships for playing oboe is like trying to win the lottery by buying tickets at a certain location…among other things, if a school is known for giving scholarships for oboe, it is likely others will have the same idea diminishing your chances of getting one if available…</p>

<p>With oboe, it is a weird one, there are a lot of oboe players these days, but oboe is a weird instrument, there are a lot of kids playing it but IME very, very few who play it at a top level, even in the high level programs, it is hard to find top level oboe players at the high school level, so if you are really out there, it may increase your chances (which would be true on any instrument, of course)</p>

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<p>Thanks for the responses! I’m interested in going to school in the North East, more specifically the New York Area. I have no problem with being in the school orchestra for all my college years, so I will keep my options open.</p>

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<p>And a large number of those oboe players, as woodwinds said, are in the Northeast, with a ton of them in the tri-state area. Given the OP’s georgraphical preference, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for scholarship money given on the basis of playing the oboe at that level. If the school has a music department, then they’ll have oboe players and any available funding will go to them. Not saying that the OP couldn’t audition for the orchestra but with $$ being tight all around, I can’t see it being spent outside the department itself.</p>

11

<p>Many schools will give you a “scholarship,” meaning free private lessons on your instrument (which can add up over four years!), but not monies applied directly to your tuition payments. Some of these may include a requirement that you play in the orchestra, but others do not.</p>

12

To be rated highly for admission, playing an instrument is a bonus for you, but does not count more than grades or for some schools, SAT scores. Do not expect money from the schools unless you have filed the FAFSA and can see “need based” information. Most of the schools only do that. If you need a full scholarship, you should quickly add a stellar performance in the sport of your ability. Others can tell you which sports give the best scholarships. A sport would round out your picture in the admissions office, since most of the candidates claim to be athletic and fit and get leadership skills being captain of the team. You can try to paint a sporting image of your musical ability, especially emphasizing any team leadership or winning efforts of your team, and fairness in competition.

13

IMHO, the “oboe scholarship” is an urban legend.

14

I had to laugh when I read @intparent’s post. (Ironically, I’m typing this as the sounds of Mozart’s oboe concerto emanate from my daughter’s bedroom). I had a friend tell me “Oboe? That’s the golden ticket!” Well … talk to me next April. “Urban legend” is a great way to put it. My daughter is going to be a performance major and I’m not holding my breath, so I think this whole non-major scholarship thing might have been true at one point in time but not any more. The competition is ridiculously fierce.

15

Several years ago, I remember reading articles that said things like that, that for example an Oboist who was a music major had a lot better chance of getting merit money, or a bassoonist, compared to “common” instruments like the violin (ie a ton of kids were applying who played it) or that a non major student who played one of the ‘rare’ instruments, could get merit money for playing it to be in the school orchestra.

I agree with the idea that being a musical kid may be a plus for admission (if you are planning on an academic career in college), and it could be if they need oboists or bassoonists in the school orchestra or violists, it could weight in the kids favor if they are on the boundary…I suspect this would apply to be honest at schools that don’t have performance programs, where they want to have a good orchestra program and such (the ivies, for example). Is it possible that some school may give merit aid to musical kids who aren’t performance majors, that they desperately need instrumentalists and don’t get many so want to tempt them to go there? Maybe, but I suspect you might find it is an obscure school you might not want to go to. Among other things, there are so many parents these days pushing kids playing instruments, especially at the top schools like the ivies, that I doubt they suffer from a lack of anything, especially since "orphan instruments’ like the viola, bassoon, english horn and so forth, are being pushed specifically because of the myths.

I think you would stand a better chance of getting merit aid for academics then playing a specific instrument, so if you are doing an instrument, do it because you want to play and hope it gives you an edge into your dream school admission, counting on it, not so much.

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Well, I think the scholarship is a myth. :). A bassoonist in D1s high school class did get accepted to a college that needed a bassoon player for their orchestra, and it may have provided a small admissions bump. But it is not a “golden ticket”.

17

Yeah, it was all I could do to not laugh when that person said that. And here’s the kicker - when they said that they were actually referring to MAJORING in oboe performance. Well, show me the money! I’m waiting. I think as a parent of a child who plays (insert less-than-uber-common instrument here) you just get used to comments like that from friends and family. My daughter has a friend who is now a harp performance major. You should hear some of the comments her parents got! Smile and nod, smile and nod . . .

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@designdad: If you took all the myths about music school admissions, all the claims about magic scholarships, about how it is the golden ticket, etc, and put them together, you would need a heavy lifter to move it. I was at a Juilliard parents admissions meeting several years ago, and someone got up and asked that since the viola was ‘in demand’, would that mean a student who got past the audition process would expect any kind of special scholarships or their choice of teacher, and the admissions person had a hard time keeping a straight face (in rage or laughter, I don’t know)., and what she ended up saying was that they had super talented kids applying on all instruments, so even if that student was really exemplary, it likely wouldn’t change all that much.

One of the problems is that some of these myths at one time might have been true, like many things in music, I think a generation or two ago some of the things I hear would have been true. A music student applying to conservatory when I went to college could have been an okay player in high school, not really serious (ie all the practicing, etc) and gotten into one of the better conservatories on let’s say violin, someone could pick up the violin at 14 and get in, whereas today that would be next to impossible (a lot of the stories, about the guy they knew who picked up the violin at 14, played in school, worked hard and got into let’s say Juilliard, are from this era). Back then, the top schools were looking for kids who played an instrument well and I can tell you they did offer merit money for it, but that was also a very different era. The biggest change is that with the influx of kids from Asia, and to a certain extent Eastern Europe, there are just scores of hypertalented kids applying to the top schools, and to get to that level you have to start early. Likewise, with all the obsession about the elite colleges, and parents seeing music as a ‘golden ticket’, those school might give an edge to music students, but they don’t have to entice them, because these kids were using music to try and get in (put it this way, based on personal experience, I would bet that 50% of the kids in the Juilliard pre college, CIM pre college and some of the other elite prep programs are doing music for that reason). And this has spread from piano, violin and cello, now the word among the hyper students and parents is that piano and violin and cello are too competitive, too many ‘elite-eys’ using that, so now it is spread to all instruments, and especially the ‘orphan’ instruments (ie viola, oboe, bassoon, english horn, etc) they still see as being a golden ticket (hint, they aren’t).

And I am not even going to repeat some of the idiotic crap I have heard from school administrators and guidance counselors about music, not even worth polluting the air with it.

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@musicprnt - That is good to know. My S wants to be a bass performance major for the love of music, and he’s working at it as best he can. However, we do hear this comment quite often even from people who probably are current with the times - that as a jazz bass player, there will be no shortage of work (I assume for a ‘good’ player). We take note of the opinions, but that is all. I have noticed that bass players tend to be the least filmed of the players in jazz videos that I see, and there sometimes is a local shortage of bas players at small venues, and there is no shortage of saxophone players or saxophone solos.

20

I was just struck by the strange irony of all this:

So many well-meaning friends and family think they know so many things to be gospel truth; that if you play instrument X the automatic result is Y, and “I’m sure your child will be accepted everywhere because they’re so talented”, or they should go to school X because it’s the “best”. But the reality is that as a parent of a student pursuing music (or any of the performing arts, really) one of the most important things to learn is that you can’t know anything for certain and, to a large degree, it’s a big giant crapshoot.