I’m a junior in high school right now and struggling to make my reach, match, and safety list. I have the list in regards to music auditions, but not academically. For some background info, I am a flutist hoping to study music performance. I’m worried about getting accepted academically to a lot of these schools because I struggled last year in math and science and some of the best music schools are also the most academically selective. Freshman year, I got a 3.33 GPA, sophomore year I got a 2.98 GPA, and this year so far I have a 3.55 GPA (unweighted). I also attend one of the top schools in the country, which is a magnet school. I am in the performing arts program for my school. I’m also in a leadership position in a club that I started, a selective peer leadership program at my school, I write for an online magazine, I am a published poet, and I have been going to Interlochen for four summers. I know that I will get good recommendations and I will make sure to write a good essay. What kinds of schools do you think I can get into with these grades? I don’t know which schools you have to get academically accepted to first, and which ones don’t look as much as grades. (Ex: You have to get academically accepted to Northwestern first, but Carnegie Mellon looks 50/50 at grades and your audition.) Please help! I am driving myself crazy with the applications for next year.
Also, my school is all honors classes and I took 1 AP and 2 IB classes. Next year I will be taking 3 APs and 2 IBs.
I was just reading somewhere that Peabody’s admission process depends almost entirely on the audition. I don’t think that’s uncommon for conservatories, which may be a better fit for you (though you probably already know there’s not a ton of scholarship money for flute players). I would hope that the counseling office at a performing arts school should be a very good resource for this question.
I’d look at schools average GPA and act scores for admission and apply accordingly. And add a few that you are close to. You can stack academic at Indiana and CCM and a few others.
Music majors do not have to have the same really high GPA and test scores as the regular academic admissions, but they have to be in the range. The regular reach, match, safety exercise is not the same. The audition will be most important and your academic improvement will be noted. That said, some are a harder academic admit than others. The best place to find out is the web pages, but look at the music pages, not the general academic pages. They will be pretty straight forward.
Use your teachers to identify schools that have teachers for you and that fit what you feel would be a good environment. From that list look through the web pages for the admission requirements. Don’t focus so much on what might be a difficult admit at this point. That is going about it backwards. Find the teachers and schools that interest you the most and start from there. When you have a list we can help more. In audition based programs there really are no safeties. Those would be a non-audition based schools.
Conservatories as a whole don’t really look at grades, unless grades are some sort of tie breaker or the grades are particularly bad. With music schools within a university, it really depends on the school and how much allowance they make for music performance majors. For example, I am pretty certain that with performance majors they don’t hold them to the same high standards that they will kids getting academic admit, so if you don’t have all the AP’s and such it won’t be looked at negatively, because they know music takes a lot of work and there are conflicts. A lot will also boil down to how good your audition is, if the music school feels you played very strongly, they may be able to get the academic side to relax standards, but it all depends.
Can I suggest something? For the schools you are planning on applying to, send an e-mail to the admissions department and ask, they are there to answer those questions. Tell them “My GPA will likely be in the X range, and my SAT is Y, but I am planning to audition as a performance major”, and see what they have to say, it never hurts. I have known kids who got into performance programs at places like Rice and Northwestern and U Mich whose academic stats were good, not brilliant, and they got in on performance, while kids with much higher academic stats didn’t get in on academic admits, so it isn’t so cut and dried. Try to keep your grades up, and maybe senior year cut back on some of the more rigorous academic classes to keep your GPA up and allow you to be in good shape for the auditions.
It doesn’t hurt to look at the common data sets for schools - you can see where the stats are for people with your GPA/test scores.
Right now the top schools on my list are University of Miami, Northwestern University, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign, Blair School of Music (Vandy), Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, and University of Michigan.
My son had borderline GPA and a great act of 29 and got in at ui. However, he didn’t qualify for any academic merit which maDE the school unaffordable.
@Cellomom6 - I believe in past years merit awards for Indiana came later. You may not yet know what the financial package will be. Others will know more about that than I - but that’s my vague memory.
We won’t know anything for Indiana yet. Not until april. We found out already for illinois. We do not qualify for any financial aid so we are doing Fafsa later just in case my son needs a stafford.
To follow up on what @musicprnt said about schools like Rice, NW, and UM I’ve recently had in-person discussions with admit folks from all three and specifically inquired about how a music student gets into a University that, like theirs, is known for academic rigor. NW said get a 26 on your ACT. Michigan said get a 24. Rice said get a 26 and have an UW GPA around 3.4. Those numbers fell in the “you’ll be fine” range. Lower than that was not a showstopper if someone really wanted you in their studio.
That said, @LaurenFlutist, you need to realize there’s a disconnect between what you’re saying (i.e., worried about) and what you’re actually doing. If you’re worried about your grades, why are you taking 3 AP’s and 2 IB’s next year? Unless those are required, drop all the honors stuff senior year. That will accomplish two things: it will take the pressure off your GPA and will likely free up practice time. As folks have already pointed out, it’s most likely going to come down to the audition.
@Cellomom6 - Whoops I immediately though Indiana for UI rather than Illinois. Must be my West Coast bias…
Listen to design dad! My son had an “easy” fall semester that enabled practice time, pre-screen and all those essays you have to write. Just writing the essays alone took up way too much time. So his easy semester was still ridiculously hard. Sure he had a higher gpa, but only because it was easier. You risk your gpa or most likely admissions by sticking to your schedule. My son’s earlier tough schedule was sufficient to test well on the ACT. That apparently is good enough.
Also. Be careful in how you choose your easy classes. Basic strength training ended up being a time waster. My son had to do a lot of time after school to get his workouts done and do extra running and still only managed a B because he had to also make significant progrest with weights. It ended up being really exhausting.
^^Interesting point, cellomom about the easy course that wasn’t!
Thanks everyone for your advice! The problem with my classes is that the two IBs are required. I know that I will do better in AP Stats than I would in Calculus because I am horrible at trig and that’s basically all of Calc. Another AP Music Theory is required for my music program. The last AP would be AP Psychology because it’s either take Psychology or not take a science next year. I would be nervous that the colleges would see that and not like that I didn’t take three years of science. Also, the only year that I’m really worried about is my sophomore year since that was the year that my GPA was so low.
Thanks for the info, @DesignDad! However, according to all of those schools, you have to get accepted into the university first and then you audition. Do you think that they just say that to uphold the appearance of the consistent academic rigor?
DD went to Rice and you do not get accepted to the university first. You get past the audition first and then are checked for suitability for the University. Generally the music admits have much lower GPA and scores than the general academic admits. DD was in the lower 25 percentile. Which isn’t shabby but is not sky high. She only took 2 IB classes her senior year, music theory and the second half of biology. She dropped math since she had algebra in 8th grade and had 4 years without senior year. DesignDad is correct as far as Rice goes. I understand NW puts more weight on the academic stats. All expect a respectable schedule, grades and scores but not on the same level as regular academic admits. That is why the normal match, reach, safety based on stats will do you no good. You have to have the good audition. If you spend all of your time trying to deal with a heavy academic schedule and short your practice time you may well hurt your chances to get into the kind of school that would be good for your music performance. Work on a list that has teachers and environment that suit you, get ready for the audition and then worry about the other factors.
Sometimes, when a conservatory is within a larger university, the university has ultimate say over who is admitted and the music departments must advocate for students who come in under the cutoff for scores and grades. That can be a frustration to the music department, but the university has a larger agenda. That’s why some musicians who are admitted to conservatories like NEC and Juilliard may have difficulty being admitted to Rice or Northwestern, where there is an institutional decision above the conservatory’s decision. I have been told anecdotally of cases where students were declined by a university despite advocacy from the music sector.
However, if your GPA was low in Sophomore year but has since recovered, that will help make a good case for your admission. It’s always good when the “narrative” shows that you are improving.
Unfortunately, every school is different in their approach to admissions, and their approaches can change from year to year. In some cases, you could make up for a problematic GPA with a terrific essay, but some schools don’t really place much weight on essays. I’d suggest, rather than make yourself crazy, developing a good plan B, in terms of a early or rolling admissions safety or a plan for a gap year.
One thing to keep in mind here, is that no matter how good your academic stats, you need to pass the audition. As others have said very eloquently, If you take a heavy academic workload that requires a lot of hard work to get good grades, so you can (in theory) pass the academic requirements of Northwestern or U of Michigan, what is the point if you lacked the time to be able to practice and bring yourself up to the level where a)you can pass the audition and b)get into a studio? Having a high gpa, a high SAT score, may get you into let’s say Northwestern academically, but that won’t get you into the music school if you don’t audition well, pure and simple.
I remember one person in my son’s graduating class at Juilliard pre college, who was one of those wanting to do a dual degree at a place like Northwestern, U of Michigan, Vanderbilt, Rice, Bard (he applied to all of them), the kid had the stats to get into any school he wanted to, had some ridiculous SAT, had a near 4.0 GPA, the EC’s, you name it, that got him into I believe all the HYP schools, but he didn’t get into any of the music programs for a dual, because he (at least my S thinks so) put all this effort into the AP’s and so forth, and his playing fell off, he simply couldn’t maintain a high level of practicing. The mother was incensed, couldn’t understand how the music school wouldn’t admit a kid with such stellar stats (you couldn’t tell her anything, other parents told her that, that there may need to be compromises, and she wouldn’t believe it).
GH is right, that it is possible that you might have trouble with some schools if you don’t have that additional year of science, or don’t take an AP or something, but if your dream is to go into music, then it is a risk you may want to take, given the competition with auditions. The flute is extremely competitive, because it is technically a solo instrument it attracts a lot of students, yet schools also don’t admit a lot (one year at Juilliard, they had 1 flute opening, and that was for grad and undergrad combined!). If you get into Northwestern, for example, as an academic admit but the music school turns you down, would you want to go there and just get an academic degree (I don’t know if Northwestern offers a ba in music on flute in the college…)…if you want to do music performance in a college, rather than in a stand alone conservatory, then I again think you may be better lessening the load academically, maintain as high stats as you can while maintaining a rigid practice schedule. You obviously need to talk to your teacher, too, because it also depends where you are musically. There are kids who by Junior year pretty much have their audition rep polished and only need to maintain it, and the amount of practice is in part determined by how far you have to go. If your teacher tells you you are on track with your current level of music practice for your auditions, now roughly a year away, then you may not have to do much, but if he/she says “you have some serious work to do, to get into that level of program”, then the academic load will need to be lightened IMO.
I agree with MP (if he calls me GH, then I’ll call him MP 
) Flute is incredibly competitive; if you want to study flute in a good conservatory, that is where to put your energy.