I was wondering if the experienced parents knew if any schools are particularly generous (or stingy) with scholarship money My son will be applying to conservatories and music schools within universities for jazz saxophone doubled with music ed (he thinks). List includes Ithaca, Berklee, Syracuse, JH/Peabody, Rutgers, Eastman and maybe Michigan (so far). Thanks!
U of Miami-Frost has great music talent scholarships, some as high as $30,000 a year, and will also stack on top of academic merit scholarships if your son qualifies for those. Also a great jazz school. The Frost dean previously headed up the Jazz Studies program at USC-Thornton.
Both Oberlin and Lawrence University have a reputation for excellent merit (and need based) Aid. Both have great Jazz programs, but Oberlin does not have a music ed program. Some programs have caps on their merit aid, and this is a super important question right out of the gate (sometimes this is true for State School programs, so attending as an OOS student can be prohibitive).
Also consider the tuition for the schools too. Very generous can also equate to very high tuition. Mid-level generous can equate to mid-level tuition. My D got her best scholarship offers from schools with the highest tuition (both Miami (MT) and Lawrence (VP) fell into the category). It was interesting that in the end all school offers were similar when you looked at final tuition. We did not qualify for financial aid and I removed any loan offers so it was straight scholarship offers. So applying at a school like Miami can make sense despite the price tag. Sorry I cannot assist with your school list.
Thanks! My son won’t go south so Miami is not on the table.Will check out Lawrence.
Lawrence only gives up to half tuition, and does not stack with academic scholarships. My daughter got as much talent money as they offer - but with tuition, room and board at 56K, well - we will have to keep looking. DePauw supposedly offers up to full tuition in talent scholarships. Fingers crossed for big money. After my daughter’s sample lesson - the head of the voice department pulled me aside to say how much she hopes daughter will attend
That’s great @cgmndt ! Fingers crossed! We can get big money from Temple, where S’s high GPA will stack academic scholarships on music scholarships. And our state school, Rutgers, is a better deal. But he doesn’t love them, so we’re still looking. Luckily he’s just a junior…
Check out North Texas, great school for jazz - tuition is cheap and they give kids in state tuition rates if they earn an academic or music scholarship. My daughter would only pay $3K a year in tuition after academic scholarship and in state tuition offer. Now - she just has to get admitted into the voice program after her audition tomorrow!
Ask me again in five weeks.
Where did your student apply, @NYCMusicDad ?
Hahaha 100% @NYCMusicDad! I was going to say the exact same thing!
The list is in the prescreen thread, if you can look it up there. Mostly music schools at universities, a couple conservatories attached to colleges. From your list, Eastman and UMich.
It’s interesting that @bridgenail mentions that in the end, with merit awards, most of the offers put COA in roughly the same place (is that right @bridgenail ?). I’ve heard other people say this, too, but this was definitely not the case for my D… she had offers that varied quite substantially in terms of COA. Just interesting! Wondering what others’ experiences are. We were a high need family, so maybe this is part of the equation?
@akapiratequeen , our kids are polar opposites. Yours won’t go south; mine won’t go north! So I can’t help with northern schools. But what we are seeing is there are some schools where my son’s academic stats would typically result in a higher academic merit award, but he was offered a lower amount because he was also getting a music talent scholarship. For example, one school gave him $5,000 academic merit, despite giving awards over $20,000 to applicants with lower scores/stats. I called to figure out what was up, and was told they gave a lower amount because my son was going to receive a music talent award. A couple days later, he got a $30,000 music award; so $35,000 in all. I think there is a bit of a tug of war between school admissions and music admissions sometimes, when both have their own pots of merit money to award. Another music school told us they wanted to see what academic merit award my son received from the university before they awarded any music scholarship, because they wanted to save their money in case my son got one of the full tuition scholarships from the university. I do find though, that if you ask, most schools are pretty open about their policies. Ask about it when you go on some tours or have some sample lessons.
Thank you, @vistajay, I will! That is really helpful. $35k, holy cow, that would be amazing!
What does your kid play? One school already told me that if the student shows up with other offers in hand, they will match within reason. They also said it’s much more effective when the kid appeals,not the parent.
So much to learn!
@akapiratequeen , my son is vocal performance. We are waiting on one more offer then we will go back to the schools to see if they will match or at least increase. The schools need to be peers, and it really helps if they are regional rivals for talent. You may get different opinions but I am of the opinion that financial matters are for me to negotiate, not my child. After all, I am paying for it, not him. Now, my son will send them emails that we discuss together, but if there is any phone calls about price I will handle that.
@dramasopranomom yes it is true in my D’s UG case. Grad school was a whole different ball game…one NO scholarship, some a measly quarter to a decent half and finally ONE near (but not quite) full tuition plus of course fees so no free lunch.
I have talked to good number of other undergrad parents who had similar experiences too…and found it odd as well (or maybe had 5 similar offers and one outlier). I do think my D’s school were all of similar “status” so maybe that evened things out too. And maybe she was a common student (even though I know she’s special) getting the common offer. I’m not sure how need would play in. My main point was that an expensive school can become competitive … sort of … kind of … I do remember Lawrence ended up the highest. It was probably a good $5K more than other offers (if I remember correctly)…and over 4 years that $20,000 more…so expensive schools can come down but how “generous” they are may be determined by how much you need.
Look for those special deals like NTU (apparently). At IU, when my D attended almost 7 yrs ago, she had an auto academic scholarship based on her ACT score that made it competitively priced with music merit or not (however that scholarship has changed and the ACT score needed has crept upward I think). You can have some high priced schools in the mix…but some “known” academic scholarships or in-state possibilities are really important to take the stress off.
One other thing that my D received was a freeze in tuition for jr and sr year if she had a certain GPA and was set to graduate in 4 years (I think those were the rules). I don’t know how you can figure that out but it may be worth asking.
Her most expensive year was Freshmen year bc of the dorm and food plan (a nice profit center for the schools). Sophomore year decreased when she got off campus and then tuition was frozen so there was some found money in my 4 year plan…that went right out the window for a summer in Tuscany (for her not me - I was at home eating ramen noodles by candle light).
My daughter is hoping to be an RA , assuming she can get hired. She would do a good job and we could really use the room/board money. That still would not make Lawrence affordable for us, unfortunately. That was the closest school.
Hartt offers up to full tuition, and students can also audition into the Performance 20/20 program which offers significant merit aid.
@cgmndt - RAs are generally upperclassmen, so your D would have to wait a bit to apply for that.
My D’s undergrad gave her some excellent $$ because of her GPA and test scores and she had a bunch of AP/dual credit courses. It was a conservatory that had a strong academic componant too. For grad school, she got decent money the first year and had tution paid by her assistantship for the second year.
There’s money out there, but you have to look for it.