DDs undergrad experience was the more a school cost the bigger the award offer, but when everything was tallied, including automatic state aid she decided to attend a state school with a modest scholarship from the school because it ended up being the most effective and allowed us to send her to summer programs in europe. Now we are biting our fingers awaiting grad school decisions. one audition to go. Already accepted at one school but thier packages don’t come out till mid-March,(they are however making calls/emails to her current voice professor. I told him to let them know she goes to the highest bidder. The other schools are obscenely expensive, one (a total longshot for her) is an automatic full ride but as I said total long shot (and in a stupid expensive area to live), Nervewracking for all of us.
@vivasolar good point about summer programs. Be careful not to stretch too far and spend ALL your dollars on tuition bc the pressure to attend summer programs will start in college. My D did not attend a summer program after freshmen year (since I thought that was silly and expensive) but I found myself writing checks the next year.
Good luck on the MM programs. So glad you got one in the bag as that really helps and bodes well for other offers. I felt like offers for MM programs came later. I remember the last scholarship offer came from her UG school at like 8 pm on the last day of offers. She had assumed around 5 pm she got nothing (since some of her friends got offers around 4 pm) and was really angry. It was extremely annoying…even though she knew she wasn’t going there…unless it was an amazing offer…which is wasn’t. But she got a few good offers elsewhere and it all worked out in the end.
In my son’s experience, for talent scholarships, Bard was the best , then Miami. I think Bard might not give such great awards to every instrument though. He is now at Northwestern, whose aid is based primarily on financial need (they meet 100% of financial need with no loans) rather than talent. UTx and UNT both started out affordable and became even lovelier with their scholarship offerings. Peabody, Berklee and SMU offered some, but not enough to make them real options for us.
@cgmndt - S is at UNT and is in the process of trying out for RA. Technically, he will be a junior next year, which is based on having 60+ credit hours, but I don’t think they have a hard rule on that. I will post if he gets that spot - it should be known in about 6 weeks.
thanks! D will start applying as a sophomore, and just keep trying. Is your son in the music dorm? D just got acceptance to the opera program today, after auditioning 3 days ago. UNT is one of her top 2 choices
Hi. Sorry for the delay. Yes, S is in Bruce Hall, the music dorm. Well, the dorm where music is most concentrated. You can be a non-musician and live there. Since freshmen have housing priority, and since S applied for housing a couple hours after the window opened (due to being in class), he missed the chance to be in it again next year and will be in a different dorm. Unless he is lucky enough to be an RA and then be assigned to Bruce Hall. The dorm has its own jazz band that you could see by searching youtube for “bruce hall jazz band”. You can goodle “UNT RLA” and easily find the FAQ, etc. for being an RA there.
I didn’t know about the corm jazz band - makes sense. D plays horn, trumpet and a little piano and sings all types of music - despite majoring in opera. She loves the idea of being around so many high quality musicians at UNT. THe downside to the school is fewer performance opportunities, due to the large grad school and it is far away. She is also afraid that she will be expected to JUST sing. It is a hard decision. I hope the scholarship offers in the next few weeks will add some clarity to her thinking
What is considered a good or average undergrad scholarship for an in state public university with a very good music school? Can one find this information somewhere?
^AT UM music scholarships are merit based, need informed which may be true at other state schools as well. I think trying to come up with a specific number that is average or good is going to be very difficult because it is going to vary so much from school to school and student to student. So much depends on how much money the music department has to offer and who they are trying to attract in any given year.
If you name the school some posters on here might have experience with that particular school. You also may be able to call someone in the financial aid office to get an idea of the range of scholarships that are awarded at that particular school for IS students and some schools may have that info posted somewhere on their website.
We just joked that our son got the in state tuition scholarship since it was so much more affordable than the private conservatories and OOS schools and he was so fortunate to be able to attend such a great school.
Would love to hear about Eastman, Ithaca (Music School), Berklee, Peabody/Hopkins, U Mich and U MD if anyone knows about these. Also Temple and Rutgers.
@cellomom2 The “in-state” scholarship joke is our thinking too! The privates would have to offer a very large scholarship to compete with my D’s in-state tuition options. And her in-state options are pretty good too. So they may be hard to pass up!
I was wondering about CCM, Jacobs and Bienen.
@vistajay you already have most of your offers??? Wow. ONly 2 of the 8 here
@Kitty394 My understanding is that because Northwestern FA is need based that the music scholarships are also need informed and incorporated into the overall FA package.
Don’t know about the others.
@SpartanDrew , sort of. More like by mutual process of elimination. He applied to 11 schools for music. He has been admitted, academically, to eight of them. One rejected his prescreen and so did not admit him academically either. One of the academic admits did not admit him to the music school after the audition. We’ve not heard yet from 2 schools where he was deferred after applying early action. He cancelled auditions at three schools because he is no longer interested. He is still waiting to hear from one music school that admitted him academically to the university with a merit scholarship. He has music talent and merit scholarships to two schools. He still needs to hear from another school about a music talent scholarship, but he is admitted for music and has an academic scholarship. So technically we are waiting for 2 academic/music admit decisions, one music admit decision, and one scholarship decision. So 4 of the 11 are not yet settled.
Thanks @cellomom2. Our EFC is higher than the tuition so I am guessing that would equal little to no scholarships? I didn’t expect any FA except perhaps merit based for music and maybe a little academic.
We just did a music tour at Bienen. We were told they only have merit money for musicians and they were distributed based on the needs of the music school and how badly they want a particular musician to attend. Sounds like they are much more generous with merit aid for grad musicians.
Maybe someone can refute this, but I get the feeling northwestern will end up being a more expensive option for most. We loved the school. Bienen also told us admissions does not allow much leeway in academics for musicians. They want students to be able to be successful in their gen ed classes and it’s easy to double major or pick up other classes in other schools there. That is very appealing for my kid.
I’ve said this before on this thread, but I’ll get back to you in a month.
@MusakParent My D is a Bienen dual degree student. I’m not sure what you mean by “only have merit money for musicians” but I’ll tell you what we learned based on our tour back in summer 2015 (D is a sophomore). Some things could have changed! Merit scholarships are competitive and offered to about 10% of undergrad auditioners. The rest of financial aid comes thru NU. Roughly 44% of NU undergrads receive aid (no loans). Also, there is some leeway in academics for Bienen students. The overall univ ACT range is 32-34 but Bienen will consider 27, 28. Not sure about leeway in GPA. Part of the reason is what you mentioned but also consider that students sometimes transfer into other schools and so need to be able to handle all academics at the university.
@Kitty394 My S graduated HS in 2011 so this information is dated but he did apply to IU Jacobs at the time. He got really good academic merit there that would have made IU less expensive than UM, our IS school. He ended up not being admitted to the SOM so it was moot. My D, 2014, also applied to IU (not a music major) and got really good academic merit bringing the cost below UM. How strong are your S/D’s academic stats? Will s/he qualify for merit there? My S was admitted to IU for grad school and got an excellent music merit scholarship but chose to go elsewhere so my instinct is that there is merit money to be had at IU. I don’t know relatively whether more money goes to grad students or undergrad there.