Music Colleges

Hey, I'm looking for colleges with good music programs (composition and/or music production mainly). I recently went to Boston and checked out Berklee, which of course is seen as the penultimate of music education. Anyone else have a good experience with a music degree in college?

I'm not to college yet. But a lot of kickass musicians have come out of Berklee. Go there if you can.

Well my main instrument is piano, so I don't know if I'd be of much use over there. Everyone plays guitar!

I'm applying to colleges in September too, so i've been doing lots of research, i'm not a music major but from my research, Oberlin College is a very good choice for music majors. You might also want to check out the University of Rochester in New York. I hear there is a music scene up there too. These two colleges are pretty hard to get into, you should have at least a 3.9 and a 1350 on your SAT.

Oberlin College in Ohio is HUGE on piano. You might want to check it out. Thier students win the national piano competition every year. Incidently, Oberlin College also has excellent academics.
If you plan to go on to graduate school it's also a good choice because it is highly regarded in the eyes of admission officers at top schools like Harvard and Yale.

Eastman, Northwestern, Peabody, Hartford, Indiana and of course Julliard are also known for thier music programs.

If you're looking for a much cheaper alternative, you could try Middle Tennessee State University. Roughly half the school is music-oriented, whether it be concert/production, instrument-specific education, music industry business/promotion, band management, etc. And, as of last year, MTSU is an all-Steinway school. I think there are 50-something brand new Steinway pianos on campus. They are GORGEOUS, and sound like heaven.

www.mtsu.edu

Cost should not be a factor in getting a good education in whatever field (that sounds so phony but it's true!).

Incidently, most of the schools I listed have among the finest financial aid departments in the country. If you cannot pay the tuition, the school will! Don't be shocked by the sticker price at expensive schools.

I reccomend you go to a school that has both a good music program and good academics like Northwestern or Oberlin. This way you can explore several interests.

Only in my wildest dreams is cost not a factor in my education. I can bearly scratch up enough money to afford what I have, and I just can't justify going $100,000 (or somewhere in that area) into debt to start a career that probably won't make enough return to break even for 10 or 15 years.

As you can see, my experience with financial aid has been very biased. Even with 0 income, 2 siblings, a single father, deceased mother, I got nothing but bad news, since I didn't have a 4.0 from high school.

Our education system is terrifically bad, and horribly good!

LoL.

Sorry to hear about your experiance with Financial Aid. This is why it's important to maintain good grades. I guess it's easy for me because there is a lot of assistance available to minority students--especially at schools that have an 85%+ white population.