Call the teachers you talked to, and see if they can hook you up with email addresses, screen names and phone numbers of current students. Or ask someone on here. I know theres some FSU guys around somewhere. That's a good start...
But I would imagine that for FSU you have to be freaking awesome for them to GIVE you money... Look for lots of other scholarships as well, not just music ones.
Berklee is awesome for guitar and bass, no idea how their brass stuff is, I'd imagine pretty darn nice.
And when picking a college, don't pick it based on the music dept. alone. Make sure you like the city or town, the campus etc. And make sure the guy-girl ratio is acceptable. I know it is at FSU. Also, make sure they have a lot of ensembles for non-majors, just in case you change your mind, etc. And remember, if you wanna do marching band, make sure the football team is worth a damn. I mean, Indiana could have the best band in the country, but who sees em, you know?
Music scholarships
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Mudman
- 3 valves
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:04 am
- Location: Mudville
There are lots of paths you could take in your musical education.
I'm a fan of "liberal arts institutions." You get a well-rounded education and can also focus on music. If you decide to do something at a later stage in life, you will have the skills to do so. Virtuoso Pat Sheridan has a degree in something totally unrelated to music. If all you can do is play tuba and lack the ability to learn other skills, you may have a tough life.
Out-of-state costs can be outrageous. For many people, a good plan is to get an undergraduate degree in your home state. Practice more than everybody else and then see if you have a real future based on offers from graduate schools. If you play well enough and have good grades, it is easy to win an assistantship at a good graduate school. If you don't play well enough to get a free graduate education, you might want to reconsider what your goals are.
You don't need to go to Eastman to succeed in music. Practice rooms are the same at any school (they are all small, hot and smelly). Find one, make it your home, and learn to enjoy it!
If you go to a small school, supplement your education by going to conferences and driving for the occasional lesson with a big name. Travel to see great live performances. Road trips are fun. (There are some great players and teachers who have graduated from top schools like Eastman. I have worked with several. There are also many unemployed people from these same schools.) Succees is mainly based on your own skills and how you build your credentials, not where you graduated from. In the college teaching scene, it does help to have one "name brand" school on your resume. This will get your resume past the first round. After that, it is about playing and people skills along with having the specific credentials a university is looking for.
Berklee is a great school for making future connections. Even with the huge scholarships that are commonly offered, it is still very expensive. Many recording jazz players met and teamed up at Berklee.
Starting salaries in music probably don't merit $80,000 of college debt. (I know several people who are trying to dig out from that position, with good college teaching jobs.) You could always join the military after going to college to erase most of your student debt.
Lots of options. If you can get a waiver for out-of-state costs to go to a good school in a nearby state, that can sometimes be a good idea. FSU is much better than anything in the state where I am a teacher. I have encouraged several really good high-school students to apply there instead of the offerings in my own state. On the downside, it is a big program. You will get less performing opportunities in top ensembles than if you were a great player in a slightly smaller program.
Good luck!
I'm a fan of "liberal arts institutions." You get a well-rounded education and can also focus on music. If you decide to do something at a later stage in life, you will have the skills to do so. Virtuoso Pat Sheridan has a degree in something totally unrelated to music. If all you can do is play tuba and lack the ability to learn other skills, you may have a tough life.
Out-of-state costs can be outrageous. For many people, a good plan is to get an undergraduate degree in your home state. Practice more than everybody else and then see if you have a real future based on offers from graduate schools. If you play well enough and have good grades, it is easy to win an assistantship at a good graduate school. If you don't play well enough to get a free graduate education, you might want to reconsider what your goals are.
You don't need to go to Eastman to succeed in music. Practice rooms are the same at any school (they are all small, hot and smelly). Find one, make it your home, and learn to enjoy it!
If you go to a small school, supplement your education by going to conferences and driving for the occasional lesson with a big name. Travel to see great live performances. Road trips are fun. (There are some great players and teachers who have graduated from top schools like Eastman. I have worked with several. There are also many unemployed people from these same schools.) Succees is mainly based on your own skills and how you build your credentials, not where you graduated from. In the college teaching scene, it does help to have one "name brand" school on your resume. This will get your resume past the first round. After that, it is about playing and people skills along with having the specific credentials a university is looking for.
Berklee is a great school for making future connections. Even with the huge scholarships that are commonly offered, it is still very expensive. Many recording jazz players met and teamed up at Berklee.
Starting salaries in music probably don't merit $80,000 of college debt. (I know several people who are trying to dig out from that position, with good college teaching jobs.) You could always join the military after going to college to erase most of your student debt.
Lots of options. If you can get a waiver for out-of-state costs to go to a good school in a nearby state, that can sometimes be a good idea. FSU is much better than anything in the state where I am a teacher. I have encouraged several really good high-school students to apply there instead of the offerings in my own state. On the downside, it is a big program. You will get less performing opportunities in top ensembles than if you were a great player in a slightly smaller program.
Good luck!
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Mudman
- 3 valves
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:04 am
- Location: Mudville
Maybe. I'm saying that it is probably not worth going into major debt to go to the big pond. You can practice just as hard in the mud puddle. After a few years, the big pond will pay you for your talents if you are any good. (A good player with outstanding grades and some experience teaching younger kids.)TUBACHRIS85 wrote:
So your saying to be a big fish, in a small pond I'm assuming, where you can have a much better outcome, then if everyone is just as good or better.
It is helpful to be around players who are better than you. If they aren't in your puddle, you need to look to good recordings and make trips to every musical event in the region.
Come to think of it . . . when I went to school, I only compared myself to the best players I had heard on recordings or live. That eliminated any "pond theory" because listening to the big guns play turned my world a big ocean.
Having a good teacher is probably the most important consideration.
Mud
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Tubaryan12
- 6 valves
- Posts: 2104
- Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:49 am
Why start early?-
Uncle Buck
- 5 valves
- Posts: 1243
- Joined: Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:45 pm
- Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
- Contact:
What are your goals
Give as much thought as you can to what your goals are. I hope this doesn't come across wrong, but if your goal is professional playing or college teaching, and you have trouble getting a scholarship to a good music program (like FSU), you may want to think about whether you have what it takes. Setting high goals and working toward them is wonderful, but unrealistic goals can lead to a lot of years of frustration.
If you want a music career as a band director, you should pick a school based on its music education program, not based on its performance reputation. You may be playing in the best tuba studio in the country, or in one of the best college wind ensembles in the universe, but neither of those are going to impress to a high school principal to whom you are applying for a job. Much more important will be the kind of clinical teaching experiences the school will provide, and the relationship and reputation the school has developed among the schools where you might want to teach.
I went to a large, nationally respected university that had top notch performing ensembles, and I performed with those groups all around the U.S. and abroad. However, when it came time to try to get a job as a school band director, I learned that while I had gotten a great music education, I wasn't prepared to be a very good teacher.
Give some serious thought to the kind of future you want. If you go into music education, do it only because you love both teaching and music. If your dream is to be a performer or college teacher, evaluate whether those are realistic goals. If you really don't have a passion for being a school band director, then don't put yourself in a position where that is your only fall-back if other goals don't work out. People who do that not only make bad band directors, but they aren't happy either.
You don't have to pursue music as a career to keep it a part of your life. You may decide to pursue a non-music major, but to keep tuba playing as a serious hobby. There are lots of very, very good players who do that. If that is the case, your evaluation of colleges may be different.
To summarize, keep your options open. You're too young to pigeon-hole yourself into one potential future. Music is a apparently an important part of your life right now, but keep an open mind as you think about the role you want music to play in your future.
If you want a music career as a band director, you should pick a school based on its music education program, not based on its performance reputation. You may be playing in the best tuba studio in the country, or in one of the best college wind ensembles in the universe, but neither of those are going to impress to a high school principal to whom you are applying for a job. Much more important will be the kind of clinical teaching experiences the school will provide, and the relationship and reputation the school has developed among the schools where you might want to teach.
I went to a large, nationally respected university that had top notch performing ensembles, and I performed with those groups all around the U.S. and abroad. However, when it came time to try to get a job as a school band director, I learned that while I had gotten a great music education, I wasn't prepared to be a very good teacher.
Give some serious thought to the kind of future you want. If you go into music education, do it only because you love both teaching and music. If your dream is to be a performer or college teacher, evaluate whether those are realistic goals. If you really don't have a passion for being a school band director, then don't put yourself in a position where that is your only fall-back if other goals don't work out. People who do that not only make bad band directors, but they aren't happy either.
You don't have to pursue music as a career to keep it a part of your life. You may decide to pursue a non-music major, but to keep tuba playing as a serious hobby. There are lots of very, very good players who do that. If that is the case, your evaluation of colleges may be different.
To summarize, keep your options open. You're too young to pigeon-hole yourself into one potential future. Music is a apparently an important part of your life right now, but keep an open mind as you think about the role you want music to play in your future.
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Arkietuba
- 3 valves
- Posts: 339
- Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 7:36 pm
I'm currently a freshmen in college and if it weren't for my music scholarship, I wouldn't be in college. My scholarship pays for full tuition and fees...if you do everything you're supposed to do (i.e. go to atleast 20 recitals a semester and be in at least 2 ensembles). My advice (keep in mind that I come from a lower-middle class family) is to find a smaller (i.e. $) school with a great music department if you can...and put off FSU untill you decide on a school for your masters. I wanted to go to the Univ. of Arkansas but there is no way I would have paid for it. But I ended up at the best college for me...UCA has the best College of Educ. in the state as well as the best tuba instructor. I hope that helped in some way....
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dopey
- 3 valves
- Posts: 312
- Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2004 7:39 pm
ure from uca arkie?
I was strrroooonnngggglllllyyyy looking there, and woulda but when it came down to it tech will require the least 'extra' to go and they have a full engineering department..and since im a double..
Dr young is awesome, and so is Mr. Anders tho, shoot so is the guys @ u of a.. it was a very hard decision
I was strrroooonnngggglllllyyyy looking there, and woulda but when it came down to it tech will require the least 'extra' to go and they have a full engineering department..and since im a double..
Dr young is awesome, and so is Mr. Anders tho, shoot so is the guys @ u of a.. it was a very hard decision
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TexTuba
- 5 valves
- Posts: 1424
- Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:01 pm
I don't know how your academics are but look for those kinds of scholarships too. Also, many music programs will give you extra money to march in their marching band. Some schools give you money to play in the pep band during basketball season. There is a TON of money to be had if you just look. If you can get a music scholarship great. But if not there are other ways of getting money. Also DO THE FAFSA. It takes no more than 30min. to fill out and they might give you money. Good luck man.
Ralph
Ralph