cello-mom

Does anybody know if the academic admission requirements to Rice are as rigorous for Music Majors as the rest of the University ?

Singersmom07

They are tough but not quite as bad as the rest of Rice. You should look at the midpoints of the last class and if you are way below that there may be a problem, but being around midpoint should be OK. The audition is extremely important but you also have to have the academic acceptance: Good SATs or ACTs, rigorous HS academic work, good essay and recs. .

pcannon

You must meet the university's standards. Whatever that means.

Sarah5450

I was accepted to the shepherd school/rice for this fall on tuba at the undergraduate level.
I have to say that any slack they cut you academically is taken up musically - the music school is highly selective.
From an academic standard, I scored very high on my SATs and SAT II subject tests, but made about a B average in high school (although in primarily AP classes) with a few exceptions (I made some pretty awful grades in a regular level chemistry class for example). My essay was very strong, and I know its weighted pretty heavily in the final decision, so make sure you have a really creative viewpoint, are enthusiastic about the school, and show that Rice and you can have a mutually beneficial relationship.
Rice can be forgiving, just make sure you make up for any faults/flaws in other areas.

cello-mom

Sarah, if you don't mind me appearing to nosey, would you share with me (PM) your SAT scores and class rank ?

Thanks,

NYSkins1

I don't really see what the point of that is. There's no magical formula or minimum score for getting in to Rice. I think you have a pretty good idea that Rice is relatively difficult to get in to, and seeing Sarah's scores and class rank isn't going to do anything to supplement that perspective.

Clendenenator

I'm pretty sure you only need to seem intelligent (enough to make it through some academic courses at Rice), but musical talent far outweighs that. They probably just go with the best auditioner and only decide otherwise if they have a really low GPA (in the Cs) or really low SAT (below 1800 or so).

aibarr

Not so true. You really need to 1) be able to be admitted to Rice like any other student, and 2) make the cut musically. I lived with a musi for all four years at Rice, married another Rice musi after college. My roommate was both a violin performance major and was valedictorian of her high school. My husband started out as a physics/music composition double-major. You really need to be able to do both, and though the standards may be slightly relaxed for musicians, I never really saw any evidence of that in my dealings with Shepherd students.

Clendenenator

Well, I don't know for certain, but I have been told that for certain instruments at Shepherd (the ones where the prof is one of the very best in that field) there is almost no attention paid to anything outside of the audition, but maybe for the majority of parts there is more of a balance?

aibarr

This from Richard Lavenda, by way of my now-ticked former Shepherd Student ('03 grad) husband (he'll get over it): They definitely don't lower the standards. They used to have somewhat lowered standards for the musicians many years ago, but they discovered that they got far *better* musicians from upping the academic standards for enrollment. They also made the change because there are a fair number of students who transfer out of Shepherd... if they didn't accept people who could hack it at Rice, then these folks transferring out would have to leave the university to pursue another field.

cello-mom

Well that certainly narrows the viable applicant pool. I wonder how many music performance majors are scoring 1350-1400 on SATs.

MomofWildChild

My D is a Shepherd grad and she more than met the academic standards for Rice (well above 1400 SAT). She said the musis who were weaker students really struggled. There are a number of courses that performance majors take outside of Shepherd, and you have to hold your own against the rest of the Rice students.

Singersmom07

DD was at or slightly below that for SATs. She struggles some but not a lot on classes but does find a lot of friends to help her out Not Dean's list or honors yet but holding her own above a 3.0 aiming to be higher. And even if the applicant pool is narrowed, it is amazing. The orchestra and voice students are superb. I have been amazed at the concerts.

mihan

Hi, I'm looking at Rice for next year and I'm applying for flute. In the grossly obese chance that I do get accepted into both Rice and Shephard, how hard is it to major in say, Cognitive Science (or neuroscience) and flute performance? (AKA do people do it and do it successfully?)

NYSkins1

I know a fair number of people who double in performance and some type of social science. It's doable, but it's definitely not easy. It also requires a lot of going back and forth from Shepherd to your other classes, most of which will probably be in Sewell.