<p>I feel for you guys making these hard choices. Last year at this time, there were some hard conversations with tears on all sides. My son’s first choice was Berklee which accepted him with a small scholarship, and we explained to him that it wasn’t really a feasible financial choice. Berklee allows you to defer your acceptance without signing any paperwork and making a deposit, so you can accept at another school without violating whatever the governing rules are. You can also re-audition the following year for reconsideration of the scholarship award. My son did the deferral, and then liked the school he ended up at so much, he did not opt to re-audition. </p>
<p>The application/financial award system sets these poor kids up for this kind of heartbreak. There is no way to know the actual “sticker price” of a school until they give you the financial aid information. Luckily, at my son’s second choice school (Hartt) he was awarded a scholarship, and we were able to get them to increase it by explaining that we had a more attractive offer from another school that he was not as enthusiastic about as he was about Hartt. In the end, it did make Hartt pretty comparable to our state school. But, our state school (U Mass) has a pretty high in state tuition rate. </p>
<p>If a kid really has his/her heart set on a particular school, perhaps that child should defer their acceptance and work for a year to save money for tuition, while continuing to take lessons, especially if the school allows the kid to reaudition for scholarship consideration.</p>
<p>I totally agree that loading up on undergrad debt if you are studying music is completely foolhardy. One of the things we did with our son was to make a “budget” showing what his life would be like if he had $80K in student loans, and was lucky enouogh to get a job paying $30K upon graduation. He was pretty shocked at the impact the loan payments would have on his lifestyle.</p>