How Strong - Music EC

Parents Forum
101

<p>Fiddlin, I am not as quantitative as you are so I say the following with humility:</p>

<p>If your son doesn’t apply to MIT his chances are zero.</p>

<p>Your son has a very strong chance at many other excellent colleges, so you should both be spending time identifying which colleges those are.</p>

<p>My son had four very wonderful years at MIT, but he readily concedes that he could have been happy at many other great places, some of which are much easier, statistically speaking, to get accepted to.</p>

<p>My son had no musical talent whatsover. But among his friends and dorm-mates, acquaintances, etc, music (classical instrumental) was by far the most common EC, followed by public service/volunteer work. The math/music connection (neurologically speaking) is one that mystifies me.</p>

102

<p>maybe i can simplify things a bit…
…my oldest d is at a top ranked school…and thinks everyone but her plays the piano :wink: so no piano for her…but …she is an athlete AND she was in select choir during high school. although she doesn’t play the piano…she had the select choir participation and she did always include the select choir on her applications. she did not submit an arts supplement to any schools.</p>

<p>i am not surprised that there are lots of musical kids that are at her college. a music teacher told me once that a high percentage of students who participate in band do go on to college…a higher percentage than the non-music students based on her experience over the years. so if you have large numbers of music kids who apply, it makes sense that a high percentage of them would end up enrolled at the college.</p>

<p>fiddlin…if your s applies to MIT, he should definitely also apply to some schools of the same caliber. i think fiske guide mentions similar schools in their listings. what does he want to study ?</p>

103

<p>FidEcon: Since you like to think mathematically, please let me try to address your comment about 2100-2300 scorers being 20-30% of the student body. </p>

<p>I don’t think the graph of acceptance rate by SAT score is linear. It is probably more like one of those S shaped graphs where the curve is flat for a while, then becomes linear, and then starts to flatten out again. There is probably a term for that graph but I am not a math person!. Probably someone somewhere has generated such graphs and perhaps someone will provide a link. But I believe there are two psychological cutoffs for SAT scores, and these are per subscore: 700 and 750. Beyond those two cutoffs, I don’t think the scores contribute all that much to the probability of acceptance. The higher you get in the SAT score, the non-SAT components of your equation start assuming greater importance. So perhaps you could say that the Ksat decreases as the SAT increases above a certain number. And I think the 2100-2300 range is one where the curve is already beginning to flatten out.</p>

<p>So it doesn’t surprise me that there are a lot of 2200 scorers who are preferred over a lot of 2350 scorers. At that level the other factors start becoming more important.</p>

<p>I may be way off base in my perception and I’m willing to be corrected.</p>

104

<p>there are definitely other factors…are they nmf? are they an athlete? what specific need do they fill in admissions for that particular college’s enrollment goals? google enrollment management and read some articles on that topic. it’s pretty interesting stuff…thank goodness for cc…i’d never of heard of that term before i found this site.</p>

105

<p>Here’s who you find at ivies:</p>

<p>recruited athletes–about 17% of class
URMs--------------16-21%
legacies------------12-15%
development--------2%</p>

<p>Then there are first generation students being actively recruited, haven’t seen many numbers but Dartmouth took 14% this year. Even with overlap this is a lot of kids–almost half the class.</p>

<p>These are the vast majority of the kids with lower stats.</p>

<p>When I worked in admissions at an ivy in the dark ages, we did review faculty comments on arts supplements, but they rarely had major impact on a decision. Kids who were talented enough to sway faculty had generally already been ‘discovered.’</p>

<p>Fiddlin, apply your quant skills to your kid’s school. I’m assuming it’s a top private in NYC. This is your son’s first line of competition. If it’s a typical NYC private, a huge number in his class will be ivy and top LAC legacies. Another significant group has the kind of money ivies are after in development candidates. Maybe you have some very high profile, influential families. There are also probably other high achieving Asian candidates–where they rank and score vs where he does is key. These things will probably effect his chances more than an arts supplement.</p>

106

<p>From my prospective, although D is not at the elite school, her interest in music has been a topic of discussion at various interviews. She is pre-med. She has applied for intern position at Med. Research lab at her school. During interview, her misic involvement definately gave her edge and point of discussion. This is of course, when other qualifications are met and they are competing against the same caliber people. In addition, medical field in general like people of wide interests which migh not be the case with other majors.</p>

107

<p>Let me just say again…it is really, really important to get a good evaluation of where your student falls (talentwise) before making a CD for any college. </p>

<p>My D has been All-state for many years, first at the junior all-state level and then senior. Our all-state is extremely political in terms of who makes it and where they are placed in the section. On my D’s instrument only one musician is maybe on the level of Curtis or Juilliard and that person has yet to be principal. There was one other musician that was offered a spot at Oberlin. The rest? Some of them tried to audition at the elite conservatories based on where they placed within all-state and advice from someone very involved at the all-state level. One might assume that that person would know what he was talking about. However, he gave bad advice and the students were left scrambling for places in small LACs, most of them in a world of hurt. This happens every year. It seems to be more important which high school you attend and who knows you rather than how well you play. Some of these students also apllied to HYP and sent in musical supplements. I honestly don’t know why they were not accepted, but I don’t think the musical supplement helped.</p>

<p>Go get a lesson from a well respected teacher at the closest elite conservatory. Then, get another lesson from someone else, maybe at the college you are interested in. Then, you may be able to get a feel for where your student fits in.</p>

108

<p>The way MY kids really discovered how they “ranked” musically was by attending summer music programs. EVERYONE at those programs was the first chair in their high school and EVERYONE was an All-State musician. It was quite a shock to both of them. The more competitive the summer program (think…auditioned like BUTI or Interlochen vs a camp program) the better the “reality check” will be. We know kids who had been told how talented they were and they didn’t get accepted into these summer programs when they auditioned…never mind dealing with the talent once they got there.</p>

109

<p>How about a more pointed way of looking at this.</p>

<p>HYPS orchestra conductor conducts an all-state orchestra and says to a musician, “I need more/better (insert instrument here) for my orchestra. If your grades are up to par for HYPS, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation based upon my needs and my perception of your ability to help my orchestra.”</p>

<p>Would you send a CD then?</p>

110

<p>Why would a CD be needed if the orchestra conductor already has evaluated you and promised to write a letter of recommendation? I doubt that the admissions office would need to send the CD to another faculty member to get yet another opinion. One opinion would be enough.</p>

111

<p>Here’s a question: </p>

<p>If you send in a CD does it not at least signal that music is a significant EC for you?</p>

<p>So even if they don’t pass it on to faculty for evaluation, the fact that you sent in a CD might help you indirectly?</p>

112

<p>Vicarious- take your cues from the school. We were told at Stanford, “the thicker the file, the thicker the student”. They asked kids to “edit and consolidate” their application; they specified, "no cover letters, no resumes, no three page attachments outlining the significance of the “Garden Club Student Volunteer of the year award”. Our impression was that unless you had a talent so outstanding or unusual that your application would have been misleading without some extra notation to that effect— describe your talent or achievement in the spaces alloted, and then move on.</p>

<p>Other schools were quite encouraging in their message- send it in, make sure it has your name and social on it, please don’t bake us brownies but any other hobby or EC is fine, etc.</p>

<p>So to me, making a CD if you are your typical HS musician is a mistake. If someone with knowledge listens to it and decides you are a pedestrian muscian and lack any sort of judgement about your place in the musical pantheon, you are destined for the reject pile, no matter how signicant making music might be for you. If nobody listens to it, you’re just another kid with a CD-- no harm, no foul, but why bother. If someone without knowledge listens to it and is tired of the other 50 CDs they’ve had to slog through that week during application reading season… well what’s the point?</p>

113

<p>All this talk about ‘Yo-yo Ma level prodigies’ vs. all-state level… just seems to miss the boat. First of all, most actual prodigies/future high-level performers don’t go to HYPSM. They go to conservatories. Zuill Bailey, Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, etc did not go to HYPSM. At the same time, if you spend some time at Yale, you notice you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a high-level conservatory acceptee or two. What you may not know is that these conservatory acceptees also had great SAT scores, great SAT II scores, great GPA’s, great recommendations and great essays. Not 50% scores; 75% percentile. </p>

<p>My daughter was accepted at Yale. She did send in a CD. She is not a prodigy. She won some awards, and attended auditioned summer music programs. She applied to 3 high-ranked conservatories and was accepted at 2 of them, with considerable merit aid. What Yale saw in her was someone who combined academic intensity and success with the discipline to practice 3 hours a day and achieve a respectable level of artistry. Also, it was clear that she intended to continue to be musically active at Yale, and would fit in well with the musical culture already there.</p>

<p>We know a kid in the Columbia/Juilliard program, and 2 in the Harvard/NEC program. I’m not sure I’d call them prodigies either (well, maybe one of them). We also know a lot (maybe 20 at Yale + Harvard) who are there after turning down the likes of Juilliard, Eastman, Oberlin, IU, U of M. (Not Curtis, though.) If your kid belongs in that group, then I know for a fact that sending in a CD is a fine thing to do that might help and certainly won’t hurt.</p>

<p>I don’t know for a fact what difference a CD makes at an Ivy if your child is not quite at that level. I personally do not believe it likely that a CD or arts supplement ever actually hurts, but I realize that admissions officers have stated the opposite. I just don’t believe them, and I think they have some obvious reasons for prevaricating. By ‘hurts’ I mean that you have a kid where the admissions committee is all ready to admit him based on the rest of his app, but then the music dept review arrives and they say ‘Kid plays ok, but nothing special’. And so the admissions committee rejects him. I just can’t really imagine this happening.</p>

<p>So anyway, what’s the upshot? If an arts supplement shows the admissions committee what you’ve been doing with your life, what you’ve accomplished, what you’re proudest of, then I don’t really think it’s going to hurt. If music is just another EC, and your real deal - what you are all about - is not the music, then maybe you are hurting yourself by sending it in, because you are missing an opportunity to show them the best view of you. You should be focussing the applic on something else.</p>

114

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<p>You may be on to something. Thank you for your insightful observations. I am beginning to think that in my D’s case there is a greater chance she would hurt her application by not sending in a CD than by sending one in.</p>

115

<p>I don’t know whether a mediocre CD can nix a kid’s chances or not. I guess if I were an adcom or college music instructor/director, and listened to an average-at-best CD from a student who describes music as his/her most important, time-consuming EC, it might make me question a few things about the student. I might think said student was not a very good judge of themselves, or was mediocre in other areas. I might not be right, but the CD would not present the student in his/her best light, and it would have been better off left out. </p>

<p>Truthfully, there are not THAT many students who should send a CD (having listened to a good many over the years). Thousands more send them than ought to, IMO, but as long as the weak recordings are simply discarded by the adcoms (and do not REALLY affect decisions), it really is no harm, no foul.</p>

116

<p>“If you send in a CD does it not at least signal that music is a significant EC for you?”</p>

<p>They should be able to tell that from the rest of the app.
For instance:" Piano: 12 years, violin 6 years; VP of regional music club; member h.s. orchestra, h.s. chamber music group, local college orchestra. Accompanist h.s. choir. Member, folk music club. Member, Area All State orchestra."</p>

<p>This, incidentally, was my own music experience by the time I was a h.s. senior. I was a good - not great, pianist and violinist, but it would have been a waste of time for me to send a CD if that had been possible when I applied.</p>

117

<p>Northstarmom - ditto</p>

<p>Allmusic - ditto</p>

<p>My concerns are A) the no harm no foul construct is not nearly universal and B) accurate appraisal of talent is not widespread especially outside of places like NYC and Boston, etc. where the conservatory and professional scenes are. … and even there, if you don’t take advantage of the pros, conservatory faculty, etc. …</p>

118

<p>I just want to say that I think that an all-state tenor who has sung in a capella groups for a number of years gets a boost at Yale (in particular) that an all-state violinist will not enjoy. Yale has a major MALE a capella vocal tradition, with lots of very serious groups that travel all over the US and world, cost free. Tenors are always in demand. Good–even excellent–violinists are a dime a dozen at top schools.</p>

<p>Generally, there is no comparison between the admissions advantage of the competent athlete vs the exceptional musician. Colleges couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the musician. Especially violinists. </p>

<p>Sorry to be so cynical.</p>

119

<p>Good morning!
hmom5, first of all, I have no significant profile nor influential family connections. AND do not fall into URM in US definition, too.
But thanks for the info of composition of students.(#105) Your numbers look realistic although the composition of recruited atheletes is beyond my guess. 17%!!! It changed my view on students at these insitutions. I thought it would be less than 10%. Other numbers are in line with my guesstimate. I did not mention below 25% scorers because of this.(in #96)
Let me use your number this way. If 50% of students are recruited athletes, URMs, lagacies, development and first generation, the rest 50% without above advantages may be composed of students with higher scorers having other strength. The advantageos pool is not necessary a pool of lower scorers. So the lowest score of accepted students without advantage is likely a bit below the mean score. Correct? If so, my question remains what factors affect on decision for these “around mean” scorers. Their acceptance is less than 10% but such accepted students exist. At the same time, the top scorers’ acceptance rate is roughly 30%. These facts suggest some other important factors other than SAT score and its strongly correlated elements also work for admission. If not, the all accepted students would carry perfect or nearly perfect scores. I am not saying it is music EC :slight_smile: I know many schools mention about it in abstract way. But I would like to see more concrete pictures.
I came from a coutry where college admission is almost solely based on entrance exam points, especially in case of top schools. Even so, I don’t think we did not have a good shape of student body. I basically doubt artificial effort to build a desired student body succeed. Having said that, I am facing reallity of college admission in this country now.</p>

120

<p>consolation…so are you saying a kid might want to work more on his fast ball instead of his scales? :wink: i hear what you are saying.</p>

<p>fiddlin…essays…another factor. my d’s essays were very strong.</p>