<p>My S isa high school senior planning on majoring in Music Ed. He will be participating in Drum Corps this summer - already has already auditioned for and accepted a contract with a World Class corps.</p>
<p>I noticed in a couple of college catalogs courses entitled “independent studies” with variable credit from 1-4 semester hours. I’m just wondering if after he has been accepted by a college and paid the deposit, if he could immediately request a meeting with his advisor to arrange for the Corps experiance to be an “independent studies class”. I would think that any independent studies credit would have to be approved before he did the activity, but it is possible to get independent studies approve before he has even taken the first college class?</p>
<p>Just for those who are not familiar with drum corps, they have a month long “spring training” with 12-16 hour days of instrument practice and drill practice. Its a lot like a marching band, but apparently you cant call it that because they do not have woodwind instruments. Then they go on a two month long tour, about 30 cities across the country, performing in competitions about 4 days a week, ending up with a multi-day championship event.</p>
<p>That would be worth a call to the school involved, but I wouldn’t get too optimistic about it. Performance and Music Ed departments tend to be very finicky about what they will grant credit for on classes taken elsewhere. Many would not grant credit to one of their matriculated students doing something like that after freshman year, let alone one who has not yet matriculated, unless the summer program was an offering of another college that they respect.</p>
<p>I sincerely doubt it would count towards independent study (actually, wouldn’t be independent study, would be granting college credits for an outside activity, which is different). In general independent study courses are where there isn’t a formal class, the student meets with a teacher and works on something like a special research project or the like, usually something the teacher and student agree on in the context of the course. For example, for a US history independent study, could be doing research on the influence of Masons on the founding of the US (was sick and watched way too much bad tv, including the History Channel <em>lol</em>) and writing a thesis about it. Unless colleges have changed much, most independent studies are granted to upper class students, not freshman. </p>
<p>It may be the particular program would in fact grant credit, but though I know little about music ed, I doubt it is going to count for much, but always worth asking.</p>
<p>I’m willing to bet that whatever music ed department he’ll be enrolling in will have a fair number of students doing DCI, and I’m betting that would be a really hard sell. </p>
<p>However, it’s a great experience in its own right. It’ll provide an invaluable set of skills for teaching marching music in the future, and he’ll be able to work at a much higher rate of pay if he decides to work with marching bands as a tech. Plus, he’ll be able to start college with a ludicrous sock tan. </p>
<p>By the way, do the music ed programs he’s looking at require participation in the university’s marching band? Corps and college marching band is almost always a really interesting contrast.</p>