Julliard and free tuition

College Majors Music Majors
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I know some posters mentioned it on here previously as rumor, but making Juilliard free tuition, that was announced several weeks ago, has been confirmed. They are undergoing like a 550M dollar campaign to create an endowment that will support this.

I think this is huge. I have been very critical of Juilliard for their attitude in the past about the high cost of going there and the relatively small amount of money I felt they allocated towards aid. Juilliard’s current tuition is 55k, and if you add in the cost of living in NYC, it is easily going to be 10’s of thousands more. Given how hard it is to establish a career in music and how fraught it is to attempt it while having loan debt, this should make it easier for people to attend the school (and they gain another benefit, they can in their rivalry with Curtis now say “people can’t buy their way into Juilliard either” lol. ).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think Juilliard can raise that kind of money, they did it when they renovated their facilties, and they already have a pretty large endowment. A good number of years ago (just before the 2008 recession), there was talk of going tuition free but the idea died off. Some of it from what I was told by an insider was the market crash in 2008 damaging their endowment returns, and crippling fund raising efforts in the downturn, but the other part was even using endowment money it wouldn’t cover the cost of free tuition and that kids paying tuition , especially kids paying full freight, were needed. I am glad they are seriously attempting this, and I tip my hat to them for doing this. I could only wish other music schools could do this as well, would make music students lives a little less crazy than it already is.

https://www.juilliard.edu/news/177306/juilliard-announces-historic-campaign-tuition-free-future

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It would definitely be nice if other schools did this, as well! ALL of the conservatories seem to be in that $50-70k range just for tuition, and then add room & board, and you’re easily looking at $90k/year for a music degree which is insane.

My daughter was accepted to Juilliard and got a decent scholarship, but it was still going to be incredibly expensive. She’s hoping to go there for grad school, though, so hopefully they’ll have the free tuition in place, at least for grad students, by the time she wants to go there in 4 years. Of course, we’ll still have to figure out how she will afford rent and general living expenses in NYC, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

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Same here! Accepted with $30k scholarship but it was like half of what other schools offered so it was a no go. (And one of the schools was definitely comparable as far as program level and career outcomes, so it wasn’t like comparing apples to oranges etc). My kid will try again for grad maybe.

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I’ve also been unimpressed with their lack of aid

Have felt the same way about Juilliard. It will be interesting how it goes! I bet they will see a lot more applicants! Exciting.

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