<p>My son just graduated last May with a Minor in Musical Studies. It was an instrument performance minor. The requirements were a couple of music theory classes, a music history class, a couple other elective music classes, and private instrument lessons set up as a 1 or 2 unit class each semester. A recital at the end was optional, but he did one.</p>
<p>The trade-off is that essentially every elective spot you have will be devoted to music classes. The minor is cool to have, but if you would like to take a variety of non-major subjects as electives, you won’t be able to unless you take extra time to graduate, at $25K per semester.</p>
<p>An audition was required to get into the minor program. My son is an excellent amateur musician, but does not have the chops to play professionally or anything like that. In fact, the audition instrument was not his original instrument, and he only picked it up as a freshman because the Trojan Marching Band did not have his original instrument. The audition went well enough, he said, but they asked more than once, “this is for a minor, right?” Clearly for a Major in music he would have been held to a higher standard, so there is probably no need to worry that much about the minor audition or being accepted to the program.</p>