Reviving my own thread here!
S19 is now close to just going all in and considering a B.M. program - the more he thinks about his future, the more he has come to realize that he doesn’t have a lot of academic interests and music is what makes him happy. He might be interested in combining performance with another music concentration, but not an entirely different area of study.
He has a 34 ACT and should have about a 3.75/4.0w after this year. He’s going to do BassWorks or the Hinton Bass Institute this summer but that’s the extent of the budget. He plans to join AYP for the next season and will be taking AP music theory and piano lessons.
Currently considering GMU, JMU, Maryland (had a nice visit to the school of music during a university-wide open house), Delaware, maybe Temple (maybe too competitive?), Ohio public schools, since he would qualify for merit based on his scores and decent grades. He realizes that he started playing seriously too late to go to a high-end conservatory so the goal would be to have some money left over in his 529 and hopefully go to a better grad school after a lot of hard work.
If any respectable mid-level private programs exist that aren’t cut-throat competitive to get into, I would love to hear about them (preferably mid-Atlantic, NE or Ohio). I am completely clueless about what would be considered “mid-level.”