Music Supplement for Ivies

jazzzmomm
Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:51:09 +0000

I have a son who had a music supplement for all his applications a couple years ago: Harvard (ED), Brown, Duke and others. He was deferred at Harvard–the old story–he had the stats but did not stand out enough. Duke and Amherst responded to his music supplement early–the music departments contacted him- and he subsequently got into those schools. Also Brown, which is where he ended up, and the admissions counselor who read his application made a comment about his passion for music. The point of this is that he was not a conservatory level musician, but a very creative and self-taught kid with a wide variety of quirky intersts: hand drumming, composing, producing shows at school, etc.

The point of our experience is that some schools are interested in these things that go into making you an interesting student. I don’t know if Harvard, Yale, Princeton care unless you made some big international mark on the music scene! That’s just what I think. We had a sense, with Duke, Amherst and Brown, that there was more of an individual process involved in their admissions. You need the grades of course, but those schools, for example, looked closely at your individuality.