Playing musical instrument career advanatge

College Confidential Community
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<p>I am 30+ high technology engineer and have been contemplating learning a musical instrument as a beginner. Even though music is primarily for one’s own personal satisfaction, I wonder whether it’d help one in one’s career resume in any way at my age. I have been trying to find reasons to motivate myself and justify undertaking the immense amount of effort it would take on my part to begin learning an instrument.</p>

<p>It’s known that being a member of school marching band may help in top college admissions and a student can concretely cite it as an accomplishment on their resume. </p>

<p>However, what kind of community bands (if such a thing exists) can a adult in 30s starting as a beginner be involved in in a formal role so that he or she could cite an accomplishment related to a musical instrument (such as clarinet, oboe)? Are there known community orchetsra that people can join? What level of expertise with the instrument will be needed for such a role?</p>

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<p>While I wouldn’t argue that the list is exhaustive, the two (primary) theories of the market value of education are human capital (i.e. learning valuable skills/knowledge) and signaling. Except for careers in music, I think that we can rule out the human capital theory here.</p>

<p>To be valuable, a signal must be costly and difficult/impossible to imitate in a way that is associated with some unobservable quality of interest. Musical accomplishment could qualify as it requires focus and effort over a long period of time, delay of gratification, a capacity to deal with frustration, etc… So it makes a certain amount of sense that high school orchestra or marching band would be a valuable signal for undergraduate admissions. For grad school, it probably wouldn’t signal anything that an undergraduate GPA wouldn’t already cover. On top of a 4-year degree and 10 years of work experience, it seems unlikely that it could add much.</p>