Real talk about money - family won't qualify for need-based aid

We are a higher-income family (over $200K). Like many families in this position, we haven’t been at this income level for very long and lived paycheck to paycheck for most of our kids’ childhoods while we worked at our careers (teacher and public interest lawyer). So while we are doing great now, we don’t have robust college savings. We also have our own student loans that we are still paying and some significant medical expenses.

Anyway, I am anticipating that we will get no need based aid, and that is fine. Based on running NPCs, it looks like we will be expected to pay $45K-$50K at most higher-level music schools/conservatories.

We are casting a wide net, but obviously my son (cellist) wants to go to the best school he can get into. If he gets into Juilliard, we are probably sending him to Juilliard. :wink:

I have found a few good deals: Lawrence University (my alma mater), and University of North Texas (very hard to get into, but great financial support for those who do).

For families who did not receive need-based aid, how much did you end up paying out of pocket to send your kid to a top-tier music school or conservatory? Did you discover any schools that were particularly generous?

Colburn and Curtis used to be free tuition—perhaps they still are?

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Your son’s music merit aid will be based on the strength of his audition compared to others auditioning on cello also…so it’s hard to predict who will be generous, or not.

Our son attended Boston University Tanglewood Institute for two summers. He forged a great relationship with the applied music faculty at Boston University (a conservatory environment within a university). He was fortunate to receive their largest music merit award at the time, but it was 1/4 of the cost of attendance. We just viewed it as like having one free year…

Re: payment. We didn’t have a dime saved for college expenses. Like your family, my husband was the larger wage earner, and I was a public school educator. We used my whole income to pay for college…and my husband’s income to pay our other living expenses. This worked for us. We funded expensive private universities for both of our kids doing this. We also did not qualify for need based aid.

Like you, we were willing to fund any place our musician got accepted. He did get accepted to both New England Conservatory and Peabody, but decided BU was the best choice for him. And it really was. He was also accepted to UNT, the Hartt School, Duquesne.

Our musician went to University of North Carolina School of the Arts for grad school. And he loved that completely conservatory environment.

In terms of perhaps considering other options…

The Hartt School at University of Hartford was generous for our kid.

But I have to say…the number one consideration (if you can afford it), would be the applied cello faculty. This relationship is key. My kid also wanted a strong orchestra and orchestra conductor, and the ability to do some chamber music. So…in addition to finances, these need to be considered.

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Yes, but the odds of getting in there are incredibly small. Maybe we will just submit for prescreen and hope for the best!

Yes, we are getting ready to sell organs here. :frowning:
I will have two in college at the same time. And my husband is 60.

True…but since you mentioned Julliard, I thought they might be within the realm of possible!

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For students not qualified for need-based aid, as far as I know, 50K after scholarship sounds about right. The only exception I know of was a classic string student who was not only among the very top musicians (with many national and international awards) but also a member of an underrepresented group. Every school waved full-tuition.
Considering the cost (college plus summer festivals and future audition cost), my son decided not to proceed with Juilliard after passing the prescreen two years ago. Rice Shepherd was much more generous with a very comparable (if not better) combination of experience and outlook. I also know a cello student transferring to Shepherd from one of the most prestigious (Juilliard, Curtis, Eastman, Colburn). I would suggest you and your cellist take a close look at Shepherd.

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We’re in a very similar situation, and my daughter (singer - mezzo-soprano) is a senior currently playing the waiting game to find out who is the most generous with $$. We are also playing the numbers game and trying to get as much scholarship $$ as possible because while we are comfortable, we absolutely cannot pay full freight, and we are also sending another child to college in a couple of years, so we will save wherever we can. My daughter is also doing as many competitions as possible in order to collect some awards to cover whatever school scholarships don’t. Like you, we didn’t always have a lot to save for school, so while we have a small nest egg, it won’t come anywhere near what we need. And we absolutely don’t want her going into debt for a vocal performance degree.

My daughter has been accepted at UNT (it really is a great school, but we live in Texas, and she wants to go farther away, so she applied there as a “safety”), IU, and CMU, and we are still waiting on Oberlin, Eastman, CIM, and Juilliard. She has gotten three scholarships from UNT so far - 1 academic and 2 music. They are as generous as they can be, but they have less $$ to give than some of the conservatories. When she had a trial lesson with one of the voice teachers, he told her “we may not be able to compete with some of the other schools $$ wise,” which surprised me because most of the other schools at full price have $80-90k price tags. Right now, the UNT scholarships are covering about 80% of her tuition, which is great, but we’re hoping for at least full tuition somewhere (and would not turn down a full ride if offered!) :slight_smile:

She was also awarded scholarships at CIM ($25k), Oberlin ($25k), and Eastman ($15k) through outside competitions, but they were clear that “this is the MINIMUM you will receive,” so we don’t know what the price tag will end up being once all the #s come in. From what I’ve heard, Oberlin and CIM can both be very generous if they like you. Eastman is a little less known for its generosity, but we have high hopes. She auditioned for Juilliard mostly because she wants to be able to say she got in (it’s probably about 3rd on her list, preference wise), but if they surprise us and give her some huge wad of money, she would probably go there to have the name on her resume. She did get a callback audition, so fingers crossed.

Basically, you just have to play the game, cast a wide net, and try to network as much as you can. Try to get a good sense of your son’s level in relation to other musicians his age, and ask his teacher for recommendations of which schools might be a good fit. Try to apply for a reach school or two, a safety or two (people will tell you there are no safeties in music, but that’s not entirely true - you just have to seek out the schools that have good programs but aren’t necessarily the ones that are the best known), and then a few that are realistically on his level. And of course, that is different for every musician - one person’s safety is another person’s reach (Juilliard and Curtis are reach schools for literally everyone, though :slight_smile: ).

We started doing college visits and trial lessons fall of my daughter’s junior year, so by the time she applied and sent in her prescreens, she already had teachers picked out that she had worked with and felt were a good fit. A few she’s had the opportunity to work with at summer programs and YoungArts, as well, so she already has a good working relationship with them, and we are hopeful that that will help when it comes time to decide on scholarship awards.

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It is definitely possible to get full rides for almost any level student if you correctly match the level of playing to the level of conservatory/college. My son applied to 5 schools and got full rides to three, an almost full ride to one (easily could have been negotiated to full), and oddly enough, only 50% at his safety school. Incidentally, we are in a similar income group, maybe a tad lower, and we were offered financial aid to the safety school, so don’t count that out.

Yes, my son was in the top tier, but I have seen numerous students from my kids’ precollege program get really good offers to a wide range of schools. If they are not the absolute top tier, they may need to make a choice between a full ride at a second tier school versus minimal merit aid at a top tier school. That is always a hard decision for families to make.

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So many people here in the same boat… so are we … None of our schools have released decisions or merit aid yet, but our paper income does not match our ability to pay and I’m just hoping that schools want my kid enough to give money (they are a top performer in their instrument).

Like a previous poster, I know of kids of our income paying about $50K-55K at Juilliard, which is a lot. Our top choices at this point are Rice, Juilliard, and BU, and I don’t know anything about potential merit aid at Rice and BU for undergrad lower strings. If anyone has specific Rice or BU scholarship numbers, I’d be interested to hear.

We also know of kids getting full tuition to DePaul and Peabody, but those are second tier schools for our instrument and we didn’t apply there. These kids were much lower skilled players, too, so at a lower tier school, if you’re in an instrument the school needs, I think you can get a lot of money, potentially.

Son is at UNT so we enjoy the in state tuition even though we are in CT. He went there bc of the guitar teacher and it was his first choice. I’m not sure I would have dished out giant bucks for Julliard or NYU but would’ve paid the 30k Berklee would have cost him and the balance of Frost bc both were in our college fund range. We are also full pay. Miami was incredibly generous with music merit and it was closest to UNT but he went where his gut took him and is very happy. He is happy to have saved his college fund for Grad school "in NYC " where he feels he will land. If you want any specifics feel free to pm me

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We are also passengers on the “searching for merit because we don’t qualify for need-based aid” train.

Our musician applied several years ago. He had a private teacher who was very knowledgeable about talent levels in particular studios/programs for my son’s instrument. The reason I add this is that you may target differently as a cellist compared to an oboist. And of course jazz or vocal performance would be likely a very different set of programs.

My son had various offers from $5K per year (at a $95k per year annual COA university!) to almost full and full tuition offers. We feel very fortunate that he was accepted to a top program with full tuition and most living expenses paid. It is allowing him so much flexibility as he enters the professional world.

And just a word about top tier versus second tier programs. Our approach was to have him shoot for some reach conservatories but also apply to programs that had excellent teachers/student outcomes at what might be considered “lesser” programs. We were absolutely prepared to take the best program within our pre set budget.

In reality, there are many paths forward for a young musician. We know so many here in our state who start at a state school (we have some really good ones here) due to cost constraints and end up in grad school at top programs. Yes the programs matter, but the musician has a fair amount of control over their own destiny. Even though it doesn’t always feel like it with the stress and ambiguity of the applications/acceptance process.

High level talent and hard work really do rise to the top.

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Yes, flexibility as they enter the professional world is so important. Our S22 (different performing art) took a full scholarship rather than attend a top-tier program at $90K/yr. No debt and an untapped nest egg will buy him a lot of freedom, we hope.

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My musician is only a 9th grader, but she is the youngest of 8. Her dad will be close to retirement age when she graduates from high school. We will not qualify for FA. Finances controlled all of her siblings options, and they will control hers. I have spent most of this school yr reading this forum and investigating options. If she doesn’t get accepted to any of her top options with enough scholarship $$, then she will be limited by where the $$ is offered.

FWIW, her older siblings were told the same thing about needing to go to the “best” school for their career path. The ds who is behind my posting name was an extremely advanced high schooler. He was told by many that doors would be permanently closed if he didn’t go to a top UG. He went to Bama for free for UG. Guess what? He had an amazing experience. He ended up being accepted to multiple top grad programs and went to Berkeley.

It may well be that doors will be closed to her in the future, but debt for either her or us also closes doors. Those closed doors are a given. But, the non-debt doors that will be open are also very real. We will be able to help her land on her feet as a musician trying to start her career. We have always taught our kids that there are many paths forward. They might be steeper and rocky in places than other paths, but they can still have a good life. That is all that matters to us.

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I read that the recent budget that passed the US house and senate has wording that says scholarships and grants will be taxed as income- it makes me so sad.
For us, using the NPCs, we targeted schools that were in our potential price range. Now, if they come with generous scholarships and grants and meet the NPC, we’ll have over $10k more (than our current budget) to pay in tax!

They are already taxed as income for any amounts beyond tuition.

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It is my understanding this is for tuition too.

If it is taxed as income, it would be better than at the parental unearned income tax rate which is what we have paid for scholarships covering room and board. If it is at the kiddie tax rate, that is a major tax if it includes tuition.

Is there a link for this? Will it be for 2025 grants? Retroactive to 2024? Assessed for the student or the parent???

Thanks!

I’m sorry, I should’ve gotten a reference. It was on a paying for college FB page and someone was going through the newly passed bill. I have been trying to find it again today but couldn’t.
It did not sound retroactive. I believed it was for the student as the student is the one receiving the money for their education. Perhaps I misunderstand as we haven’t paid for university and then done taxes yet.