<p>N8Ma on the Bard admissions blog has written another very thoughtful piece about the importance (or not) of location in choosing a college for music. It reflects and echoes many of the discussions here on this board.
[Hopson</a> Cottage Blog Blog Archive On the Bucolic in Music](<a href=“http://www.bard.edu/admission/blog/?p=155]Hopson”>http://www.bard.edu/admission/blog/?p=155)</p>
<p>(I confess I have actually given up reading admissions blogs but this was posted to the conservatory’s fan page on F<em>c</em>b**k. I hadn’t considered it before, but Fan pages might actually be a good way for prospective applicants to get insights into the programs they’re investigating…)</p>
<p>As a landscape painter and someone who grew up in the “bucolic” midwest, I couldnt wait to get out west. I live only twenty miles from downtown Los Angeles and find that the mountains I live in, the desert, the ocean AND the urban jungle all essential to my inspiration. I know several musicians here who feel the same way. I find a lot of people who are fans of schools in remote locations will argue that locale is unimportant while at the same time sing the praises of their “bucolic” locale. Different strokes.</p>
<p>That’s a good blog.
I thought Bard architecture was…all over the place, quite literally - the library was especially “eclectic.” Nice Gehry music hall, but way far away from the music school.</p>
<p>I think where you go to school can be very important (as a place, not the school), it can help shape the experience of what the student will do. Assuming that a perspective student is accepted at programs with high level teaching, etc, that all seem good,then place is important. Music is at least in part a thing of the emotions, of experience, of life, and where someone is can inspire them and also has the potential to take away from what they are learning. Someone who is inspired by the city, who loves the hustle and bustle, the different people, and so forth, might not do so well at a rural school where things are slow paced and the people are relatively uniform in the campus and surrounding environment (on the other hand, someone might be looking for the peace and calm of a rural setting to stimulate them). There is the obvious, too, that where you go also has impact on what you have access to, someone going to Juilliard in NYC or another school within some sort of range of it has access to an incredible amount of music (same with other areas, obviously, like Boston, LA, and so forth…). So I think for at least some students place is an important consideration (others might be indifferent…)</p>
<p>Ditto Stradmom. My son decided not to apply to a really good music school because he hated the practise rooms. Disliked another because he thought the building felt cold. We didn’t argue with him - these aesthetic qualities can make the difference between a happy experience (which I’m glad to say he’s having) and a sad one.</p>
<p>Agreeing with Stradmom and stringfollies- my D also struck a school from her list because she didn’t like the surroundings. We tend to think of college as being “temporary”, but to our kids, home becomes school and the house we tend is just a place they visit- would we want to spend 4 years in surrounding we disliked, if there was another option?</p>
<p>I guess I tend to disagree. I think it’s the people who make the home, and not the building. But, if all else is equal, then sure, let the little things help with the decision. I would discourage my own children, however, from ruling something out right at the beginning because of architecture - or even if a place was unkempt and falling apart. But that’s me. There are other things I think are more important. It would be the professors and the students who mattered most to me, and the opportunities for growth and wonder.</p>
<p>In fact my older son disliked the architecture at CMC the whole time he was there. But he had a great experience nonetheless. If the architecture had made the decision for him, he would have gone elsewhere. If you’ve ever seen Harvey Mudd you’d be surprised any students went there at all. And it’s a great school for a lot of kids.</p>
<p>But for the bigger questions, for me, of rural vs urban, isolation vs being right dab in the center of things, the on campus experience vs. the off campus experience. I think that’s well worth pondering in the decision making.</p>
<p>A different spin from our home. We think “location, location, location”. The kids have to live there for four years. They better like the location. DS, the music major, felt that he needed to be in an urban area OR have VERY easy access to one. The reason for this was that he wanted to be able to hear great music performed and have some opportunities to play gigs as well. He didn’t look at any rural schools for that reason.</p>
<p>Some schools are “too urban”.
Some are “too rural”.
Some are “too hard to get to from here”.
Some are “too close to home”.
Too big, too small, too red, too blue.</p>
<p>I like this part, where we reject them
better than the part where they reject us.</p>
<p>Stradmom, I enjoyed your post, especially that part about rejecting/being rejected! </p>
<p>I think this is a really interesting thread, but each time I read a post, the same thought comes to mind. The physical environment/aesthetics of the place is very important, but to make things more complicated, the interpersonal environment is also a factor for consideration. I think that it is great if the school is in a beautiful setting and has great architecture, but the social environment of a school also has a lot to do with whether some students will want to stay there or transfer somewhere else. It may be that for many music students, getting the right teacher and music peer group/performance opportunities and maybe a beautiful physical environment too are all that matters. But for others, the social environment (for example, prevailing political views, level of respect for different views, how liberal/conservative is the campus, how tolerant to different religions or having no religion, how open the students are to diversity, to what extent Greek system dominates campus, etc.) may be important also.</p>
<p>Cartera, you have hit the nail on the head. I am trying to plan a college visit and it appears to be easier to go from Los Angeles to the moon, than from Los Angeles to Bloomington, Indiana.</p>
<p>CLRN8MOM: I drove to Bloomington, IN this summer (and need to write a mini-report about S’s experiences there). It is in the middle of nowhere. After a while you begin to suspect someone has played a joke on you. How can there be a university with 50,000 students?? They advise flying into Indianopolis and renting a car. The campus is huge, btw. I walked back to my car from a dining hall and pulled out a campus map, sure I had walked across most of campus. I was stunned to see I had traversed only an inch or so of the printer paper sized map. And D attends Ohio State so I am used to big campuses! IU felt much bigger. </p>
<p>cartera45: I mentioned attending a performance while S was in college a few weeks ago and he looked shocked. “You’re not coming to see me sing in college,” he stated forcefully. I could see the program that’s 45 minutes from our house drop a few notches in his mind.</p>
<p>Disguises! What a great idea! We’ll just have to find a secret way to determine when and where the performances are… I know there’s a departmental calendar… hmmm… ;-)</p>
<p>I am going to hear my S’s first concert next week. I am lucky that he wants me to come, I think he liked the idea of having someone take him to Wegmans. Not easy to go shopping without a car at Eastman. </p>
<p>Getting back to the idea of location, Rochester is the last place I would think my S would have wanted to attend school but it was all about the atmosphere of the place and the teacher.</p>
<p>My son’s idea of the perfect school was to take Rice, put it in Boston and have it hire his teacher from Eastman! He decided that the teacher and the musical experience he would have were more important than anything else and chose his schools accordingly. He hated Rochester initially, but said that the place grew on him over time.</p>