Violin for a non music major

A lot of the top academic schools, that don’t offer performance degrees, have decent performing programs for students, the ivies are known for that, especially (but not limited to) Harvard, Yale and Princeton. While it isn’t dogma, it also seems to be true that the schools that have music performance programs don’t necessarily offer great opportunities for non majors, they generally isolate the majors from the non majors, and the level of playing for the non majors seems to be a lot less. Obviously, every school is different, but it may be better to look at a program without a performance degree program.

What I would do in your case (or what I would tell my son, if he was doing something similar), would be to find the schools you want to go to academically, and then e-mail the schools you potentially want to go to and ask about music for non majors, what opportunities they have and so forth, and narrow down the list at that point, rather than directly trying to find programs with top music opportunities for non majors. For one thing, a school may have a dynamite program for non majors, but in the area you want to study, either doesn’t have it at all, or has a department that is so so, and if you are interested in studying something, wouldn’t you want a better quality program? Or wouldn’t you want to be at a school that has better quality programs in general academically (given that a lot of kids don’t study what they think they will before going to school).