Which schools should one consider for DMA (violin)?

musicprnt
Mon, 22 Feb 2016 19:14:48 +0000

“Disparaging the DMA is wrong and insulting, particularly when the insults imply that DMA students are somehow less talented performers. How in the world could you possibly know? If you don’t believe you did that reread your posts.”

My whoe point wasn’t disaparaging the DMA or the level of performance, and I clarified that. GlassHarmonica hit the nail on the head, she said that the people who go for DMA degrees at the top schools tend to be top flite performers looking to bolster their academic knowledge or in studio teaching, so no, I wasn’t disparaging the playing ability of all DMA students, and nowhere did I do that.

What i was talking about was something I have seen, real world, with violin students, and that is where students have done a BM, usually an MM, and then head for a DMA (in their own words), to get more time to perfect their technique, or to get the credentials since a DMA would make it easier to compete and get a job (and they were talking performance)., and often they aren’t good enough to get into the top programs, and end up at one of the plethora of programs out there, that have multiplied in recent years, and end up disappointed, this is not conjecture, I have seen and heard about this over the years, and it seems to be happening more frequently. Someone else commented on the DMA becoming a kind of degree inflation, and I took that thread and talked about that. what they meant.

As far as the OP goes, I also gave the names of some of the top programs I knew about, in general, if a program has a top notch strings department undergrad (Yale SOM being the exception, since they don’t do undergrad), if it is a tough admit for BM or MM, then likely the program will have a decent DMA program on the instrument.

It also would likely be different for an academic DMA, for things like music theory, or music history, or composition, I can’t talk about those with any direct knowledge, but there it could be a very different set of criteria, I was talking DMA on an instrument.

In the end, it comes down to what they want to do with the degree, if they are a top player looking to bolster the academic side, as GlassHarmonica said, it is very different from someone who sees it as a way to stay in school and ‘get better’, or have the misconception that a degree alone would make a difference with a performance job. I never said the DMA was a waste of time, I said the DMA may be a disappointment to those who go for it for the wrong reasons shrug.