Counterpointer

I just submitted my TC application yesterday. Feeling good about it. I know I'm super early but other schools are due december 1st, so might as well submit TC as well and get done with it. You MUST meet early deadline. I expect that if you submit by 4/15, you won't get any funding. People have been saying that they were offered admission as early as February 22, and they may have submitted their application well before 1/15. Don't quote me on that though. I think TC application is pretty easy, I see no reason to delay into January. Unless your program requires GRE and you need time to study. Keep in mind that Columbia is notorious on not giving out scholarships. Must meet early deadline if you want some funding. TC is my safety school, in case I don't get into other schools, at least I have a choice to just pay a lot of money for a degree. Hope I didn't offend anyone here..

Anyone looking to apply for Fall2015? I'm waiting for them to finish updating their website.. Starting Fall2015, it's going to be very competitive but I will apply anyway. UT is my first choice, UOttawa as back up. Applying to 2 more schools in US-- Indiana University (my alma mater) and Columbia U-TC. J/I, Music Instrumental. Would love to apply for I/S, teaching music/history, but I studied in US and I don't have Canadian history credits Credentials: Indiana University, Bachelor of Music, GPA 3.84/4, History minor Temple University in Philadelphia, Master of Music, GPA 3.89/4, With TA position teaching 1st and 2nd year music undergraduate majors Voluntary teacher at Salvation Army Philadelphia A ton of camp experience Hopefully they would consider me even though I studied in US.. I'm Canadian too.

you got a JD? Just curious, do you really need an education degree?

rather quiet here.. I think I give up on PhD application for now. I may try again in maybe 10 years.. I'm still in my early 20s.. Instead, going for second masters in education with certification.. Applying to only 3 universities: Columbia-TC, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia. My first masters, in music theory would be useless now, but oh well. Somebody's gotta teach high school, right? I'm finishing up my masters at Temple University and they would probably be OK with me staying here for PhD but would Temple PhD worth anything? Columbia masters with certificate may be more useful..

The only reason I won't be applying to HGSE is because it doesn't have certification program for my field (music). I would need additional studies beyond HGSE 1-year masters in order to be certified, right?.. Thinking of Columbia TC, but people say TC is a diploma mill? Kinda regretting why I didn't do BEd now. If I had BEd with certification already, HGSE would be my first choice..

I'm planning on 4 years of masters, not 5. Actually, I don't have a degree in performance, my undergrad was composition. I suppose there isn't really a great benefit from doing second masters. I'm an international student studying in U.S., and I know I have a lot to improve on my writing, as well as speaking. Although I did my undergrad in US, I still feel like I'm not ready to move onto doctorate mainly for the language barrier. For my second masters in performance, I will only apply to schools with good research programs, such as Yale, Indiana, Eastman and FSU, and even if I get accepted, I will only consider attending if I'm offered a good financial package or TAship in theory or Guitar. My undergrad was at Indiana. Currently masters at Temple. If I do a second masters in performance at Yale, Eastman or FSU, and get to know academic faculties, I will have a variety of references from different schools and have an idea where I would like to do my PhD

Who has just posted the results for MM Classical Guitar performance program? Eventually, I want to do a theory PhD but I am not ready to apply to doctoral programs yet. I'd like to do a MM Guitar first then apply to PhD. If you're the one that posted results on MM Guitar, please share your financial package, if you don't mind. Congrats on your acceptances, and congrats to everyone who got accepted. Coming straight from undergrad, I applied to schools for Fall 2013, only to be rejected by every school. Well, I did get into 2 masters programs and I'm attending with a TAship. I doubt I will be ready to apply for Fall 2016, so I plan to finish 2 masters (theory, performance) before applying to PhD programs again for Fall 2018 : S I will spend another four years as a masters student.. this is like undergrad all over again. But I can't give up after my first try. Second try coming for Fall 2018. Everyone seen this '10 rejection letters sent to famous people'? http://mentalfloss.com/article/55416/10-rejection-letters-sent-famous-people Hey, this could be you, or me. Although, do music PhDs ever become famous to that degree? I just want to say that even if you get rejected by every school (just like me in 13), things happen for a reason, I think everything will turn out fine. A PhD is not a requirement for a great life. Anyway, yeah. Reply if you're the one who posted about Guitar acceptances. I'm applying to Guitar MM for fall 2016

1500 is a lot.. but that's what everyone's paying I suppose.. I'm in my first year in MM theory program. I'm already thinking about Fall 2015...... but I still think I would NOT make a strong applicant by then. I think I'll just go back to my undergrad institution in Fall 2015----to Indiana University. I can get into their MM composition or performance programs with TAships no problem, just that I'm still not a great writer to be a PhD student in musicology/theory. I think I'll just take MM performance while taking some history/theory courses at Indiana University. Perhaps credentials at Indiana will help me. Perhaps I'll be applying to real PhD programs in Fall 2017.... I'm not going to spend $1000+ on applications when I feel doubtful about my strength as an applicant.. My mistake in the fall 2013 season was not knowing where I stand among other applicants. I was clearly not ready and I bet I'm not alone in doing that. Sometimes it takes a long time to get ready for such a life-changing admissions. Fall 13 was a disaster for me. Now looking forward to Fall 17.. No rush for me this time. First deadlines are coming up in just over 2 months? How's everyone doing?

As far as I know, Indiana University's MA is pretty good. (I went there for undergrad) Everyone gets 96.5% tuition remission, free Health insurance and stipends. Of course, it's only MA.... they don't give you 20k/year like in PhD.. After you pay all the service fees and 3.5% of tuition, I think you get just under 9k/year. If you're very savvy, you can probably live off on that. Bloomington is pretty cheap place. If you get a summer job, you'll be just fine. (you CAN work outside of campus if you're international and you've finished one academic year) University of Memphis offers full tuition remission+7000/year stipends. I'm assuming that all the admitted musicology applicants get TAship. I don't think there's any school that would offer 20k/year, but there are some pretty good offers, if you look for them. I'm not a musicology person so it sucks for me, but there seems to be many places that offer pretty good $$$ for successful MA musicology students. Penn State offers either 7k or 14k/year for being TA. Look into well-known public universities. Make sure that it is a very large university, where they need TA.

Any Temple student at Beech International Village? Man, I'm regretting applying to only 3 masters program. Should have applied to Penn State as well. Temple seems a bit sketchy, especially the area around, and whenever one of the staffs email me, they can't spell a thing.. And apparently my Temple grad housing was changed last minute (really, I'm moving there in 2 weeks); they did building safety check and it didn't pass it. That's so sketchy. They told me I should move into Beech International Village and the school will pay the difference between grad housing and Beech International. I have no idea about the building-- and their website really isn't saying much. If anyone has lived there, please let me know your thoughts. Haha UPenn students must be laughing at this aren't you? This is probably unthinkable at UPenn.. Hopefully, after 3 year double masters at Temple, I'll be ready for UPenn..... I just wasn't ready for UPenn PhD straight from UG.. I'll certainly visit Penn occasionally, to attend presentations and what not, getting to know the faculty there. Anyway, congrats to incoming grads bound for Philly.

English is not my first language so the verbal was like hell for me. When I first took it, I got embarrassing under 150 in V. Low 150s in Q too. AW=3........ That was in October last year, and after 5 weeks, in November, I took it again. That time, I got high 150s in both V and Q. AW=4. I studied really hard for that 5 weeks, carrying my ipod everywhere I went and listened to GRE vocab CD. There were also downloadable video lessons which I paid a great deal of $$ for. Listening and watching really helped. Especially listening-- hence I'm a musician. Try to take advantage of your technology! This test is so messed up- I feel like GRE is testing who has the most time for studying it. If you have so much time that you can memorize 10k GRE vocabs, you'll get almost perfect score in V. Adcomms know it, but they do want to get rid of applicants who don't put an effort. However, it is true that you can't do poorly on other aspects of your app because you were studying for GRE.. balancing these two is really difficult indeed. I stupidly tried getting into PhD straight from Bachelors and totally failed, I think I'm going to re-take GRE after my first year in masters (I'm doing 3 year double masters). Just too much to do both application work and GRE at the same time..

I don't know too much about this, but you could do some research on University of Regina, Columbia College Chicago and CalArts' Interschool Masters Degree

Seems like some people are panicking about GRE scores. I thought I would steal the stats from UPenn music department (just music department, not the whole university) Admitted for 2012-2013 Verbal: Median 156, Range 150-169 Quant: Median 155.5, Range 146-165 Writing: Median 4.0, Range 4.0-6.0 GPA: Median 3.87, 3.6-3.92 Sure, UPenn may not be everyone's dream school but I'd be happy if I got in there. GRE scores certainly look doable. However, they do say that they admit 4-6 students each year from 120 applicants (2011-2012). Surprisingly not so high GRE scores, yet less than 5% acceptance rate (might as well just go to law school instead).... this probably means that they don't care too much about GRE scores. Although, I'd say, your chances are slim if your Verbal is in the low 150s- this is just far too low, whether GRE is fair or not..

Hello, I'm gonna be starting my MM in music theory at Temple University with TAship--- so I won't be applying to schools anytime soon, but if I choose to apply to Stanford-CCRMA, I will want to choose more relevant courses during my time at Temple.. so I decided to make a post here Has anyone applied to CCRMA before? (Either MA+PhD Comp-Based theory OR terminal MA Music-Sci-Tech (MST)?) I have always been a 20th C. scholar and composer but I just started learning about programming. Purchased MAX/MSP as well. I'll be doing MM+2-year A.S. in Computer Science (distance learning)-- so at the end I would have some basics in programming and comp. Sci. I'm mostly concerned about the computers part, does anyone know how confident I have to be in programming and technology? I'm still young so I don't mind doing 2nd Masters at Stanford-- but jesus. "Financial aid is not available to terminal M.A. students" This probably means $40k/year.. Other programs I've also heard about are: Dartmouth-fully funded digital music masters, MIT Media Lab, Carnegie Mellon Comp-music Masters. Perhaps these would be great if I'm not ready to apply to Stanford PhD in 2~3 years. Again, I'm mostly concerned about the computer part. If you happen to be in computer music and have your portfolio somewhere online, I'd love to take a look at them to get some ideas. Thanks guys!

Hello, I applied directly from Bachelors last year, and it was rejection across the board. I applied to 7 phd programs, 3 masters. Only got into 2 masters. As soon as I was rejected by the only masters program I initially applied to, I applied to two more. I'll be attending the one with the better financial aid. But I'm doing music theory, and it is a bit different. For composers, if you have an excellent portfolio with a great deal of complexity (duh.. ), it may worth a shot. I know a person who got into Cornell for composition straight from Bachelors. Make sure to check out student compositions from the schools that you're applying. Good luck!

Good luck everyone! April 15 Approaching!!! I'm prob not gonna be on here for next 1.5 year-- will come back during my 2nd year of masters program.. too bad PhD programs didn't want me yet. I can see that some of you here are Ivy league admits.. I'm quite jealous.

I just got my financial aid package today-- but gosh. While the admission decision can wait until April 15, I have to respond to financial offer by March 28-- they are giving, eh, 9 days for me to respond, not counting the delivery time. I'm still waiting on one other school that I don't really like, so I'm pretty sure that I would be accepting this offer but ugh. I wanted to let you all know that April 15 may not be the deadline for some of you- in fact could be much earlier. If you already got acceptance letter and are waiting on funding package, or you are expecting an offer from a back up school, you should now start calculating all the costs- if it's financially doable and/or how much scholarship/stipend you would need in order to attend.. 9 days for me. I'm under a lot of pressure at the moment! Since my future school is in a notable ghetto area, I'm gonna try graduate housing for first year- that application is also starting in 3 days... Blerghhhh

Where TAships are available, there is always some funding. Temple doesn't have PhD programs in theory/history, although they are making one very soon. The great thing about these schools with no PhD programs.. It's easy for a master's student to get TAships, and they may offer good fundings. Also, doesn't every school "expect" a BA or BM degree in music? They just have to say it so that they don't get a total tone-deaf applying.

Haha Same thing for me. Rejected by UPenn, I'm going to Temple for Masters with stipend. I feel like it's really difficult to get into doctoral programs if you don't have Masters.. although possible.

Someone in this forum a few pages ago has posted (maybe it was previous years) a survey of Ivy league (and other top schools) professors' alma maters. It started with something like this::: Harvard (4~5), Yale (4~5), Oxford (4), Cambridge (2)... something like that. I can't remember exactly. I believe this was musicology ONLY. I think that Ox+bridge are very difficult to get in, and also have great brand names... Also, they may be getting top applicants from across Europe.. In US, we get some International but maybe a little less than Ox+Bridge.. But it's just my guess.

I personally know a friend studying at NYU for film music. He studied at my university (Indiana Bloomington) and he was masters student in performance with minor in composition. Not to offend you, but I was never fond of his music, to me his music lacked creativity. He composed a lot of tango, and other Latin dances (he was from Mexico). Perhaps it would be great to have some Chinese elements in your music, but I don't think you have to write super complex music. If you recently got a job in the field, that would make your application a lot better in the following year. You should probably just submit what you do for your job. In the mean time, work on your English and try to score as high as possible on TOEFL. Some people say you only need to clear the minimum, but really, if you had a choice between a native English speaker and international with similar applications, who would you choose? If you score 100+ on TOEFL, they may not be so concerned about the language barrier. (Never mind if you already have a good TOEFL score) Also, it may be great to get to know some people in US. Even if your director is famous in China, I'm not sure NYU faculties would recognize him. Also, would your director be able to write you LOR in good English? Indeed, it is very difficult to apply to schools in US if you are international..... I'm also international but I did my undergrad in US so it's different

I'm probably going to be rejected by every single PhD program I applied to, but I just got a good news from Temple University, for their Master's program. I may be getting a full TA, which comes with tuition waiver and $16000/year stipend+health insurance. Pretty sweet deal for master's. I guess there's no reason to decline the offer if it's fully funded... just hoping that the composition DMA students don't take all the full TA theory positions..

April 15 is only 6 weeks left! But not a single acceptance letter for me yet.. CP3, I'm right there with you.. I'm going down to Temple U on March 4th for an interview.. I have a good feeling about this, the chair of music department (also happens to be professor of my discipline) will take me on a private tour of the campus and a lunch. If there's anyone like myself; coming straight from undergrad and perhaps not so ready for PhD programs yet, you can still apply to masters programs at Temple (comp, theory, history), deadline is March 1st-- if you get a full TAship, the financial package is actually pretty good (around 16k/year+tuition waiver).. I actually got into Harvard Graduate School of Education as well but yikes!!! the $$$ there! I won't be able to attend due to the tuition rates at HGSE (I don't really count this as an acceptance letter, it's not exactly in music and I just can't afford to attend without any scholarships).. But I think I will go to HGSE some day... after I save up a bit. Turns out that if you get into HGSE for "Art in Education" program, you can take courses from Harvard Music Department.. Now I regret applying to PhD programs straight from undergrad. I'll try again after a M.M. and a M.Ed (hopefully with a LoR from Harvard music department)

Hey fellow composer.. if you apply again next year, in what way can you improve your application? I only have an undergrad degree in composition and I have never applied for grad degree in composition, so I'm not so familiar with the process but I would like to know how you think you can improve your application. Certainly, writing more impressive piece of music would be helpful, but if you're out of school already, then getting the performance is very difficult... GRE shouldn't matter that much, perhaps you can get more work experience and revise personal statement. Sorry that your applications are being rejected... In a way, it's kinda unfair, judging compositions is heavily based on the taste. I have seen scores of people who got into Columbia, Brown and Princeton, their scores all have triplets inside quintuplets and stuff... Although I listen to a lot of complex music myself, I could never write rhythmically complex pieces, as it is already hard to get a good performance with pieces in 4/4. I've always thought that judging compositions is quite stupid, so I have been applying to music theory degrees, but so far I'm getting all the rejections. I got an interview at Temple, for MM degree.. So, after I finish my MM, I'll apply to PhD programs again.. So I guess for me, it would be technically applying again, 2 years later. Do you have a masters yet?

I got flat out rejected by UCSB ;;; exactly 1 week after applying. Even before all the reference letters have been submitted. My guess is that it's their funding issue, the small department probably couldn't support too many non-resident, international students who can't become CA resident.. Some of my other internal colleagues report similar cases from UCSB.. I mean, if they aren't even going to consider my application because of my financial needs, they should actually refund me the app fee. After this disappointing news, it's most likely that I will go for MM music theory at Temple U or U Houston.. falling back to safety schools.