felagund

Rejection #4, as I expected

Congrats! That's great news

The only two places I have not heard back from are both likely reaches; I am most likely to be rejected by both. The ones that I felt were most likely to accept me have already rejected me. I am trying to stay positive, but it is difficult. I am feeling a little under the gun for financial reasons. I think my current institution will most likely accept me with tuition coverage, but I will run out of money in less than a year due to the cost of living here and will not be able to afford to pay my rent. I am also supporting a spouse who does basically nothing but play video games which is wracking up my debt even faster. If I don't get in somewhere with full funding and a stipend sufficient to live off of, I will need to get a job again in the tech industry, which I left to pursue music composition (and possibly a second job as well, to support my spouse). That is a very annoying prospect, because I won't be doing anything to do with music for a year, and so things would look even worse for me when I applied again next year, so I would most likely be in the same situation. Worse still is the idea that I won't necessarily even be able to get a tech job because they will know that I left tech for music composition, why am I coming back and wanting a job? They will not be likely to hire me when I would want to leave after a year to pursue my doctorate, and so I would have to lie to them and tell them I had given up my doctorate. So the bottom line for me is that it feels like if I don't get in somewhere this year with full funding, my chances are severely impacted such that I may never be able to get my doctorate. I've never felt so stressed out and worried about something in my life.

Rejection #3.

I suspect I'm going to get rejected from all but the place I have the interview at and my current institution. I applied at Stanford for composition, and if someone else has gotten an interview, chances are I'm on the rejected list and haven't gotten it yet. Another place only listened to my portfolio once, so I imagine they are likely a no as well... that leaves only one other reach school.

Now #2..

Comp, as you can see from the program listed under my avatar...

UC Berkeley

Welp.. first rejection..

For composition?

I much prefer 'nothingness' to having a tiny bit of news that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Specifically, some of the places I applied at have you put your portfolio up on a private webpage. This means that, due to modern web analytics, I can see when they look at my portfolio, what tracks they played, and how many times. Now I find myself freaking out thinking "oh my, institution X only listened to my best track once, and only one person! They must have hated it!". I know I am jumping to conclusions; I would rather know nothing vs. knowing that tidbit and trying to draw conclusions from it.

Are there any other composition applicants? It seems everyone who has posted in the thread so far is a musicology applicant.

That article seemingly doesn't mention what fields were interviewed. Therefore, it is safe to assume that many comments are not reflective of the music admissions process - they are most likely talking about hard science fields where someone studying physics at Harvard would be expected to get a high score in math, etc. I wouldn't go into full freak-out mode over it, or even worry about it. There is another website that lists average GRE scores for admission for various programs, and the required scores for fine arts (presumably music is in the same ballpark) are much more reasonable than required scores for hard sciences.

I'm in Canada so it's somewhat rare that I get calls from the US as well.

Earlier today I received a call from a long distance United States caller ID and I was thinking "oh my god, it's one of the places I applied to!". Nope. Just a telephone survey...