hova

Yes. It's a trickle down process, the top 20 or so schools latch on to the most talented and those with the most drive and talent declines as you go down the line. Well a lot of the "elite schools" are state universities, and those are relatively cheap. Also if you have the grades and whatnot, or even just the need, you should be getting adequate financial aid. By the way, I'm confused by these numbers. You say "20-40k or 10k", but you aren't very exact. Are you talking about yearly tuition, or cost of all 4-years? Or cost of one semester? Average yearly state university tuition is around 12-14k (so 6-7k tops per semester), so 48k for all 4-years tops. I dunno about you, but I didn't pay for any of my schooling out of pocket. If we're talking a private school, you can just double those costs, and if we're talking a community college you can halve the yearly costs (Community Colleges are CHEEAAAAP). But you have to understand though, I'm not even talking about the very very top schools, I'm talking the top 20-35ish. I'm just saying that it really is a waste of money and counter-intuitive to go to a school that's bottom ranked, bottom 100. One could even argue that the level of school needed for you go to and how pragmatic your degree is are inversely-related. You can go to a community college and major in nursing, the reasoning being that the job market for nurses is so large that you really don't need a Yale degree in nursing in order to be competitive. However, if you're getting a degree in Art History, or music composition, it would behoove you to go to a top 20-40 program in order to maximize your success once you graduate. I'm in my *early 20s* and recently received my bachelors in music composition, so you're half right. Are you a professional composer? Did you go to a bottom ranked school? Are you regularly receiving commissions? I'll be honest and say that I wouldn't really consider myself a composer, despite the degree. That last thing the world needs is another symphony... Also, if you ask me, the bottom ranked schools are pumping out too many degree holders. The market is so flooded that only the most elite truly do anything worth existing. Music isn't like more practical career paths where even a degree from some school no one has ever heard of can give you hope of success. Of course, if you went to some bottom tier school I've never heard of and happen to have works performed in Lincoln Center, I'll gladly stop.

http://www.music.fsu.edu/Highlights/FSU-no.-3-for-arts-research There are also things like placement levels, trends etc etc etc. The school you go to does have influence.

Your stilted prose doesn't hide that red neck, boy

Let's see if you get into a decent law firm if you go to Tennessee State and not Duke Law Welcome to real life

FSU is ranked no. 1 for music education, but I think if you wanted to go all out with Education and Composition you're better off going to North Texas. Definitely make them your top priority, they've got great faculty and Texas is GREAT for education in general. Great place to live, good schools, you have every reason to attend UNT. If your teacher went to Troy then you shouild look into them too. Who knows, maybe they'd be a fit? Keep George Southern as a safety. As far as your credentials, you sound like you'd be a competitive candidate, so definitely push for the best schools than you can attend. For the record, there's a reason people who go to Ivies and top 50 schools are successful. I'd hate to break it to some of you out there, but schools like Duke, Stanford, Yale and Berkeley are better than Arkansas State, Tennessee Yokel College or GameCock University for a reason, just sayin, just sayin.

Let me tell you something kid, friends are not important at all. Do not under any circumstances choose a school so you can hang with your buddies. You go to school to learn, learn, and learn some more. If you're cool and do what any normal person in college does you'll make plenty of friends when you get there. Making new friends is healthy anyway, high school relationships aren't supposed to last. Anyway, schools... Florida State - Top 10 music school, and I believe the 3rd largest student enrollment in the U.S. (the others being UNT and Indiana). This means you'll have access to a lot of performers, most of which are very good (the performance program is very robust there). The faculty is pretty open there, and you'll learn a lot. If you're up to the challenge and really want to work and have a rigorous musical and academic experience, then go to Florida State. The university is also in the top 100 public schools, at least top 120, so that's another thing to consider. Oh yeah, they're also great if you want to work with electronics/computers etc. That isn't my bag, so I can't really comment further on that, but you can contact the professors about that. Some other things to consider though, what are your interests? I would actually recommend getting a second degree, it doesn't have to be music-related, it could be anything. I'm saying this because assuming you're not getting some sort of out of state tuition waiver, then you WILL be paying out of state credit fees, so that'll eat up a lot of aid/scholarship money. Again, I don't know your credentials, but I'm just assuming worst case scenario. If FSU winds up being too expensive, I would suggest going to University of Georgia, they have a very solid music school and university, not to mention in-state tuition. I really don't recommend going to Georgia Southern or Troy. Neither are very prominent as far as the academy is concerned and to be perfectly honest I've never heard anything about their music schools, which is a bad thing as far as prestige and PR are concerned. So yeah, I definitely recommend Florida State if you get into the school and pay for it, or University of Georgia as a 2nd option. If you want a good safety, I recommend Georgia State. Again, if you can reply and tell me your academic interests and how you are as a student that would help a lot. See my response to MaskedTrumpeter's post above for some of what I would say. Anyway, I kind of hear this wimpy argument sometimes, but I'm not buying it. I mean if a program is large, and it also graduates good people and carries a certain amount of prestige, where does the poor education come in? Of course it depends on your level, but people colleges determine that in admissions anyway. So if you're good enough to get into an Indiana or a North Texas or a Florida State, then why wouldn't you go? ALSO, as I mentioned above, part of studying composition is access to players and hopefully being a player yourself. Obviously you're going to be around better players and ensembles and directors at a top 20 school, not a mid-tier school. I think you misunderstood the definition of "small and large" colleges. However, I'd rather not debate with you since you tend to be pretty long winded, like in this post for instance.

That just seems like a rationalization for low standards and poor achievement. If you have the chops, go to a top 20 school. Also look at the faculty for various schools. Of course, don't count out schools in your state (I didn't look at your profile, so I'm just going to assume that you're American). If you live in Florida, Indiana or California, STAY IN STATE, you've got great colleges at your disposal. I would stay away from conservatories, unless one of their profs really interests you and you you think you have the chops for it. The better conservatories are Manhattan and Curtis.

That just seems really lazy. Maybe you should get better at writing and organization

Depends, people outside of academia haven't really bothered to label any of it since it's so irrelevant to modern society. Modern or contemporary classical aren't very precise terms and people don't really use them. Maybe "modern symphonic" or "modern chamber music" perhaps.

To be honest, I question anyone who chooses to write anachronistic music--music no one really cares about--without understanding the repercussions of such, no matter what race they are. I also don't think people should blatantly ignore their culture for some sort of lame reactionary reason, like not liking T-Pain or something. If anything you should fight to learn everything you can about it, not just succumb to laziness and write piano sonatas and minuets because that's what you learned about in your 7th grade youth orchestra.

Well when discussing genres and history, it's important not to discuss and opine about these things in a vacuum; the same can be said about anything in a semi-historical context. I just have to say that cause the notion of "classical v. art v. pop" or whatever is pretty vague. I just want to clear up misconceptions in this thread... The Baroque era is generally considered to be from 1600-1750 The Classical era is generally 1750-1820 Romantic era 1820-1910ish? Modernism 1890-???? Then there are sprouts of Neo-Classicism in the early 20th century in Europe and in the middle 20th century in America. If you want to learn more about all that stuff, I really suggest reading a good book on the history of Western Music. By the way, I completely left out Medieval and Renaissance because, well, I'm definitely no expert when it comes to Western history pre-Enlightenment - not with music at least. As with pop music, you can't really use that as a blanket term across epochs, it just doesn't work. It's more precise to refer to folk and dance music if you're talking about music of the lower class in pre-Industrialized Europe, or any other continent.