Good Sciences Colleges with Music Programs

I think one deals with musical waves and amplification whereas the other studies noise waves and suppression of it. Don't mind me I do nasty once in a while.

MIT has an excellent music program. I know a few faculty and students there and my impression is that it is particularly good for composition.

The nice thing about the Boston area in general is that there is a lot of interaction between schools. I know MIT musicians who take classes and perform at NEC, Harvard, etc., and vice versa. Boston in general (along with New York, San Francisco, and other big artsy cities) is the kind of place where there's enough musical activity going on that you could easily be involved with music without actually having to major in it. (I'm told Pittsburgh has a growing musical scene for classical music as well, with Carnegie Mellon and U. of Pittsburgh having lots of musical opportunities.)

If it's performance rather than composition that is more your son's calling, then many of the big universities already mentioned are good candidates. If your son plays violin, it might be a good idea to aim for a bigger school that has a decently sized orchestra, since orchestral music is as crucial (and for some violinists even more crucial) to the instrument as solo or chamber repertoire. This is not to say you can't find a good orchestra at a small school, but small schools sometimes have trouble maintaining a large ensemble of consistent quality from year to year owing to the smaller population of students to choose from. This was the case at my own undergraduate alma mater, and my current school--also of the small liberal arts variety--has a student population of just under 1500; we've never had a full-time orchestra because there just aren't enough musically inclined students to sustain one from year to year.

He's definitely performance oriented. The orchestral part is a real plus for him.

The first school that comes to my mind is the University of Illinois.

s an old thread but one still in the planning stage no? Any insights engineer?

He's definitely performance oriented. The orchestral part is a real plus for him.

F'n copy bot.

In the end he didn't care as much about the science part as I did so he's off studying violin performance.

maybe youve got a Josh Bell in the wings.

Good for him. Scientists are a dime a dozen. What this country needs is more good string players.

Some of the best schools of music are in the Boston area and of course, can any school of engineering top MIT?

In the Midwest, two top-rated schools of Design and Engineering are of course, Purdue ( Indiana ) and the Illinois Institute of Technology ( Chicago ).

Of course, since Chicago has a long, long history of Jazz music as well as other forms of music, , there are many very fine schools of both music and dance in the Chicago area.

I knew someone, a few years ago, who taught a course in music in the music department at MIT. I don't think MIT offers a degree in music, but a student could minor in music/instrumentation.

I also know of a violin-making scholarship offered by a group in Chicago.

MIT has a music major as well as a minor: http://web.mit.edu/music/academics/programs.html

Who knows, maybe I do. When his music aptitude started to show up, I was encouraging him to enter the sciences (hence this thread) but by his senior year he was one of the best high school violinists in the state and while all the technical skill is there, clearly his passion is in music. That led to months of applications to universities with extremely competitive music programs where the admissions office loved him but we couldn't even get an audition with the music department. Finally he ended up at a state school with a great faculty advisor. They love him, he loves them and they stream all their student performances so we can watch him perform from home. He's been accepted to a music festival this summer where Josh Bell will be a guest performer, so he can see how high the bar is to play with the big dogs.