The Willow (Seamus Rooney) plus Berklee Update
As promised in my last post, here is another original composition Seamus produced for college apps this year. (It's his NaNa’s favorite.)
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(For my less tech-savvy friends, just click the triangle below and make sure your speakers are on ♥️.)
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As for how Seamus’s college decision has progressed...
Among the four Berklee Music Production grads that Seamus and I had the good fortunate to talk with (thanks Watts Hospital Hillandale Neighborhood List Serve!), the consensus is that Berklee’s pretty awesome... with these caveats:
1) Studio time is reserved for specific assignments, and getting ‘free time’ (at/after 8 PM) is like calling into a radio contest.
2) Studio time slots are only for two hours, and it can take an hour just to set things up; so students generally team up with classmates to get a total of 4 hours at a time.
3) Music Production professors are actually very accessible, and you should never not take advantage of their required office hours.
4) You can get a comparable music production education elsewhere, but Berklee contacts should not be underestimated.
5) Boston is not the great music city it used to be.
6) Relevant work experience (including gopher) and connections made through this experience are more important than a degree from Berklee or anywhere else.
And, perhaps most importantly:
*6) You do not want to start your music production career in debt.
One Berklee alum said his band is loathe to hire a musician if (s)he is in debt. “They can’t afford to tour with us,” he said.
Another said that, while Berklee may get you a second look on your first application, some actually get a negative first impression. He said that what matters most is if you can listen, follow instructions, and deliver coffee (and food) with a smile; and that the Berklee grads who think they are above this have unfortunately left a lasting impression among some prospective employers.
Another Berklee grad, who is still $40K in debt 10 years after graduating, said he had to ‘grind’ for the last ten years but that he’s in a good place and doesn’t regret going to Berklee - primarily because of the connections with students as well as staff that he made there. He also said that, if he had it to do again, he'd have taken his liberal arts classes at another school (Berklee allows maximum transfer of 24 credit hours) rather than paying Berklee >$60K for the year required to fulfill them. "You don't need to take a math class at Berklee," he said.
Meanwhile, we still haven’t received our financial package from Berklee, so we still don’t know how much it would cost for Seamus to go there this Fall.
Three weeks ago, Seamus emailed the Berklee admissions office (he couldn’t get anyone by phone), and after a few days they responded that he needed to change the selective service line on his FAFSA form to "register me", which he did. Once that's done, they said, he should receive the financial package in 2 to 3 weeks. He called the admissions office a couple days ago to ask whether he would receive his admission packet before the acceptance deadline (in 10 days!), at which point he/we have to write a nonrefundable check for $1000 to save his Berklee spot. He received a message that the voicemail box was full; so he emailed the admissions office again and waited. After two days with no response, I called the main number for the admissions office (on the Berklee webpage) and got a voicemail referring me to another number, which requested that I email or leave a text at the first number. The response to my text referred me to yet another number that played the same voicemail message as the numbers I'd already dialed. I left voicemail messages at every number I called, but I have yet to receive a telephone response.
In the meantime, Seamus got an email response from the admissions office instructing him to make the same change to his FAFSA form that he’d already made 🙄.
I updated (profusely) the text number that had responded, each time asking them to please put me in touch with a real person so we can stop going around in circles. "I've never had so much trouble finding out how much money I have to give someone," I texted them.
This afternoon, Seamus called FAFSA directly, and they told him that, apparently due to a glitch with his online file, he needed to re-enter something related to the selective service line. When he did this, the file wouldn't let him save the change because it said no change had been made (!). So he put a period after "St" in the address line, and it let him save the 'new' file.
Whether or not this will fix the problem remains to be seen. But no thanks are due to Berklee if it does.
The person Seamus spoke with at FAFSA advised Seamus to request that Berklee extend his acceptance deadline until he is able to receive his financial information. I texted this request to the number that had previously responded and received the following response:
"Hello, I apologize for the difficulty with communications. In that case, I would recommend contacting student financial services at 617-747-2274. I apologize again for the inconvenience."
I called this number and heard the same voicemail message I'd heard at the other numbers. I left a voicemail message anyway, and Seamus sent an email message to the address provided.
We still have not spoken with a real person in real time; and, at this point, we don't expect to.
To see the next post in this series, click here: http://www.melissarooneywriting.com/blog/2021/04/the-college-drama-continues-mac/.
To see the last post in this series, click here: http://www.melissarooneywriting.com/blog/2021/04/seamuss-abyss/.
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Eno River; Durham, NC
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