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Is it so hard to enter Berklee College of Music?

Getting Into Berklee College of Music?

  • My boyfriend is an excellent musician and has been playing guitar since he was little. He does really well when it comes to improvising, playing by ear, and creating original pieces, etc. However, when he was in high school (2 years ago) the band teacher never helped him out when it came to note reading (as he could play by ear very well) He really is talented and has a strong passion for music. He's looking to apply to Berklee for the spring semester but is a little nervous about sight reading. Does anyone know how much emphasis is placed on reading music? and if he does very well playing during his audition, will they cut a little bit of slack if his note reading isn't extremely good? Also, does anyone know exactly what the acceptance rate for Berklee is?

  • Answer:

    I think the recent acceptance rate has been around 30%. Here's the thing: sight-reading is only a small part of the audition and may not be that important for getting into the school, but he will need to learn to sight read. Many of the required classes (for everyone) involve a lot of sight-reading, and if he doesn't know how he won't be able to understand the material. He doesn't necessarily have to be the greatest reader or be able to read well for guitar, but in general knowing how to understand notation on a staff is absolutely necessary.

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I don't recall having to sight read anything at my audition... you really don't sight read very much there, unless you want to. I went through there as a performance major (which obviously requires the most reading), and I didn't have to read that much. I took a few classes that had a lot of sight-reading, but that was my choice. I knew a few people who were terrible at reading and avoided it as much as possible... that's a shame really. I'd think they would want to use their time there to improve, but whatever. Anyways, the Berklee guitar audition is OUTRAGEOUSLY hard. There's an overwhelming amount of guitarists at the school (at one point it was over 25%). That's a problem. To remedy it, the guitar audition got harder. They also receive more applicants for guitar than any other instrument. The fact is: there's not enough room for everybody. A lot of really talented people get turned away. It's not that they did anything wrong, there just isn't room. Berklee's acceptance rate used to be up around 70%, but their retention rate was only 30% of that. Then when Roger Brown became President, he instituted an entrance audition (why they didn't have one before is anyone's guess). Now their acceptance rate is around 30%, which is still pretty high, but it's a big difference. With all the guitarists that audition, and Berklee's active effort to thin out the guitar players there, I'd wager that they're accepting less than 5% of guitar applicants.

LucasMan

If you mean "Berkley" college in California, then that would be around 26% for 2013.

Steve

I googled this question and it was asked a few months ago by someone in a similar situation. A graduate student from there who also happened to be a guitarist said that sight reading was required but not strongly emphasized for guitarist there. They did have to sight read sometimes though so your boyfriend might as well teach himself how to by using a self help book or something. The acceptance rate there is 37% Edit: I thought you meant Berkely too! Had to google to research Berklee Music School.

Absolut

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