Oklahoma to (likely Western) Massachusetts - Beginning Research (Boston, Holyoke: limousine, tornadoes)

[WoodwindsRock]

You all... Lol.

My degree is a bit different from the music performance degree, it's more academic and leads to careers in research and teaching (professor). That's not to say it's an easy job to land, but it's quite a bit more stable than the music performance degree, which a lot of people get and then don't land a job.

In my experience, music education is pretty stable, too. I don't know many people that went into music education and aren't now band directors.

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I could not verify that University of Hartford has a musicology master's program. Also, listen, I'm not expecting to get into these top of the line schools. My GPA is good, but not top of the line.

One asset I have that universities might love is that I play the oboe and bassoon. Playing just one of those instruments is an asset. Needless to say, I'm going to spend a lot of time and effort making myself a better musician now.

[WestieWhitie]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

And my good friend, an education major there, is a petsitter.

Not only that but their faculty makes poverty wages - where else would you find full professors making well under $100K?

And on an unrelated note, for the OP, it’s it’s lobsta and oklahommer ‘round these parts, we’re weird like that.

[OutdoorLover]

If you want a fairly liberal area, with good mass transit, that might be less expensive than the Boston suburbs - one place that comes to mind is the Montgomery county, MD suburbs of Washington DC - for example Gaithersburg and Germantown. I lived there myself for a couple of years while doing my post-doc. It's a pleasant area, and back in the early 1990s anyway, they had a lot of apartment and townhouse complexes that were newly built and for what you were getting, had reasonably priced rents. Wages should be pretty high around there as there are numerous businesses and government institutions - like NIST in Gaithersburg, where I was for a time; NIH is down the pike in Bethesda. DC has the Metro commuter rail network as well as an extensive bus system. Avoid Baltimore - pretty high crime city.

DC Metro website:
https://www.wmata.com/schedules/maps/

Not sure what rents run there these days, but whatever it is, it's bound to be cheaper than the Boston 'burbs

P.S. Another place you might look at in Mass is Worcester, some neighborhoods are not good, but some are pretty nice. They do have a bus system.

[bibliotreka]

Originally Posted by WoodwindsRock

I could not verify that University of Hartford has a musicology master's program. Also, listen, I'm not expecting to get into these top of the line schools. My GPA is good, but not top of the line.

One asset I have that universities might love is that I play the oboe and bassoon. Playing just one of those instruments is an asset. Needless to say, I'm going to spend a lot of time and effort making myself a better musician now.

Hartt School is good, but definitely a notch or two below Juilliard. Even so, it wouldn't be your GPA that would really determine entrance, it would be your "audition" (for musicology, maybe it's a portfolio). I think general consensus there is that admission standards for the wider university (where GPA would come into play) are lower than they are for the Hartt School specifically.

Area-wise, I hear Middletown is a good LGBT-friendly spot. Maybe it's the closest the Hartford area has to a "gayborhood?" I lived in Granby north of Hartford a number of years which I found to be a pretty generic suburb, no rainbow flags there sadly, though it got more quaint if you ventured off the main routes that had succumbed to mcmansion-sprawl. Further out to the northwest you can find some quaint small towns that feel a little bit like the Berkshires if you squint hard enough. If you were looking for a job in higher ed with that degree though, you'd probably need to relocate again after graduation.. so maybe not a metro area to put down roots.

[chicagoliz]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

If you want a fairly liberal area, with good mass transit, that might be less expensive than the Boston suburbs - one place that comes to mind is the Montgomery county, MD suburbs of Washington DC - for example Gaithersburg and Germantown. I lived there myself for a couple of years while doing my post-doc. It's a pleasant area, and back in the early 1990s anyway, they had a lot of apartment and townhouse complexes that were newly built and for what you were getting, had reasonably priced rents. Wages should be pretty high around there as there are numerous businesses and government institutions - like NIST in Gaithersburg, where I was for a time; NIH is down the pike in Bethesda. DC has the Metro commuter rail network as well as an extensive bus system. Avoid Baltimore - pretty high crime city.

DC Metro website:
https://www.wmata.com/schedules/maps/

Not sure what rents run there these days, but whatever it is, it's bound to be cheaper than the Boston 'burbs

P.S. Another place you might look at in Mass is Worcester, some neighborhoods are not good, but some are pretty nice. They do have a bus system.

I'm not sure there is a worthy music school in the area for the OP. The Metro was in the news a few years back for their major problems (neither MD, nor VA nor DC wants to pick up the tab for Metro maintenance. Particularly in MD and VA, the residents who don't live in the DC area especially don't want to pay for it). Once you get out to Germantown, the public transit isn't so great.

After some real insanity in the housing market there, it is now less than the Boston area, but I don't know that I'd say it's great.


As far as less expensive housing, does Eastman have the program in musicology? I'd think Rochester would be pretty inexpensive. Not quite as liberal as MA, but still New York and there are quite a few schools in the general vicinity, so it's better than some other areas of upstate NY.

[bizcuit]

I wonder if the OP has found a place to focus on? She hasn't been back to this thread in a while.

[WoodwindsRock]

My direction has changed quite a few times over over the past several months. Whereas when I made this topic, I was not giving grad school much of any thought at all, my recent doctor's appointment that showed that my ears are fine really flipped things upside down. I started lessons up again and my teacher cut to the matter of grad school really quickly.

For the greater part of the past few months I've been thinking upstate NY, specifically Rochester, but that has changed drastically now. I would love to go to Eastman and all. I even got to meet one of their professors at a double reeds conference a few weeks ago, BUT Eastman is out of my league. Both my teacher (who is more optimistic than me) and I agree on that point. This doesn't change the idea of me potentially deciding to make Rochester my place of residence after school, of course.

Vermont and Maine don't have any universities with my degree at all, so they're off the list for this particular moving plan. Rhode Island only has Brown University which I can not even confirm has the degree for sure, so RI is off the list, too.

I have prospective universities I'm looking at in Massachusetts (yay!), Connecticut and maybe Upstate NY (not Eastman) or NH. If need-be, I'll expand to other blue states - Maryland, New Jersey, or *shudders* Minnesota or Illinois (the latter two are not my top choices because of them having a lot of tornadoes like Oklahoma. They'd still be far better than Oklahoma, but the further North and East the better).

Those are the states currently on my list, with the top two being my top two choices at this moment, but we'll see.

Now that my Colorado trip is done, I am making plans for a vacation next Spring where I can go up and explore.

[bizcuit]

Well, good luck as you move forward. It all sounds much more promising for you than when you first started this thread! Even if you don't end up in Massachusetts, it would be great if you could update us to let us know where you end up. Good luck with it all!

[mdovell]

If you like something small but good in NY I'd recommend Hudson. If you can get a job out of albany and do something hybrid or virtual it's only 45 minutes away.

[pitchpine]

Another thought for NY could be New Paltz. SUNY has a New Paltz campus and I believe they have a masters program for music.