Oberlin College

Within the Conservatory, which is housed in a modern complex designed by Minoru Yamasaki, are ensemble rehearsal rooms, two excellent concert halls, and 153 individual practice rooms. The Conservatory houses one of the largest collection of Steinway pianos in the world, and the campus is also home to twenty-five organs. Other features include numerous instrument collections, seven acoustically isolated and optimized electronic music studios, and a library that rivals those in the nation’s largest university music schools.

The Conservatory of Music and the College of Arts and Sciences share the same campus. As a result, Conservatory students can take courses in both the College and the Conservatory in the same semester and can simultaneously pursue majors in both divisions, completing majors leading to both the B.Mus. and the B.A. degrees after five years. Twenty-five to 30 percent of the Conservatory’s students are in the Double Degree Program. In addition, the Conservatory offers dual-degree programs, open only to Oberlin’s own undergraduates, which combine bachelor’s degree study in performance with graduate study leading to the master’s degree in conducting, opera theater, or music teaching.

The Oberlin Conservatory is one of the few major music schools in the country devoted primarily to the education of undergraduate musicians. As a division of Oberlin College, the Conservatory is also recognized for being paired with a preeminent college of the liberal arts and sciences. These factors allow the conservatory to offer its students the essential components of excellent musical training: an accomplished faculty, outstanding facilities, an extensive curriculum drawing on both divisions of Oberlin College, and an active cultural life centered on campus and drawing on Cleveland as well.

“You’re at Oberlin? What do you play?” Every Oberlinian has heard this question even though the Conservatory of Music is but one fourth the size of its partner, the College of Arts and Sciences. Yet it is natural that the name Oberlin should evoke thoughts of music. Built up by an amateur cellist (Charles Grandison Finney) and funded mainly by a former piano student (Charles Martin Hall), Oberlin College created America’s first professorship in music in 1835. Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music, established in 1865, is the country’s first continuously operating conservatory. Even before the Civil War, a visitor, Thomas Hastings, pronounced the Oberlin choir “the finest in the land.” A century later, Igor Stravinsky was similarly effusive over the Conservatory’s young instrumentalists.

Oberlin has been the source of much innovation in American musical education. It established the country’s first full-time chair in music history (1892), offered the country’s first four-year degree program in public school music (1921), introduced to the United States the renowned Suzuki method of string pedagogy (1958), pioneered a program in electronic music (1969), and created the American-Soviet Youth Orchestra, composed of 100 young musicians from the United States and the former U.S.S.R., the first arts exchange produced jointly by the two countries (1988).

Conservatory alumni include well-known composers, conductors, performers, and teachers. Some, like David Zinman, conductor, have gained public renown. Others, like jazz pioneer Will Marion Cook—whom Duke Ellington called “my conservatory”—are revered mainly by specialists. Today’s Oberlin graduates are to be found in virtually every major American orchestra as well as in international orchestras from Berlin to Hong Kong. Its singers and pianists are no less ubiquitous, as are Oberlinians in the many new allied fields of music.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music has taken great pains to both educate and train its students. More than ever, technical proficiency is essential to success in music; however, the day when a pianist could simply perfect a limited repertoire of classics in order to launch a career is past. Increasingly, musicians need to master worlds of sound that were scarcely imaginable when they were students. Only the most well-educated minds can attain such flexibility. Oberlin is committed to providing its students a balanced combination of professional training and comprehensive education.

Application Procedures

Deadline--freshmen and transfers: December 1. Notification date--freshmen and transfers: April 1. Required: essay, high school transcript, college transcript(s) for transfer students, 2 letters of recommendation, audition, SAT or ACT test scores, transfer release form (for transfer applicants), DVD (for recorded audition). Recommended: minimum 3.0 high school GPA, interview, video. Auditions held 28 times on campus and off campus in Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Houston, TX; Interlochen, MI; Idyllwild, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC; videotaped performances are permissible as a substitute for live auditions if of good quality.

Oberlin College

Application Procedures

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