Recently, Ouyang Nana, who was once known as a cello genius, finally graduated from Berklee College of Music, but Ouyang Nana's graduation diploma was found by the majority of netizens: Ouyang Nana only has a certificate of completion, not a normal graduation degree certificate. After this incident, it has aroused widespread social concern.
Coincidentally, in addition to Ouyang Nana, a large number of singers of domestic music have gone to Berklee College of Music to gild, including but not limited to: Wang Yuan, Duan Aojuan, Xilin Nayi Gao, etc. Even top singers such as Zhang Jie and Wang Leehom are very related to Berkeley. So what is the influence and attraction of Berklee College of Music, which is often mentioned in China? Is it Pheasant University? Can anyone enter? Why are celebrities crowded to gild? What is the teaching model?
Today, the mystery of Berkeley is broken from a professional perspective, and the answer is as follows:
1: Berklee College of Music is a no-threshold training university for global personnel, adhering to the thinking of American universities. The average success rate is 33%, and in 2020 it reached 50%, which is very, very high. To put it simply: anyone can enter Berklee as long as they can pass the Berklee College of Music, and there is no threshold other than the exam. This is a perfect gilded shrine for "Chinese students". But the dropout rate is higher than the enrollment rate.
2: Berklee College of Music is the world's top conservatory of music in terms of faculty and hardware equipment. Alumni have won more than 100 Grammy awards. However, the teaching mode is completely different from the domestic customized test-taking teaching, but more emphasis on personal initiative of the master open class and the tutor one-to-several key training method, emphasizing the initiative of personal progress, there is no passive learning test-taking space, it all depends on you to make friends and find a tutor.
The teachers are the top teachers, but whether they can learn the real skills depends entirely on their personal ability. If you are the material and are willing to work hard, you can learn real skills at Berkeley. But you're a bastard, gold-plated mindset, and if you don't go to class, then you can't learn the real thing. And there are many bastards.
3: Berklee College of Music graduates also face an employment problem - less than 5% of high-quality students can survive or engage in music through music. Therefore, in fact, it is difficult for most Berklee College of Music students to survive on music, but the 5% employment rate of Berklee College of Music is almost all top talents: especially the majors corresponding to the master's degree, are high-end art practitioners.
4: Chinese students at Berklee College of Music are still test-taking. There are intermediary training institutions for the Berklee Music Exam in China, which will tell you how to pass the exam to get the admission qualification, and in the internal graduation season of Berklee College of Music, there is a big business of Chinese students writing homework for the exam. Chinese students at Berklee College of Music value that diploma very much, and often ignore the true teaching value of Berklee College of Music.
5: Berklee College of Music's tuition is very expensive - the average semester is $20,000 (2019), or $40,000 a year. However, there are full scholarships (American scholarships) and half scholarships (Chinese scholarships), as well as the Wang Leehom Scholarship (Chinese student scholarships). This is Berklee College of Music's main way of making money, in fact, it is a bit similar to the gym's annual card thinking: after paying a huge tuition, most students do not have the perseverance to study at Berklee, and bastards are the norm. The college is also happy to relax and make money lying down. There are also work-study Chinese students who can't afford half of them, and there are not a few, and the tuition fees are indeed too expensive, and the surrounding consumption is also high.
Combining these five points, we can draw two very obvious conclusions:
1: Berklee College of Music is an international top training institution with top music education and music resources, which can allow some people who truly love music to gain knowledge, but it makes no sense for those who only use the test-taking thinking of diplomas and ignore the real knowledge. You are the material, you can be admitted to Berkeley and go straight to 90,000 miles, but it doesn't make any sense to graduate by passing the test and not taking classes.
2: The positioning of Berklee College of Music is biased towards a kind of imperial examination thinking that exploits loopholes. Take advantage of Berklee College of Music's low admission threshold and the low risk that can be solved by just throwing money at it, and get one: study abroad, Wang Leehom alumni and other extremely bluffing music gimmicks, so as to facilitate other entertainment activities and social status. But there isn't much hard power in nature. The final diploma is just that. Most of the celebrities belong to this category. Because of the seemingly huge tuition fees, it is very easy for them, and there are huge loopholes in the way of graduation.
Therefore, at this moment, we can come to the conclusion that Berklee College of Music is not a pheasant university, but a world-class music school that attaches great importance to personal learning desire and learning initiative, and a top hardcore undergraduate four-year training conservatory, which can provide a very perfect musical environment, but it is not good for ordinary families and ordinary people. Note: Berklee College of Music is more inclined to a training mindset rather than a domestic test-taking mindset.
Berklee College of Music: more suitable for musicians who already have a certain reputation and employability, not suitable for ordinary people, but not against ordinary people;
Berklee College of Music's moisture is as high as his gold content, and most of the moisture comes from the gold-plated thinking of Chinese students. Because there is a survivorship bias here - families who can afford 300,000 yuan a year tuition and 150,000 yuan of living expenses in China do not need to go to Berklee College of Music to lay a foundation for training universities, because they can get better conservatory resources in China.
Most of the students who go to Berklee College of Music are students who can't afford to pay 300,000 tuition fees a year in China, and a work-study program is equivalent to Berklee College of Music. As I read and read, I found that I had no space and time to study music, and my mind was all about studying for tuition. There are very few Chinese students who can really grit their teeth and study quietly for four years, and it is difficult for most of them to have a high level of natural standards. In this way, the water will get bigger and bigger, but it will still be rushing.
In this comparison, we can easily get a sense of Berklee College of Music's real audience, as follows:
1: A musician who is already in the music industry, has a certain reputation and employment experience, and is not short of millions of dollars. That's why celebrities are willing to go to Berkeley to gild, whether it's Wang Yuan, Xilin Nayi Gao, or Duan Aojuan, they all already have basic business properties, and they have basic income in the idol field and singer field, and it is not particularly difficult to spend millions of Berkeley tuition investments. On the contrary, Berklee College of Music can help them make up for their academic qualifications, majors, and personality, which is a very qualified deal.
2: The second generation of children who have an amateur music foundation and want to further their studies and are not short of money. Berkeley actually has a core and strong audience: completely zero foundation at the time of admission, or amateur state, in just four years to become a professional level performer, such examples are many, because the performance major is the majority of the number.
3: There is no money, but there is a scholarship grassroots with the ability to learn from the genius. This is also possible, but this kind of genius often needs to show himself in the interview at the entrance stage. But if it's a true genius, then Curtis, the mecca of music, is clearly better. In other words: Ouyang Nana's withdrawal from Curtis means that Ouyang Nana has given up her classical career in cello.
So, in a real sense, if you want to get a more perfect intellectual experience and further study in music and art at Berkeley, then the most important thing is - money. Money is the only way to provide a real learning environment.
Berklee College of Music's major – Simulation of the Employment Environment in the Music Industry
Finally, if we take a look at the majors at Berklee College of Music, we can clearly understand the detailed teaching ideas of Berklee music. Berkeley's majors are as follows:
- 1: Playing professional - core big head. Professional performances of various musical instruments, such as piano performances, violin performances, electric guitars, classical guitars, drum kits, orchestral music, etc.
- 2: Arrangement Major - CWP. It includes the learning of various genres and the use of arranging host software.
- 3: Mixing and production professional - MP&E. Includes wiring, recording, hardware, software equipment, as well as music engineering and music production. It is Berkeley's ace specialty
- 4: Sound Design - EPD. Synthesis of electronic music. It is Berkeley's ace specialty.
- 5: Melody creation. Song writers are different from the composition department, and they are specifically composed for melody, which is biased towards harmony and style knowledge education.
- 6: Music agent. Teaching the commercial operations and copyright operations of the music industry.
- 7: Music Therapy. Medical uses such as depression, psychomusic, quality, etc.
The whole of Berkeley is home to these seven majors, the strongest of which are MP&E for mixing, production, and electronic sound design. In addition, the most complex major must be the performance major, because the performance major is the instrumental music that the art industry specializes in. The profession of more Chinese people is focused on melody creation. Because in fact, Berkeley does not have a vocal music major, and the only thing that has something to do with vocal music is melody creation, so most Chinese people will choose melody creation. But in fact, mixing and production are Berkeley's strongest professions. The arranger profession is also very good, but it is biased towards laborious and laborious technical work.
In essence, these seven majors are the employment environment of the music industry, and if you want to live on music, then you can only start from these seven majors corresponding to the domestic seven sections: instrumental music, arrangement, production, electronic music, composition, agent, and music therapy. Many people will ask: why is there no singer and no vocal department? The answer is: the vocal music department cannot be employed, and being a singer is never about singing well, but needs help from other dimensions.
To sum up, we can clearly conclude that Berklee College of Music is a top music school with a low entry threshold but a very high learning threshold. It is not suitable for ordinary people, but more suitable for insiders with a certain reputation for further study.