The Jacobs School of Music reigns supreme again, and I definitely couldn’t be more proud.
The IU Jacob’s School of Music was recently named the No. 1 music college in the United States by musicschoolcentral.com , beating out world-renowned Juilliard in New York City and multiple Ivy League ?institutions.
Although my musical abilities are subpar and I have no interaction the music school at all, I’m beyond pumped. Nothing gets my cream and crimson pride flaring more than a situation like this.
I’m from central Indiana, as are many students currently enrolled at IU. When declaring my intent to attend college in Bloomington, I heard endless blabbering about how IU wasn’t “branching out” and how people wanted a “more expansive and successful” college experience that couldn’t be found in a state school in Indiana. Yet I sit here as a second-year student, a decision, by the way, which I have never ?regretted, smiling to myself.
My public school with its state-funded education that was deemed so safe and average to some of my high school compadres is once again nationally praised for its excellence, beating out many of the schools I was told were superior to my own.
Obviously there are benefits to every university, one of which being the comfort and connected feeling that makes students choose to attend school there. And make no mistake, my beef is not with people choosing to go to a school they feel more drawn to, or that I am unaware that IU is outranked in certain aspects of its curriculum.
I feel this explosion of Hoosier pride because of the consistent criticism associated with attending a public, state school and how that somehow makes my college ?experience less than someone else’s.
I’m tired of IU getting looked down upon as being just a big midwestern state school where generation after generation of family ?members follow suit in attendance.
As our fantastic music school has just made perfectly clear, there’s much more to IU, and it’s outranking the competition.
cmcelwa@indiana.edu
