The answer to this question is more complicated than it appears on the surface. The Strategic Arts Alumni Project (SNAPP) surveys arts program alumni from schools throughout the U.S. The data collected is compiled for each participating school to provide insights about the value of the degrees offered and how each school can move forward to improve career preparation. To date, it has appeared that the majority of students who graduated from arts programs were satisfied with their education and those who wanted to be working in the area of the arts they attended school for were doing that.

That’s a simple question to answer: all the things that are taught in other courses outside the music department.

1) Statistics
2) Marketing
3) Finance
4) Accounting
5) Computer programming
6) Database management
7) Medicine
8) Engineering
9) Math

Do you get the point, or do you need more examples?

Hello,

Your point about careers in an orchestra is well taken. Because seats are so scarce in symphonies across the country, and because so many symphonies have been ailing, we’ve been trying to address this upfront with articles including: , and . We know that an increasing number of music schools are addressing the challenges to aspiring symphony players and hope that students will seek out these schools. To our knowledge, the SNAAP study did not separate out genres of study nor specific career areas in which study participants work.

We’d be very interested in hearing how your background in studying music has informed your nursing education and career.

We’re not sure what skills you feel you’ve missed out on in music school that could be useful to you now. We also wonder whether you had opportunities for internship and outreach experiences as a student, and whether you were able to take any entrepreneurship and/or business/how-to-market yourself classes or seminars to prepare you for leaving school. Note that it’s not too late to do any of that. We know it’s harder once you’re out of school and needing income in addition to filling in gaps in your education, but it’s essential stuff regardless of what area of music you want to work in.

As a music major, you’ve had to learn skill sets that are important in practically every field outside of music as well. Check out and “The 7 Skills Students Must Have for the Future” — they both talk about what you learned in music school: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, time management, and juggling several projects simultaneously. Think about how these skills relate to the types of jobs you’re interested in applying for, so you can “package” what you’ve learned in a way that makes you more marketable.