By Nisha Kutty:

Now that the admission season is upon us, most of the undergraduate aspirants are rattling through online forums and websites to find the best ranking colleges in their chosen fields of study. Life after school begins with an impending feeling of confusion and anxiety within most of us today, as choosing the right college for the right area of study requires intense research.

These areas of study are broadly divided into fields of Art, Science and Commerce. Within India, intense competition is seen in all three fields. For some of you who are aspiring for a more selective area of study like Music or Painting, the number of options are limited and the competition more fierce. Based on rankings of various web portals and newspapers, here is a list of the some of the best music schools in India:

– Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal — It is an autonomous university founded by noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore in the year 1939. Being one of the oldest universities in India, Visva Bharati boasts of a long list of alumni, which include renowned Bengali artists like Rezwana Chowdhury Banya and Suchitra Mitra. In India, the university ranks high in the list of colleges offering a course in music.

– University of Delhi — Delhi University offers a rather competitive post-graduation degree in music and a Doctor of Philosophy in Music.

– Delhi School of Music — This is one of the very few schools in India to have a tie up with a European Universities like Trinity College of Music, London. Delhi School of Music also offers a great guitar tricks training program overview and a very challenging course in Western Classical Music.

– KM Music Conservatory — A music school founded by A. R. Rahman in the year 2008, this Chennai based Music Institute offers two internationally recognised degrees in collaborative partnership with Middlesex University, UK.

– Adarsh Kala Mandir — One of the oldest Art colleges in India, Adarsh Kala Mandir, situated in Madhya Pradesh, specializes in offering degrees in almost all fields of art and music.

Apart from these, there are several colleges and music institutes abroad which offer prestigious degrees in music. Some of them are:

– The Juilliard School of Music, New York
– Radcliffe College (Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study), Massachusetts
– Royal Academy of Music, England
– Berkeley School of Music, Boston

With this list in hand, most of you would surely find it easy to go through the prospectus of each of the colleges, narrow down the specifications and make your admission procedure quick and hassle free.

So, good luck and always remember to prioritize your wants from a particular course above the ranking of a particular college.