Application Requirements

There are two required steps to successfully complete your first year application for admission:

1. Complete the Common App - with the NYU Supplement - and submit to NYU Undergraduate Admissions. *The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music Admissions Committee does not review the Common App.

2. Prepare a creative portfolio and submit via Slideroom (you will be charged a $10 fee to use this service, payable with credit or debit card). *This is reviewed by the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music Admissions Committee.

   IMPORTANT: Please note the Common App and the Slideroom Creative Portfolio both need to be submitted by the specified deadline.

   If you do not submit your Slideroom Creative Portfolio by the specified deadline for your applicant pool, we will not accept any late Slideroom applications.

If you are currently an NYU student NOT enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts, you should complete these two required steps to successfully submit your external transfer application for admission:

1. Complete the NYU Internal Transfer Application

2. Prepare a creative portfolio and submit via Slideroom (you will be charged a $10 fee to use this service, payable with credit or debit card).

Note: Internal Transfer applicants DO NOT need to submit a Common App. Transfer students are required to maintain a minimum of five full-time semesters per the Tisch School of the Arts’ residency requirement. For more information about transfer student eligibility and requirements, refer to our Transfer Policies.

IMPORTANT: Please note the Internal Transfer App and the Slideroom Creative Portfolio both need to be submitted by the specified deadline.

If you do not submit your Slideroom Creative Portfolio by the specified deadline for your applicant pool, we will not accept any late Slideroom applications.

If you are currently an NYU student enrolled at Tisch School of the Arts, you should complete these two required steps to successfully complete your change of major application for admission:

1. Complete the Tisch Change of Major Form.

2. Prepare a creative portfolio and submit via Slideroom (you will be charged a $10 fee to use this service, payable with credit or debit card).

Note: Internal Transfer applicants DO NOT need to submit a Common App. Transfer students are required to maintain a minimum of five full-time semesters per the Tisch School of the Arts’ residency requirement. For more information about transfer student eligibility and requirements, refer to our Transfer Policies.

IMPORTANT: Please note the Change of Major form and the Slideroom Creative Portfolio both need to be submitted by the specified deadline.

If you do not submit your Slideroom Creative Portfolio by the specified deadline for your applicant pool, we will not accept any late Slideroom applications.

If you are currently a college student enrolled at another institution, you should complete these two required steps to successfully submit your external transfer application for admission:

1. Complete the Transfer Student Common App
2. Prepare a creative portfolio and submit via Slideroom (you will be charged a $10 fee to use this service, payable with credit or debit card).

Note: Transfer students are required to maintain a minimum of five full-time semesters per the Tisch School of the Arts’ residency requirement. For more information about transfer student eligibility and requirements, refer to our Transfer Policies.

IMPORTANT: Please note the Common App and the Slideroom Creative Portfolio both need to be submitted by the specified deadline.

If you do not submit your Slideroom Creative Portfolio by the specified deadline for your applicant pool, we will not accept any late Slideroom applications.

Keeping in mind the crucial information above, in this two-page essay, tell us why you are a good fit for the Clive Davis Institute. A strong essay might include a bit of your personal story; a description of the kinds of skills you possess or have the potential to develop that will allow you to succeed at the Institute and in the music industry; experiences you may have had that illustrate those skills; the courses of study you are interested in taking at the Institute that fall outside your current focus or strength; and how you expect to contribute to the community and the culture of the Clive Davis Institute.
2 pages, 12pt font, double-spaced, .pdf format

Present a five-minute sample of your best creative work to date. You have five minutes of our attention, so please carefully curate the use of that time. Your submission may be one, unified sample, or multiple samples that together total five minutes of review. Your sample could include audio, video, a sample of articles you’ve written or published, a business plan you’d like to implement, designs for a home studio, flyers or promotional materials you’ve designed, evidence of live event production, evidence of experience with new media or online entrepreneurship, films you’ve scored, etc. For video, you may speak to the camera, narrate, and/or use screen text to convey facts or context or details for the creative work.
5 minutes

Some important tips:

The creative sample should align with the skills you’ve described on your application. For example, if you are an aspiring songwriter, your sample should highlight your songwriting rather than being a series of clips of you performing mostly other people’s songs. If you are an aspiring music executive, performance is less important than giving us a glimpse into shows you’ve promoted and bands you’ve managed.

You must be the primary contributor to or creator of the work. Collaboration is permitted, but your sample must show clear evidence of your contributions. For performers, if you’re applying with heavily produced songs that feature your voice we'd like to hear you without those production elements. This may be as simple as you sitting in front of your computer camera and performing for 30-90 seconds. Work that involves sampling or previously copyrighted material may be submitted only if your creativity is displayed through the use of the sampled material.

Aim to balance breadth and depth. How much of your work should you include in your sample? On one hand, one piece is sometimes not enough to show us that you have created or are capable of creating a body of work. On the other hand, we want to hear enough of the pieces you do submit to assess their quality. So attempt to strike a balance. If you are a performer, songwriter, or producer, we might need to hear more of some songs and less of others. Use your best judgement in service of showing us that you create with quality and also that you have been and are committed to creating with consistency.

Show your entrepreneurship. How have you taken your talents and aspirations into the outside world? How are you an active participant in the business of you? If you are a performer, for example, where have you performed? If you are a producer or songwriter, what have you done with those songs after you’ve completed them? 

Avoid the common cliches that we often see in creative samples. These include footage of childhood performances — cute, but superfluous unless it demonstrates truly exceptional skills; or general declarations about music being a crucial part of your life — we already know. Don’t waste precious time. Focus instead on giving us what is uniquely you, in the present. Please do not use previous student samples as a guideline as our requirements change from year to year.

Write one page or less detailing how you created and/or contributed to the work included in your creative sample. For each individual piece, identify the full extent of your creative involvement, and, if applicable, all credits due to other contributors. You must provide, as applicable, the name of the composition, composer(s), producer(s), engineer(s), mixer(s), arranger(s), programmer(s), location of recording, date of recording, software(s) used, and full list of musicians and performers on the recording. Max. 1 page, 12pt font, double-spaced, .pdf format

Talk to us for two minutes about your profound curiosities and interests outside of music. Using a computer webcam or mobile camera to record yourself, share a bit of those interests, and why The Clive Davis Institute at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, is the place for you to explore those interests.

At the Clive Davis Institute, you will be spending three to four years as a scholar taking a wide range of liberal arts classes, not just as a professional practitioner and entrepreneur-in-training. To graduate from the program, you must succeed in intellectual training as well as creative training, as reading and writing is an integral part of what we do.

With that in mind, choose one book (fiction or non-fiction, graphic novel, etc.) you’ve read in the past five years that had a personal and/or transformative impact on you. Your task is to write a two-page essay that analyzes and explains two things: 1. the importance, distinctiveness, resonance, or relevance of the book's ideas, or the brilliance of its craft;  2. and why that book had such a personal and transformative impact on you. For example, you might write about how reading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities changed the way that you think about the city that you are from, or how reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X made you think differently about racism and your relationship to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Consider that the work you choose should reflect the seriousness of your thinking and it should deal with intellectual ideas. The reason that we want you to write about a book is because we want to know what makes you 'think' about the world you live in, outside of just music. But if you feel compelled to write about another kind of work — a film, a record album, a podcast, documentary or docu-series— we will read it. 2 pages, 12pt font, double-spaced, .pdf format

Create a list of ten songs that best illustrate who you are as a creative person and a music fan. Paste a link to a customized playlist via any suitable streaming service (i.e. Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, etc.) of your choosing. Include a paragraph about why you picked the material you did.
1 link & 1 paragraph, 12pt font, double-spaced, .pdf format

Please identify your previous/current artistic, entrepreneurial, and work experience. Experiences may include promotional activities, jobs and internships, businesses that you have started, magazines or newspapers that you have written for, volunteer work experience, extra-curricular activities, projects, and school leadership positions, creative leadership in activism or organizing, musical skills, church choir, school chorus, band involvement, and amateur or professional performances. It may also include formal training on an instrument, voice training, technology (such as MIDI), or technical skills in music performance and recording, such as arranging and composition, DJ-ing, and producing. Please include instructors, courses taken, and the duration of study or engagement. .pdf format